The Uplift War by David Brin

1. Brin’s writing improved! I’m excited about this. Here he pays attention at times to the sounds of words and weaves in some consonance and assonance to up his writing game. On reflection, in Startide Rising he paid some attention to sound when writing the English approximation of Trinary, but that was it, and by being separate from the prose of the novel it didn’t really endear his writing to me. This works though. I like it. Here’s an example from the start:

“Garth. So many times the victim.

The outlines of brown continents and shallow blue seas lay partly smeared under pinwheel stormclouds, as deceptively white and soft to the eye as a Gubru’s plumage. Along just one chain of islands—and at a single point at the edge of the largest continent—shone the lights of a few small cities. Everywhere else the world appeared untouched, perturbed only by occasional flickering strokes of stormbrewed lightning.

Strings of code symbols told a darker truth. Garth was a poor place, a bad risk. Why else had the wolfling humans and their clients been granted a colony leasehold there? The place had been written off by the Galactic Institutes long ago.

And now, unhappy little world, you have been chosen as a site for war.”

One more sentence to drive my point home:

“Nervous, anticipatory shivers flowed down the bureaucrat’s head-crest all the way to its vestigial flight feathers, bringing forth chirps of complaint from the two Kwackoo aides.”

The above two quotes are from the prelude. He has some nice sounds here and a nice collection of words. It doesn’t continue throughout enough of the rest of the novel to transform this whole novel to great writing, but there is enough in there that I enjoyed the writing here much more than in the last novel.

2. Brin also paces this book well. It’s a more traditional narrative arc with important actions occurring throughout the novel, slowly building the tension and the stakes. The novel is paced appropriately for this structure. But it also has that overarching plot point of the Gubru invasion of Garth and the Earthling struggles to get rid of them. (There are no dolphins: Here the Earthlings are humans and neo-chimpanzees and gorillas.) This overarching arc was what the last novel relied too much on. Here, by beginning with important actions and keeping them coming throughout the novel, the pacing is much better at grabbing me and keeping me moving and interested. For example, the book starts with the invasion, then builds into the resistance movement quickly instead of waiting for a third of the book to pass before the resistance gets going, like the last novel would have. This pacing is successful.

3. Brin remains good at character creation and progression. Specifically, Robert changes significantly throughout the novel: to the point that his portions of the book consists of a coming of age story. Like Toshio in the last book, Robert’s change is fundamental, but it’s not a major shift—say, from an antagonist to a protagonist. Rather, it’s a fulfillment of Robert himself. He begins as a boy version of Robert with some ignorance and talents, he ends up more of an adult, still with some ignorance, but his talents progress to skills as his mastery grows throughout the novel. There is a Robert-ness that stays from start to end, keeping him established as a consistent character that changes. And other characters similarly change throughout the novel. This is really good character creation and change.

4. The overt theme here is prioritizing ecological health. It’s something the humans value and it’s a way for this new galactic race to gain a place in the galaxy. It’s also something that the other races value, at least in word. This references Jane Goodall often in this respect, partly because her memory functions as some sort of patron saint to the neo-chimpanzees in the novel. But there is another, more interesting and unusual theme threaded throughout the novel: finding good times within the bad times. The invasion of Garth disrupts the ecological restoration of the planet and the lives of the inhabitants. But despite the desperate struggle they go through in resisting and subverting the invasion, they all find moments of happiness and peace during the war. Robert and Fiben find love, Athaclena finds balance, Mary finds a way to attain a personal connection to her son, and the other protagonist characters all find their own little slices of happiness too. In essence, this is the theme of Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, where Ivan is successful in so far as he is able to make his plight slightly better for another day—he is satisfied with survival, a little extra bread, and a job well done. Here Robert is satisfied by testing himself against the invader and discovering his talents and doing a good job at this new task.

5. As a sequel, this novel has remarkably little to do with Startide Rising. It’s another story set within the same world as that earlier book, around the same time, but it’s in no way a continuation of the story. This novel is its own thing and you don’t have to read the other one to get this one. It’s well done and doesn’t fall into the same traps most sequels tend to. I like that about it.

6. The opening is great. It allows just enough of the pre-invasion to take place for the invasion to have import, without dragging the opening on too long like the last novel did with the landing on the new world. Again, there’s no initial murder, and that’s a big positive for me. In the fifth chapter, the invasion occurs, allowing Brin to introduce the main characters and define them in relative peace before the war is begun. This pacing is perfect for the length of the novel.

7. In all, this is a better book than the last in most respects. The overtness of the ecological theme made it feel slightly forced at times, which means the ending was a bit incongruous as the characters don't really change through it, they just coast through the last section. But other than that, this novel was more enjoyable to read, better written, and paced better than the last novel. I look forward to reading more Brin in the future.

Startide Rising by David Brin

1. This novel switches points of view rapidly, but keeps most PoVs within a chapter. Each chapter break typically signals a PoV shift, but sometimes chapters are extremely short—like half a page or so. By having so many PoVs, this constant shifting effectively couches the action of the Streaker’s crew in its context. Brin keeps these switches legible by limiting his PoV character count—15 in the Streaker’s crew with around 5-10 aliens—and signposting the switches with chapter breaks, of which there are 124.

2. These PoV switches are very effective with worldbuilding. Brin shows willingness to allow a variety of characters to have a voice in the novel, but he also delves into their stances on the political issues, their unique characteristics, and their being. This variety and delving effectively builds the world while he’s telling the story. This is well-done here. He doesn’t overload the front, the middle, or the finish with world-building. He drips information out at a pace that is legible and easy to follow, while still creating an incredibly complex galactic society, and all without losing sight of the story and excitement.

3. [Added 12/14/15: Another thing Brin does well is grab and sustain the tension inherent in the situation he set up. The book takes place over about a month, maybe less than a month, and the situation doesn't significantly change throughout that time, but the tension does grow. The tension grows from characters essentially making their last play, trying to fulfill their desires through mutiny, assassination attempts, setting up traps, going AWOL, glimpsing and then grasping for spirituality, helping others at a cost to oneself, et cetera. These plays to fulfill their personal desires bring tension to the story, while the constant shifts in PoV allow the tension of the battle above the planet to substitute for tensionless times on the planet below. It essentially bleeds over due to the quickness of the shifts: after a chapter about the battle above, a chapter of a couple characters falling in love is tensionless, but I don't notice because the tension of the battle above is still with me.]

