Imperial Radch trilogy

Thoughts on Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy, its world, characters, and ideas.

Ancillary Justice is a fantastic start of space opera, set on worlds with detailed cultures and asking questions on identity and self. The next two books, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, should be considered a separate story set in the same universe, as they do not live up to the ambition, scope, and execution of the first.

Spoilers ahead!

Ancillary Justice

On the surface, Ancillary Justice is a classic story of a disgruntled hero plotting her revenge on an empire. But the world, the narrator, and the ideas about individuality and self is what makes it great.

The main character and narrator is an artificial intelligence of Justice of Toren, a large military troop carrier, able to control not only the entirety of self, but also an army of its cybernetic soldiers, called ancillaries. In some chapters, this makes the narrator nearly omnipotent, providing simultaneous description of multiple points of view, and making some paragraphs incredibly information-dense. When constricted to a single body, Breq, the narrator sometimes takes a distant and dissociated view of self, which was also an unusual perspective.

Justice of Toren subverts the "cold-hearted, calculating AI" trope by making suboptimal decisions, favoring particular crew members (Lieutenant Awn), and explicitly stating that AIs need to have emotions to function properly, even in daily routines:

Without feelings insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to compare endless arrays of inconsequential things. It's just easier to handle those with emotions.

While her motivation is not always clear, she is an interesting character, especially the conflict between following orders programmed into her and her own free will.

The Radch Empire has been ruled for over two thousand years by Anaander Mianaai, a god-emperor who inhabits multiple bodies at multiple locations at once.

Anaander Mianaai declares what will be, and that's how it is.

But the multitude of bodies and minds has its effects - after directly ordering a particularly horrible war crime, a part of the Anaander's conscience starts actively plotting against the other side. Whether it is multiple personalities struggling against each other in every body, or each body being inhabited by a different personality is not entirely clear. By the end of Ancillary Justice, this has been going for close to a hundred years, and explodes into a civil war with Anaander clones fighting each other, with no way to tell which factions they represent.

There are at least three other known alien races: Rrrrr, Geck, and Presger, but not much are said about them. Presger and Rrrrr played a role at several key events in history, and Presger, described as incredibly powerful, currently have a peace agreement with all humans.

As for the world, the Radch society is what I would call the nice and boring evil empire. The technology is advanced, and most Radchaai citizens have their basic needs met, enjoy a rather permissive religion, no gender discrimination, and a comfortable life. However, on top of that is the lack of privacy on ships and stations, countless social norms, complex hierarchical system of clientage, and plenty of classism. Meanwhile, on the outside, the Radch Empire is a ruthless colonizer.

Getting your feet on the ground during an annexation is the one sure way to increase your house's financial and social standing.

Do you realize that it's the appropriation of resources during annexations that drives our economy?

And we're built to expand, we've been expanding for more than two thousand years and to stop will mean completely changing what we are.

The constant war and annexations are just the status quo. It is somewhat painful to see characters have a glimmer of doubt ("are we the bad guys?"), but then continue on, or obey the commander. And I cannot help but to see this as a social commentary on wealthy nations who enjoys the internal freedoms and poorer nations who produce the goods for those weathy nations.

Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy

The second book narrows the scope from galaxy-spanning civil war to a single planet, Athoek, and its orbital station, and the story stays within it until the end.

The focus of the story becomes the politics and interpersonal relationships between Breq's shipmates, the Ship, the station inhabitants, and the Statin itseld. There is quite a diverse cast of characters and motivations: Breq, now a Fleet Commander and holding the last name Mianaai, is an unexpected obstacle in Anaander's plans and voice for the oppressed, Tiraswat, whose identity changes several times, Captain Hetnys, the somewhat blunt loyalist, Fosyf Denche, an ignorant plantation owner, Raughd Denche, a racist nepo baby, Queter and other Valskaayans stuck in a cycle of misery and oppression.

The themes of imperialism, colonialism and injustice are brought to the front, and addressed bluntly. A wealthy and ignorant plantation owner sees no problems while their child abuses the workers.

So if the growers run out of Valskaayans, who's going to pick tea for miserable food and hardly any wages? It's just so much more convenient if the field workers can never get themselves or their children out of here.

You take what you want at the end of a gun, you murder and rape and steal, and you call it bringing civilization.

Just how good a citizen does one have to be in order to have water and air, and medical help?

People don't riot for no reason.

I liked Breq seeking out Basnaiid and being forgiven for (as well as coming to terms with) what she has done to Lieutenant Awn.