4. Brin builds characters well: each crewmember in each group is distinct, and I think that’s hard to do. He shows multiple sides of the mutineers, multiple sides of the ship’s crew, and multiple aliens. For instance, there are a few ship’s officers, and they’re very different people: the captain is forward looking and more willing to sacrifice one crewmember for the good of the whole, the second-in-command is a stickler for rules and desires quick solutions that require bravery, Hikahi is concerned about her crew and less willing to sacrifice even one—even an enemy. Brin keeps each of the main characters and secondary characters distinct, and does a good job of it. This characterization makes the whole novel feel realistic, despite the characters being sentient, spacefaring dolphins, chimpanzees, and humans.

5. But the pacing is not without problems: about 30% of the way in, something interesting of lasting importance to the story finally happens—the betrayal is finally revealed to the reader. Before that, there was just the arrival at a new planet, scant overly nebulous hints at tension within the crew, and a tsunami: the first just the setup, the middle making it seem like Brin wasn’t quite sure where he was headed, and the last a short-term tension at best. Once this point is hit about a third into the novel, it really takes off and the pacing is all but perfect from then on. Unfortunately that first third is a little slow. I was wondering where everything was going and why I should care. The inclusion of the tsunami and the weirdness of the planet in this part do serve important roles though: they set up the way the Streaker breaks free at the end, keeping the ending from being too much of a deus ex machina.

6. The setup is fantastic though, and that’s part of why the first third was disappointing. It’s a starship, mid-chase, landing on a planet to hide, followed by fleets of hostile aliens who are content to let it lie on the planet and duke it out in space for the right to capture the Streaker. There are no opening murders—a big advantage to any speculative fiction novel—and the story starts in media res. This opening is awesome, I just wish it wasn’t betrayed by the next third of the novel.

7. The writing is okay. It’s clear but nothing stood out as great or terrible. It’s not as efficient as some science fiction authors like Asimov, but that’s not a negative statement at all. Brin’s prose effectively allows some variety in language and sentence structure. This is his second novel, I believe, and I hope he gets better. This is a solid base to start from as a writer.

8. The theme of this novel is that diversity is both positive and negative. A diverse culture requires more from its members, but in so doing, greater heights can be achieved. The crew of the Streaker has multiple races of dolphins in addition to its token chimpanzee and humans. At the end, they use that diversity and the diversity of the aliens around the planet to escape the traps set for them by alien fleets. But it’s not without costs of racial tension in this high-stress environment: they first weather an assassination attempt, a mutiny, some desertion, and misunderstandings that require much sacrifice from the characters. I think Brin deals with this theme even-handedly, showing some good and some bad and, ultimately, coming down to a conclusion of diversity is worth the risks.

9. In short, this is a good novel, not great. It has a wonderful variety of situations, characters, motivations, and sentence structures. Match this variety to the story that is, for the most part, well-told, and a theme that is applicable and universal, and this becomes an enjoyable, good book.

Ubik by Phillip K Dick

1. Where the story convolutes the reader’s knowledge of what’s happening—the basic reality of the world—the structure stays pretty straightforward. It is interspersed with flashbacks and visions that tend to offer the reader more information, none of which really make sense. But making sense is not Dick’s point, here. He’s trying to remain mysterious and force the reader to have to make up their own mind about some of the basics of the reality of the world. For instance, who is dead, who is in half-life, and who is alive? This basic question is never answered. It’s safe to guess that some of the characters are half-life or dead, but who is actually alive is a much stickier subject. Anyways, the consistently straightforward structure of the story helps the reader make some sense out of the novel and serves as a solid base upon which the mystery can exist. Without this structural touchstone, the novel would be overly obtuse; but with this concession to sense-making in place, the novel’s central mystery is allowed to work.

2. Dick starts out with two major tensions: the disappearing psychics and the mission to the moon. The actual central tension in the novel—the questions concerning reality—wait a few chapters before being really written into the tale. They are foreshadowed when Runciter states, “I’m going to talk to my dead wife,” but they only take over the novel in the chapter after the bomb goes off on the moon—a few chapters into the book. This feint by Dick is a common speculative fiction tactic to allow a portion of the novel to focus on worldbuilding. I am typically annoyed by this because I feel like the author could have had the novel itself explain the world, without putting a short story at the start necessary to allowing the rest of the book to make what sense it does. Here it doesn’t annoy me as much, and I don’t really know why. On the one hand, it’s a tactic I dislike because it feels like the author is giving up on searching for ways to tell the story and build the world simultaneously. On the other hand, it sort of works here because the theme is questioning the reality of the built world, but at some level he has to build that world before it can be effectively questioned. So I think I found a place where this tactic that I typically don’t like is effective.

3. The writing is fine. Nothing spectacular, nothing terrible. It’s a uniform quality, which is impressive, but doesn’t really sound beautiful or disappoint. It’s good, and that’s about as far as I can go.

4. The theme here, as already hinted at, is the existential questioning of reality. This theme has filled so many books already that I don’t really want to go into it any further. The real interesting twist that Dick adds is Ubik, the eponymous product. It’s this magic cure-all that is called up by faith, at the end. But like the rest of reality, it changes over time, and it’s only the latest and greatest version that works effectively. Dick’s wife certainly believes Ubik is a metaphor for God, but to me it seems more of a personification of faith based on faith in technology and newness, not faith in God. This comes through the chapter openings more than the final willing of Joe. Joe’s final will for Ubik leaves no real question that at least on some level, Mrs. Dick is correct.

5. I think at some level, these existential-questioning-of-reality novels are all interesting, but none really stand out too far from the rest for me. Some of Dostoevsky’s works are notable, for sure. And I would place this up there near them. I think whichever of these novels a reader first reads that clicks with them will probably be their favorite. This one is worthy, for sure, and a fun read. Dick is able to confuse the reader far a number of chapters in the middle and yet still pull off his project, and that’s impressive.

The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

Translated by Joel Martinsen.

0. Preamble: When I finished my notes for The Three-Body Problem, I was left with a couple of frustrations and criticisms: it told too much with inconsistent quality; that it started with a murder, or three, before the writing, world, or characters mattered to me was annoying; I was confused by the structure throughout; and I was left with the overarching question: is this just strange, or is it unsuccessful? I concluded that it was probably a little bit of both, but that “I don’t know how much of my confusion is from translational ambiguity, unknown differences in narrative traditions between Western and Chinese stories, or this tale itself being told poorly.” I had hoped that this second novel, with a different translator, would illuminate that question for me. I was also genuinely interested in the story—Liu crafted an interesting story, at least what of it I could tell through my confusion. So I got the second book right away and found it to be a much more pleasurable read. On to discussing The Dark Forest itself!

1. The structure is more straightforward, but still strange. About halfway to three-fifths of the way in, the story seemingly ends. But with so much book left physically in my hands, the tension—though evaporated entirely from the words on the page—was still present thanks to the physical characteristics of the book. Without writing something like, “But human hope in assured victory was premature,” Liu communicated this through the context of the physicality of the book. This is a cool tactic. As the reader keeps reading and the new world builds more full, the tension grows. It raises a distinct feeling of wanting to shout at the screen, “Don’t go in there!”
—But it’s not all awesome. In terms of pacing, the tensionless time after Luo Ji wakes up goes on far, far too long. It really risked losing my interest. Which is a shame because: I feel that’s the only pacing problem in the book, I feel the mid-epilogue-gone-south tactic has a lot more potential than what Liu does with it, and because it takes up so much of the book with what quickly feels like a cheap trick. It begins to feel like a trick because of two reasons: he only uses it to create that one wonderful feeling in the reader, nothing more—I’m still left wondering what the Rift was and how this world is governmentally organized on any level other than the broadest strokes; and because he belabors the point for so long—which reminds me of his unfortunate heavy-handedness in the first book.
So the structure is strange. It does some cool things, but it also takes a risk that doesn’t quite work out fully. The rest of the structure of the book is successful, and without a translator’s note like the last one had, explaining how translated the structure is, I am still left wondering if my problems with most of the structure of the first book, and this central portion of the structure of the second book are due to differences in the narrative tradition, translational skills, or just poor writing.

2. On the other hand, he starts the book brilliantly. Instead of destroying something, he creates something—that graveyard conversation that invents cosmic sociology is told well from an interesting perspective and the rest of the book reflects on it well. The opening shows the power of beginning in a positive place. Sure the book had some negative aspects—it's filled with death and destruction—but by starting positive, I start the book with a positive outlook and that helps me remain positive throughout the book. Wonderful. Though it’s probably only so wonderful because so many books don’t start this way. If every book started this way, I’d be just as bored of it as I am of the opening murder tactic. [12/5/15: Oh hey! The opening has been put up online]

3. He still tells an awful lot, but I feel he is less ham-fisted here. He allows the reader a little more space, respects their intelligence more, and this creates a much more pleasurable read. I really enjoyed this book on a level I didn’t enjoy the first one. The first was a slog at times, but this was something I couldn’t wait to get back to reading. I was excited about it and thinking about it when I wasn’t reading. Some things I want to have explained more are brushed over, and some things that are explained are done so too fully, but that’s probably just personal preference. Throughout he foreshadows well, sets the stage for coming revelations well, and leaves enough hints that reflection is rewarding: I was guessing where things were headed and enjoyed that process because of his hints. So I would say the writing improves here, which is probably due to the translator. No offense to Ken Liu, but this book was more enjoyable to read. I’ll be interested to read the next one when it comes out next year, to see if Ken Liu modifies his translation to read more like this one does.

4. Where the first book focused on humans and how they would react to alien contact and aggression, this book’s theme continues that somewhat, but also focuses on Liu’s theory of galactic survivalism. The galaxy itself is the eponymous “dark forest”, a fearful place of shoot first and ask questions later. In other words, he's focusing on Luo Ji's theories of ET life and galactic survivalism, and these ideas are the central theme of the book: the name of the book, the opening scene, and the way that certain portions of the book’s plot focus on humans acting the same way and it’s a pretty depressing conclusion: survival requires lots and lots of murder. The theme is successfully illuminated through the spell, the probe, and the humans—especially the escapees. Because Liu has thought deeply about this and shows that in his writing, the theme really works well.

5. Like Iain M Banks’ The Player of Games, he has really long chapters here. And I appreciate this tactic simply for breaking away from the typical chapter structure of ending cliffhangers. This is a novel, why not let the story roll instead of trying to break it up into chunks?

6. In all, I really enjoyed this book. Where The Three-Body Problem was a dense puzzle, this is a sprawling adventure. Liu keeps tension in the book really well, except that overly long middle portion where he wanted to drop all tension. The writing fixed my major issue with the first book, the ham-fisting, but still wasn’t anything great. I look forward to the third book and will pick it up next year.

Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks

This one should be fairly short, and not terribly in depth, because I got sick right after reading this and spent a week in bed.

1. The one that everybody talks about with this book is the structure. To describe it, there are two stories going on: the chapters progressing forwards in time and numerals progressing backwards in time. To give an example, by the end of the book with returned to the formative moments of the main character in the numerals, while the chapters have brought us to a conclusion of this part of his life. Banks also includes a prologue and epilogue outside of this structure, as well as infuses these structures with multiple flashbacks. This creates a fairly complicated thing, but I think banks mostly pulls it off. It's legible, but there are parts that lag. For instance, the portion at the observatory, where they find a game, and nothing else happens in that chapter. Boring. But mostly he holds it all together. It's an interesting idea done passably. I'd like to see it done with a little more skill. It just creates this to really weird pacing where super tense moments and mundane moments are placed in areas that create odd relations between them. And I think it could work, it just doesn't quite happen here. Almost. But not yet.

2. The writing does not improve either.

'Let me tell you a sort of story.'

'Must you?'

'No more than you must listen.'

'Yeah... okay, then. Anything to pass the time.'