Out of the new characters, Tisarwat was probably the most interesting to me. A young lieutenant who, against her will, had Anaander's implants installed and assigned to Breq's ship. Once Breq discovered the implants and Anaander's plan, they get removed, resetting Tisarwat's personality to a new person, with only fleeting remnants of her older self and Anaander. I wish Tisarwat's condition was explored a bit more.

What one identifies as gets brought up a few times. Even in the world with non-gendered pronouns, people would find ways to be inconsiderate.

You assumed I was human. It might, in fact, be entirely reasonable for you to say I don't seem like an ancillary to you, or that you don't see me as an ancillary. And you might even think of it as a compliment.

What surprised me was the relatively non-violent resolution of the story and the turn of giving AI rights of a person.

Fleet Captain at the Plantation Planet

Which is what I half-jokingly would call the latter two books. They are okay for what they are. The space is more of a backdrop, and the story probably could have taken place in England with a few minor changes. The day-long travel times and warring palaces just reinforce the idea.

These are some of the unanswered questions and reasons why the sequels did not live up to the original, in my opinion.

Breq has gained the title of Fleet Captain, last name of Mianaai, and somehow, became a human-with-implants, instead of being an ancillary that she was in the first book. This might be intentional, but is not really explained or addressed. For contrast, compare Breq's dissociation from her body when she jumped to save Seivarden in Ancillary Justice, and her human-like reaction when she lost her leg during an attack in Ancillary Mercy. Somewhere between books 1 and 2, Breq also found a great sense of justice and aversion to violence. While in Ancillary Justice she would ruthlessly try to kill anyone who stands in her way (raiders, other ancillaries, Anaander, etc.) and does not get involved, in sequels, she makes justice her goal, griefs for an alien translator that she did not know, and even lets Anaander Mianaai go (instead of killing them as planned). This is the same Justice of Toren / One Esk that carried out multiple annexations over two thousand years and killed hundred if not thousands of civilians in the process, and has been wandering the outskirts of the Radch as Breq for twenty years. While I agree that progress and changing opinions and attitudes is possible, it could not magically happen between two books, without being addressed at all. Fleet Captain Breq also rejects both Anaanders' rule, even though she sided with the progressive Anaander at Omaugh palace.

Another noticeable thing is that Fleet Captain Breq regains some of her ship powers to be omnipresent and constantly watch her crewmates in finest detail, yet Ship has to communicate through its crew reading its responses, which was weird and did not seem to serve any point.

Anaander Mianaai, a god-emperor in Ancillary Justice, who planned several hundred years ahead, recruited loyal captains, installed backdoors in military ships (inlcuding Justice of Toren), smuggled ancillary bodies for his army, reappears at the end as an ill-prepared, pathetic angry young person, without any allies, and not even having full control of his ship. Although a single clone probably does not matter in the grand scheme of things, that was a pretty bad attempt as stopping someone who started a civil war and exposed your internal conflicts and plans. Additionally, the complexity of Anaander Mianaai's internal conflict from Ancillary Justice is gone, replaced by the good Anaander at Omaugh palace and bad Anaander at Tstur palace.

Seivarden, the only other major character of the original book, turned out to be quite a red herring. While appearing somehow important in Ancillary Justice, Breq saved him, brought him along, helped him deal with his kef addiction, and in return, got a selfish, mentally unstable person with attachment issues and frequent mental breakdowns. I never really grasped why Breq did any of it. Seivarden served on Justice of Toren briefly, and was not her favorite, either. The only reason I see if some type of attraction between former-Breq and Seivarden.

Out of the new characters, Tisarwat is interesting, but her personality after multiple implant installation and removal is never explored. Because she retains some of the Anaander in her, she only serves as the master key to give full autonomy to AIs at the end of the story. Ekalu spends all of her time aboard Mercy of Kalr as acting or full captain, and is Seivarden's love interest in Ancillary Mercy, but outside of that, there is absolutely no information about her. Sphene, an ancient ship predating Anaander, is an interesting concept, but all we get is a sassy ancillary that for some reason keeps following Breq everywhere. And Translator Zeiat is childish, unpredictable alien in human form. While entertaining for a while, the nonsense gets trite.

And nothing gets revealed about the Presger nor any details as to how and why they supplied weapons specifically for Garsedd, the key turning point in Anaander's and Radch's history from Ancillary Justice. The ending was pretty much scaring the Big Bad Anaander with Bigger Badder Presger. The real justice was the friends we made at Atheok station.

So, for my own satisfaction, I imagine that Fleet Captain in Ancillary Sword is an entirely different person who also happens to be an ancillary. She arrives at Athoek to right the wrongs for her own mysterious reasons and does so with minimum of violence and maximum of tea.

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