'The story is this. It's a true story, by the way, not that that matters. There is a place where the existence or non-existence of souls is taken very seriously indeed. Many people, whole seminaries, colleges, universities, cities and even states devote almost all their time to the contemplation and disputation of this matter and related topics. About a thousand years ago, a wise philosopher-king who was considered the wisest man in the world announced that people spent too much time discussing these things, and could, if the matter was settled, apply their energies to more practical pursuits which would benefit everybody. So he would end the argument once and for all. He summoned the wisest men and women from every part of the world, and of every known persuasion, to discuss the matter. It took many years to assemble every single person who wished to take part, and the resulting debates, papers, tracts, books, intrigues and even fights and murders took even longer. The philosopher-king took himself off to the mountains to spend these years alone, emptying his mind of everything so that he would be able, he hoped, to come back once the process of argument was ended and pronounce the final decision. After many years they sent for the king, and when he felt ready he listened to everyone who thought they had something to say on the existence of souls. When they had all said their piece, the king went away to think. After a year, the king announced he had come to his decision. He said that the answer was not quite so simple as everybody had thought, and he would publish a book, in several volumes, to explain the answer. The king set up two publishing houses, and each published a great and mighty volume. One repeated the sentences, "Souls do exist. Souls do not exist," time after time, part after part, page after page, section after section, chapter after chapter, book after book. The other repeated the words, "Souls do not exist. Souls do exist," in the same fashion. In the language of the kingdom, I might add, each sentence had the same number of words, even the same number of letters. These were the only words to be found beyond the title page in all the thousands of pages in each volume. The king had made sure that the books began and finished printing at the same time, and were published at the same time, and that exactly the same number were published. Neither of the publishing houses had any perceivable superiority or seniority over the other. People searched the volumes for clues; they looked for a single repetition, buried deep in the volumes, where a sentence or even a letter had been missed out or altered, but they found none. They turned to the king himself, but he had taken a vow of silence, and bound up his writing hand. He would still nod or shake his head in reply to questions concerning the governing of his kingdom, but on the subject of the two volumes, and the existence or otherwise of souls, the king would give no sign. Furious disputes arose, many books were written; new cults began. Then a half-year after the two volumes had been published, two more appeared, and this time the house that had published the volume beginning, "Souls do not exist," published the volume which began, "Souls do exist." The other publisher followed suit, so that theirs now began, "Souls do not exist." This became the pattern. The king lived to be very old, and saw several dozen volumes published. When he was on his death bed, the court philosopher placed copies of the book on either side of him, hoping the king's head would fall to one side or the other at the moment of death, so indicating by the first sentence of the appropriate volume which conclusion he had really come to... but he died with his head straight on the pillow and with his eyes, under the eyelids, looking straight ahead. That was a thousand years ago,' Ky said. 'The books are published still; they have become an entire industry, an entire philosophy, a source of un-ending argument and -'

'Is there an ending to this story?' he asked, holding up one hand.

'No,' Ky smiled smugly. 'There is not. But that is just the point.'

He shook his head, got up and left the Crew Lounge.

'But just because something does not have an ending,' Ky shouted, 'doesn't mean it doesn't have a...' The man closed the elevator door, outside in the corridor; Ky rocked forward in the seat and watched the lift-level indicator ascend to the middle of the ship. '... conclusion,' Ky said, quietly.

It's passable, but not spectacular. There was one other good part:

He loved the plasma rifle. He was an artist with it; he could paint pictures of destruction, compose symphonies of demolition, write elegies of annihilation, using that weapon. He stood, thinking about it, while the wind moved dead leaves round his feet and the ancient stones faced into the wind. They hadn't made it off the planet. The capsule had been attacked by... something. He couldn't tell from the damage whether it had been a beam weapon or some sort of warhead going off nearby. Whatever it had been, it had disabled them. Clamped to the outside of the capsule, he'd been lucky to be on the side that shielded him from whatever had hit it. Had he been on the other side, facing the beam or the warhead, he'd be dead. They must have been hit by some crude effector weapon as well, because the plasma rifle seemed to have fused. It had been cradled between his suit and the capsule skin and couldn't have been affected by whatever wrecked the capsule itself, but the weapon had smoked and got hot, and when they'd finally landed - Beychae shaken but unhurt - and opened up the gun's inspection panels, it was to find a melted, still-warm mess inside.

The writing just doesn't really engage me, and that's a shame. The plot is mostly exciting, the structure is interesting, he's tackling topics of forgiveness and redemption, and yet the writing lets it all down by simply being unimaginative on the whole. This is very same-y throughout.

3. The theme here discusses redemption and forgiveness, but focuses on doing so from inside oneself. The main character is proud of some of his past actions, but intensely guilty of others—both sets in service to the same goal, and that's where his turmoil comes from.

The man stood on a tiny spur of clay and watched the roots of the huge tree as they were uncovered and washed bare by a gurgling wash of dun-coloured water. Rain swarmed through the air; the broad brown swell of rushing water tearing at the roots of the tree leapt with thrashing spray. The rain alone had brought visibility down to a couple of hundred metres and had long since soaked the man in the uniform to the skin. The uniform was meant to be grey, but the rain and the mud had turned it dark brown. It had been a fine, well-fitting uniform, but the rain and the mud had reduced it to a flopping rag. The tree tipped and fell, crashing back into the brown torrent and spraying mud over the man, who stepped back, and lifted his face to the dull grey sky, to let the incessant rain wash the mud from his skin. The great tree blocked the thundering stream of brown slurry and forced some of it over the clay spur, forcing the man further back, along a crude stone wall to a high lintel of ancient concrete, which stretched, cracked and uneven, up to a small ugly cottage squatting near the crown of the concrete hill. He stayed, watching the long brown bruise of the swollen river as it flowed over and ate into the little isthmus of clay; then the spur collapsed, the tree lost its anchorage on that side of the river, and was turned round and turned over and transported bodily on the back of the tumbling waters, heading into the sodden valley and the low hills beyond. The man looked at the crumbling bank on the other side of the flood, where the great tree's roots protruded from the earth like ripped cables, then he turned and walked heavily up towards the little cottage. He walked round it. The vast square concrete plinth, nearly a half-kilometre to a side, was still surrounded by water; brown waves washed its edges on every side. The towering hulks of ancient metal structures, long since fallen into disrepair, loomed through the haze of rain, squatting on the pitted and cracked surface of the concrete like forgotten pieces in some enormous game. The cottage - already made ridiculous by the expanse of concrete around it - looked somehow even more grotesque than the abandoned machines, just because of their proximity. The man looked all about as he walked round the building, but saw nothing that he wanted to see. He went into the cottage. The assassin flinched as he threw open the door. The chair she was tied to - a small wooden thing - was balanced precariously against a thick set of drawers, and when she jerked, its legs rasped on the stone floor and sent chair and girl sliding to the ground with a whack. She hit her head on the flagstones and cried out. He sighed. He walked over, boots squelching with each step, and dragged the chair upright, kicking a piece of broken mirror away as he did so. The woman was hanging slackly, but he knew she was faking.

He effectively treats with this topic: the main character remains in tension and these tensions do affect the story and his twin arcs deeply. And in the end he comes down on the side of forgiveness from others:

Sma turned, face almost bloodless, to look at the body of the man lying on the bed... while Skaffen-Amtiskaw worked on, engrossed in its struggle to make good.

Sma can't handle it, but the drone, he's busy trying to make the universe a better place, one medical procedure at a time. I think that in the context of the Culture, this is Banks saying the humans should use their geritocracy to better others more vigorously than they do. To us, it means we should be charitable and volunteer more to help and understand people, and forgive.

4. After The Player of Games was so good, I really had high hopes for this novel. But it wasn't what it was trying to be. It could've been so much more. I think in terms of pacing, this is a clear step backwards and it feels like the interesting structure was more than Banks could handle. The writing doesn't progress at all. However, the story was interesting. By this point in the world building, I was curious about the ins and outs of Special Circumstances, and this really illuminated that for me satisfactorily. But that's just fan service. As a literary artifact, this is an interesting failure. It's interesting, nobody can deny that. But it just doesn't pull off what it attempts consistently enough.

The Player of Games by Iain M Banks

1. This novel successfully does so much: it’s a great space opera, and great science fiction. The novel doesn’t stray too far from space opera itself:

Space opera was typically defined [at a panel from this year’s worldcon] as exploring human emotions appropriate for opera, the story and writing serving to foster a sense of wonder, a large physical scale, a broad time period, and adventure and drama.

This one nails the emotions, the physical scale, the adventure and drama, but lacks a broad time period—it is a broad time period for the main character, but not in terms of the Culture or the empire they’re dealing with in this novel. It also seems to have some of the wonder, but not as much as the last novel’s descriptions. An example of Banks’ wondrous writing here:

It was not unusual to find distinct equatorial bulges on once fast-spinning planets, and Echronedal's was comparatively slight, though sufficient to produce a single unbroken continental ribbon of land lying roughly between the planet's tropics, the rest of the globe lying beneath two great oceans, ice-capped at the poles. What was unique, in the experience of the Culture as well as the Empire, was to discover a wave of fire forever moving round the planet on the continental landmass.

Taking about half a standard year to complete its circumnavigation, the fire swept over the land, its fringes brushing the shores of the two oceans, its wave-front a near-straight line, its flames consuming the growth of the plants which had flourished in the ashes of the previous blaze. The whole land-based ecosystem had evolved around this never-ending conflagration; some plants could only sprout from beneath the still-warm cinders, their seeds jolted into development by the passing heat; other plants blossomed just before the fire arrived, bursting into rapid growth just before the flames found them, and using the fire-front's thermals to transport their seeds into the upper atmosphere, to fall back again, somewhere, on to the ash. The land-animals of Echronedal fell into three categories; some kept constantly on the move, maintaining the same steady walking pace as the fire, some swam round its oceanic boundaries, while other species burrowed into the ground, hid in caves, or survived through a variety of mechanisms in lakes or rivers.

Birds circled the world like a jetstream of feathers.

The blaze remained little more than a large, continuous bush-fire for eleven revolutions. On the twelfth, it changed.

This is good wondrous writing, but I want more of it: more unusual descriptions of unusual places that manage to be legible. This novel is not just great space opera, it’s also great science fiction and fiction. The main character, Gergeh, changes fundamentally throughout the novel, but does so in a believable, honest way. This attempts literature and, in so doing, becomes that rare breed of science fiction that is a clear step above the rest.

2. Banks’ sentence structures are wonderfully varied. He clearly ups his writing game here. Let me give an example:

So, instead of the usual tension surrounding the final game, there was an atmosphere more like that of an exhibition match. Only the two contestants were treating it as a real contest.

Gurgeh was immediately impressed by Nicosar's play. The Emperor didn't stop rising in Gurgeh's estimation; the more he studied the apex's play the more he realised just how powerful and complete an opponent he was facing. He would need to be more than lucky to beat Nicosar; he would need to be somebody else. From the beginning he tried to concentrate on not being trounced rather than actually defeating the Emperor.

Nicosar played cautiously most of the time; then, suddenly, he'd strike out with some brilliant flowing series of moves that looked at first as though they'd been made by some gifted madman, before revealing themselves as the masterstrokes they were; perfect answers to the impossible questions they themselves posed.

Gurgeh did his best to anticipate these devastating fusions of guile and power, and to find replies to them once they'd begun, but by the time the minor games were over, thirty days or so before the fire was due, Nicosar had a considerable advantage in pieces and cards to carry over to the first of the three great boards. Gurgeh suspected his only chance was to hold out as best he could on the first two boards and hope that he might pull something back on the final one.

As the above passage indicates, Banks is not afraid of long, complex sentences. What I like best about the writing is how Banks allows complexity in his sentences—he allows interesting sentences. But he still keeps it all legible and doesn’t rely solely upon structural sentence complexity: he’s also not afraid of short, declarative sentences. It’s a good balance that allows those long, complex structures to be savored, while keeping them from overwhelming the writing.

3. However, the voice still lets it down: beautiful passages are too few and far between to leave me pleased with the writing itself. Mostly, the whole improves, in terms of the writing, but he doesn’t yet achieve a consistent beauty and experimentation to allow the novel to speak on a consistently literary plane. In other words, he brings the whole quality of his writing up on average, but that just means it’s more samey: the peaks are no higher, and he still doesn’t allow a consistent poetic beauty to invest the word choices. The two lengthy portions that I have already quoted show that Banks’ word choices are a weakness. Let me quote three of the better-written portions for contrast:

'Don't be so pompous,' she told him. Her short brown hair moved in the same wind which blew the tops from the falling waves and sent the resulting spray curling back out to sea. She stooped to where some pieces of a shattered missile lay half buried in the dune, picked them up, blew sand grains off the shining surfaces, and turned the components over in her hands.

+++

'All reality is a game. Physics at its most fundamental, the very fabric of our universe, results directly from the interaction of certain fairly simple rules, and chance; the same description may be applied to the best, most elegant and both intellectually and aesthetically satisfying games. By being unknowable, by resulting from events which, at the sub-atomic level, cannot be fully predicted, the future remains malleable, and retains the possibility of change, the hope of coming to prevail; victory, to use an unfashionable word. In this, the future is a game; time is one of the rules. Generally, all the best mechanistic games - those which can be played in any sense "perfectly", such as grid, Prallian scope, 'nkraytle, chess, Farnic dimensions - can be traced to civilisations lacking a relativistic view of the universe (let alone the reality). They are also, I might add, invariably pre-machine sentience societies.

'The very first-rank games acknowledge the element of chance, even if they rightly restrict raw luck. To attempt to construct a game on any other lines, no matter how complicated and subtle the rules are, and regardless of the scale and differentiation of the playing volume and the variety of the powers and attributes of the pieces, is inevitably to shackle oneself to a conspectus which is not merely socially but techno-philosophically lagging several ages behind our own. As a historical exercise it might have some value. As a work of the intellect, it's just a waste of time. If you want to make something old-fashioned, why not build a wooden sailing boat, or a steam engine? They're just as complicated and demanding as a mechanistic game, and you'll keep fit at the same time.'

+++

'These stars,' Worthil said - the green-coloured stars, at least a couple of thousand suns, flashed once - 'are under the control of what one can only describe as an empire. Now…' The drone turned to look at him. The little machine lay in space like some impossibly large ship, stars in front of it as well as behind it. 'It is unusual for us to discover an imperial power-system in space. As a rule, such archaic forms of authority wither long before the relevant species drags itself off the home planet, let alone cracks the lightspeed problem, which of course one has to do, to rule effectively over any worthwhile volume.

'Every now and again, however, Contact disturbs some particular ball of rock and discovers something nasty underneath. On every occasion, there is a specific and singular reason, some special circumstance which allows the general rule to go by the board. In the case of the conglomerate you see before you - apart from the obvious factors, such as the fact that we didn't get out there until fairly recently, and the lack of any other powerful influence in the Lesser Cloud - that special circumstance is a game.'

In these three portions, the word choices are adequate. Nothing spectacular, but stepping out from that pedestrian level Banks relies on throughout the rest—as shown in the other examples of writing quoted. It seems like he took a step back here: I remember the first Culture novel having better word choices than this. I’m hoping the next Culture novel will show improvement in word choices.

4. The real strength of the novel, and the real part where Banks progresses as a writer, is in the pacing. His pacing is perfect. Banks ignores downtime, brushing in broad strokes to inform the reader both why he’s not dealing with it, and what happened of note. For instance, most of the trip to the Empire of Azat is brushed over: Banks covers these two years quickly and focuses on Gergeh, the main character, coming to grips with his task of the game Azat, which is not “downtime”, but the continuation of the plot of the book—Banks doesn’t delve into lengthy descriptions of the travel, tech, or spaceship, but focuses on what is important to his plot and character. Let me briefly catalog the parts and their relative lengths to explain why I believe Banks’ pacing is so good:
• He begins with a lengthy portion explaining who Gergeh is, and what the culture is like at this point. In order to do this he explains and gives examples of what Gergeh cares about. Through this portion, Gergeh changes into what the Culture needs him to be. This first part takes up 31.85% of the novel’s length.
• He then travels to the empire of Azat. This is a short trip, distilling who the new Gergeh is and his insane focus on the game Azat. This is a quick section, 5.87% of the novel’s length.
• Then Gergeh is on Eä, introducing the empire and playing his first few games. Here he changes first into an admirer of the Empire, then an enemy of it through his experiences. Banks spends 37.61% of the book here.
• Then Gergeh travels to the fire planet, Echronedal, and plays his last few games. Here Gergeh changes from an enemy to a superior of the Empire, and struggles with his realization of that. This takes up 22.57% of the novel’s length.
• The closing part is fairly short, 2.65% of the length, dealing with the aftermath of the final Azat game, Gergeh’s return to his home, and Banks tying up all the loose threads that drove the first part of the novel. Here Gergeh tries to reintegrate into the Culture after all of the changes he has gone through.
This structure successfully portions off the novel and paces it perfectly. Within this broader framework, Banks takes more time with important parts, usually breaking them up to an initial scene, then a reflective scene later on to drive home the import. He also keeps the whole thing moving very well: every plot and thread adds to the overall. In the first Culture novel, Banks spent a lot of time on things that didn’t end up mattering to the overall plot—those aspects added to the world-building alone, not the character or overarching plot. Here, that problem is gone. Completely gone. I am quite impressed with how well the story is told and paced. He learned from the first novel and really progressed as a writer. This is captivating to read because it’s told so well.

5. In combination with this wonderful pacing is Banks’ focus. The first novel sent the protagonist off on random, inconsequential adventures that served the story only in so far as they flushed out the world uselessly. But here Banks stays on-task and creates a wonderful story where everything matters to the overarching plot or to the characters. Other than the introductions at the start of the first four parts, and the closing words from that same narrator, there is really no mis-step. Everything matters to the characters and story. Every portion serves to build Gergeh or the import of the plot. This focus is wonderful. After the first novel, I kept reading this book and wondering when the other shoe would fall. It never did. The focus is spot on.

6. The theme of this novel is the effect of outside forces on a person. Gergeh begins vaguely dissatisfied and uncomfortable in life, lacking any real motivations. As he gains a motivation from the context of his world and personal experiences, a dramatic adventure, he quickly finds that his motivation perverts into inappropriateness and has to reset himself to find his true motivation again—this grand, dramatic adventure gives him meaning in life and keeps him sane. Throughout it all, he is being deceived consistently and wholly. He often realizes this and breaks through a veil, but doesn’t suspect that his new truth is just another veil. But the fact of being deceived doesn’t matter, it’s what he does with what’s given to him and done to him that matters. The theme is this sense that humans need to step outside of their personal comfort zones at times to fully live life, go on a grand adventure and allow it to change them, but they need to be careful that the changes those uncomfortable experiences impose on them are properly integrated into their whole being. Otherwise it will really screw somebody up. This complex, good theme feels honest to my day-to-day life.

7. Overall, this is a good book and a good read. As a novel on it’s own, it's good: it shows off great storytelling and attempts to communicate something about humanity and our understanding of ourselves. It seems to almost achieve this literature attempt, but the writing quality lets it down from that plane, even though the writing is better here than in the first Culture novel. This book does not need any other Culture story or knowledge to be understood—it is standalone. The focus and the pacing are clear strengths here, while the sentence structures are wonderful. Consider Phlebas doesn’t even compare to this: this is a good story well-told, that was a mess. I was very surprised by how good this one was, based on how bad that one was.

Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

[Added 5/16/16: 0. Well, as of 26 April 2016, the nominees have been announced for the 2016 Hugo Awards. Five novels were nominated. I am reading through them all so that when I vote, I’m sure of why I think that one is better than the others. I understand the inherent ridiculousness of this—it is simply a popularity contest, after all. But I find it fun to explore new-to-me novels and writers, and learn from their works. The nominees are: Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy, NK Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, Jim Butcher’s The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass, and Uprooted by Naomi Novak. Next up, Ancillary Mercy is my favorite in Leckie's trilogy because of the balance of characters, the pacing, and the writing.]

1. The theme of this one both continues the theme from the other two books—what is human and how to work with humans, respectively—but also completes and dwells on a thread running through them: autocracy is crap. This theme is both a theme on it’s own right—I do get the sense that Leckie is anti-autocracy—but it is also referencing science fiction as a whole. As Leckie herself talked about on a panel I attended at this year’s Worldcon in August, 2015, science fiction is stuck in human history by consistently retaining aristocracies, imperialism, regencies, tyranny, and other feudal and unequal methods of organization or power. After finishing, I was surprised by how closely my notes and memory from Leckie’s comments aligned with what I think she did here. Leckie really cares about science fiction and wants it to be better. And here at the end she sets down some of those tropes and clichés that people were annoyed with in the first book—and this setting down is where her theme comes out most apparently:

“Only," I pointed out, “because that had been the normal, expected state of affairs for three thousand years before you were born. You never had a reason to question it. Anaander had real power over your life and death, and no personal regard for you, or anyone else you care about. We were all of us no more than counters in her game, and she could—and did—sacrifice us when it suited her.”

As you can see from the example above, which is surrounded by pages and pages where similar thoughts are echoed, Leckie does get a little too preachy for me. But I think her egalitarian theme is successful. It also completes the other themes she has running through all three books: by the end, the AIs are being considered a separate intelligent species as well—tying up the "what is human?" theme; and the theme of how to work together and compromise is completed by the negotiations with Anaander. This novel and theme really ties everything together so well.

2. While Leckie's plot allows her to get rid of some of the tropes and clichés, she takes her time setting them down, and she still uses some of them for her own purposes—uses them in new ways. But I think this is a strength of her storytelling: that she takes her time and doesn’t just drop them for the sake of disagreeing with them, instead she dismisses them in a way that makes sense in the world and story she has created. This feels honest to the work she’s already done here and, like I said before, it really ties everything off nicely. She leaves the reader uncertain about where the world is headed, but she remains character-focused throughout. So, though I am left pondering where the Provisional Republic of Eggs is headed, I am not confused about the characters. And that too shows how she stays true to her own work.

3. Leckie’s writing is still strong. I’m amazed that with such a quick publishing schedule she managed to keep the quality of the writing so high. She also had no glaring typos—none that I found at least. She is even more confident here in the third book, applying her substitutive voice to even more characters—Omaugh and Tstur stand in as the two halves of Anaander throughout. She uses dialogue questions more frequently in this book as a way to illuminate the thoughts of the characters during stressful situations:

“Who do you think you’re talking to, tyrant?” I asked. “What is there that I don’t know about obeying you? Or about human lives depending on ships and stations? And what sort of gall do you have, lecturing me about keeping human lives safe? What was it you built me to do? How well did I do it?” Anaander didn’t answer.

This embracing of questions shows her growing as a writer, becoming more confident and skilled. And it isn’t the only addition to her writing techniques. She has really grown as a writer throughout the series and I think her best writing is here, in the third book. This is great, as a reader, to watch a writer grow chapter by chapter, novel by novel.

4. Leckie’s pacing in this third book is almost perfect. I’ve had minor quibbles with her other books, but here she nails it. The first one ended too quickly, the second began too slowly, and this one is a bit too long at the climax—it’s hard to stay keyed up for as long as she seems to expect the reader to be. But she doesn’t draw out the end, she doesn’t spend time on plot points that don’t progress the story, and she keeps focused on her characters.

5. In the second book, Leckie introduced a translator for the Preseger, and that was a good character: a civilian with a sense of humor and a strange outlook on the world, or understanding of it. Another translator arrives here in the third book. This character adds a good foil to the ever-serious Breq and its lieutenants. Translator creates a space to breathe a bit and even laugh at times. It helps the reader take in the more serious and stressful aspects of the story, by having the translator there. I feel like in the second book Leckie didn’t yet know what the translator could do, while in this one she realizes what benefit it adds. But it’s not a surprise—this character is planned and its addition has serious consequences for the story and the other characters. Everything Leckie does matters and feels honest to the tale, and for that, I think she is a good storyteller.

6. One problem in here is a problem present in all three that I haven’t yet talked about: the characters often speak in a similar voice. The translator is distinct, but due to the regimented language—necessary for her ideas about culture to hold water—the rest of the characters do not really speak distinctly. Sure, they’re military and some of this is due to their training and the requirements of ship-life. But even Celar and Uran, two civilians, seem to fall into the same patterns as well. And this requires Leckie to explain speakers' emotions in a way that could dangerously slow the narrative. But this is just splitting hairs because Leckie is able to evocatively explain character emotions so concisely that it ends up working almost every time. The characters share a shown voice, but Leckie is able to break them out of that voice through telling well and now, at the end of all three novels, I’m regularly guessing correctly what a character is feeling or thinking when they speak.

7. And that’s the end of the series. Leckie got better as a writer and storyteller throughout. This series makes science fiction better by skillfully thinking through so many ideas and tropes that have become ruts within the community. She expands them and uses them her own ways. However, she also includes a lot of them. This series is a character drama couched in a military space opera that involves the end of an empire. These are big science fiction threads and I’m sort of wondering if she just threw everything into it because it was her first novel series and she wanted to do it all. I wonder what her short fiction is like, what she would be like to read if she was more focused. That said, she pulls most of it off, like 90%ish. Especially here in the third book. This one will probably have my vote for the Hugo award next year. In the end, I'm excited for whatever she does next.

Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks

1. The pacing in the story is inconsistent to me. There are portions that seem to drag, portions that seem to speed by, and a few portions that feel just right for the amount of action, ideas, and characterization involved. Specifically, he drew out the build-up to the ending too far. I understand drawing that buildup out somewhat helped him increase tension, but he drew it out too much: at the start, I was wondering where he was going because he started so far back; and by the end I grew a bit bored and had to reread a couple of paragraphs here and there because my mind started wandering. He even includes a few wry phrases as a wink to the readers that he knows what he’s doing—Horza is sitting in the control room surrounded by a lot of controls and data screens, his back turned to an alarm that starts flashing, while Horza contemplates:

So far we've done it, despite the mistakes, but it's so easy to miss something, to fail to spot some tiny detail in the mass of data which later when you've forgotten all about it, when your back is turned creeps up and clobbers you. The secret was to think of everything...

Banks also ends rather abruptly, though he effectively then fills the ending in with appendices and an epilogue. However, the long-buildup to the climax and the quick ending are not what annoyed me most with the pacing. Instead, I’m most annoyed he set up this conflict so effectively early on, then seemingly drops it for half the book while Horza is working to get to a place where he can be working towards his mission objective. Banks spends way too much time on the middle portion of the book, Horza being thrown into situation after situation after situation that doesn’t directly deal with the conflict as set up in the start. By the time Banks got to the end, the main conflict and Horza’s mission were almost forgotten. This was off-putting throughout.

2. These pacing problems allow Banks to world-build wonderfully: it's like he's focused on building the world instead of telling a story. But he uses each plot arc to offer variations within the world and build it out in the reader’s mind. Some of the scenes and characters are simply there to build the world and nothing else. This makes portions seem unimportant to the plot and let's the whole come off like a world-building exercise, not a novel. These scenes should be doing more than one thing. Though the pacing inconsistencies are odd, there are no wasted words in here: every phrase and action is focused on world-building, wrinkling the characters, or progressing the plot. And by the end, Banks is starting to use sentences and situations to do all three at once, and that’s where his best work exists. So he paces it poorly, but through his desire to build the world out fully—which he successfully accomplishes.

3. And these previous two points set the stage for this realization: Banks experiments throughout this work. It is mostly all first person, straight narrative, but within that broader tactic, he varies his techniques widely. Some portions monologue heavily as Horza struggles with his central question, some show his actions. Some isolate Horza, and some put him in complex contexts. Some deal with the wider conflict directly, some do not—though most mix the war and the not-war. Some chapters are split between two major subchapters that each take a different first person character that do not know each other or ever directly interact—though one character affects Horza, he’s got no idea how or who. Some, like during the long buildup to the climax, jump between characters’ perspectives rapidly—including a couple of single lines. I’m probably forgetting a couple of Banks’ main narrative tactics in the above list, but the point is that he varies the storytelling methods widely throughout the work. Yet the novel remains legible. He's a new writer experimenting. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But mostly it does.

4. Banks’ writing communicates effectively, and his descriptions are above average. But other than one portion, I never really marveled as the writing. That one portion starts with a beautiful description, then mixes description and action wonderfully:

... A sky like chipped ice, a wind to cut you to the body core. Too cold for snow, for most of the journey, but once for eleven days and nights it came, a blizzard over the field of ice we walked on, howling like an animal, with a bite like steel. The crystals of ice flowed like a single torrent over the hard and frozen land. You could not look into it or breathe; even trying to stand was near impossible. We made a hole, shallow and cold, and lay in it until the skies cleared.

We were the walking wounded, straggled band. Some we lost when their blood froze in them. One just disappeared, at night in a storm of snow. Some died from their wounds. One by one we lost them, our comrades and our servants. Every one begged us make what use we could of their corpse once they were gone. We had so little food; we all knew what it meant, we were all prepared; name a sacrifice more total, or more noble.

In that air, when you cried, the tears froze on your face with a cracking sound, like a heart breaking.

Mountains. The high passes we climbed to, famished in that thin and bitter air. The snow was white powder, dry as dust. To breathe it was to freeze from inside; flurries from the jagged slopes, dislodged by feet in front, stung in the throat like acid spray. I saw rainbows in the crystal veils of ice and snow which were the product of our passing, and grew to hate those colours, that freezing dryness, the starved high air and dark blue skies.

Three glaciers we traversed, losing two of our comrades in crevasses, beyond sight or sound, falling further than an echo's reach.

Deep in a mountain ring we came to a marsh; it lay in that scoop like a cess for hope. We were too slow, too stupefied, to save our Querl when he walked out into it and floundered there. We thought it could not be, with air so cold around us, even in that wan sunlight; we thought it must be frozen and we saw what only seemed to be, and our eyes would clear and he come walking back to us, not slip beneath that dark ooze, out of reach.

It was an oil marsh, we realised too late, after the tarry depths had claimed their toll from us. The next day, while we were still looking for a way across, the chill came harder still, and even that sludge locked itself to stillness, and we walked quickly to the other side.

In the midst of frozen water we began to die of thirst. We had little to heat the snow with save our own bodies, and eating that white dust until it numbed us made us groggy with the cold of it, slowing our speech and step. But we kept on, though the cold sucked at us whether awake or trying to sleep, and the harsh sun blinded us in fields of glittering white and filled our eyes with pain. The wind cut us, snow tried to swallow us, mountains like cut black glass blocked us, and the stars on clear nights taunted us, but on we came.

Near two thousand kilometres, little one, with only the small amount of food we could carry from the wreck, what little equipment had not been turned to junk by the barrier beast, and our own determination. We were forty-four when we left the battle cruiser, twenty-seven when we began our trek across the snows: eight of my kind, nineteen of the medjel folk. Two of us completed the journey, and six of our servants.

Do you wonder that we fell upon the first place we found with light and heat? Does it surprise you that we just took, and did not ask? We had seen brave warriors and faithful servants die of cold, watched each other wear away, as though the ice blasts had abraded us; we had looked into the cloudless, pitiless skies of a dead and alien place, and wondered who might be eating who when the dawnlight came. We made a joke of it at first, but later, when we had marched a thirty-day, and most of us were dead, in ice gullies, mountain ravines or raw in our own bellies, we did not think it so funny. Some of the last, perhaps not believing our course was true, I think died of despair.

We killed your human friends, these other Changers. I killed one with my own hands; another, the first, fell to a medjel, while he still slept. The one in the control room fought bravely, and when he knew he was lost, destroyed many of the controls. I salute him. There was another who put up a fight in the place where they stored things; he, too, died well. You should not grieve too much for them. I shall face my superiors with the truth in my eyes and heart. They will not discipline me, they will reward me, should I ever stand before them.

Other than this beautiful section, and a few others like it, It seems like Banks spent his energy mostly in thinking through the storytelling tactics and world building, rather than the writing. It’s a 471 page long book and these portions are too few and too far apart to really make me interested for just the writing. It’s like he turns his writing on in spurts, and typically stays with an economical, clear voice. That said, his writing rarely bored me, and I look forward to seeing if he becomes a better and more consistent writer in later works.

5. The theme is apparent enough, I think. At one point a character points it out fairly obviously:

That is the way with all of your kind. It is how you are made; you must all strive to claw your way over the backs of your fellow humans during the short time you are permitted in the universe, breeding when you can, so that the strongest strains survive and the weakest die. I would no more blame you for that than I would try to convert some non-sentient carnivore to vegetarianism. You are all on your own side.

It’s anti-war, but even more than that, it’s anti-conflict. The future-game Damage is described in a slightly silly way. And I can’t help but feel like he intentionally let the reader down with the quick ending, forcing them to contemplate what Horza’s quest and struggle was really for, ultimately realizing—through the appendices—that it might not have been for much. I mean, Horza himself gets pretty confused about the war: he’s initially anti-Culture before he ends up conflicted about them and the whole war. I think Banks skillfully points out that war is a gray area: it’s always some bad and some good. [Poking around the internet I found this by Banks himself, so my guess was pretty close:

“I've read so many SF books where the action is terribly, terribly important to the fate of everyone and everything. That fate of a whole planet can hang on the outcome of a protagonist's actions. Sometimes, the fate of the entire universe! Well, if you look at history, this is very unusual indeed. What usually happens is that people suffer and die and get involved in all sorts of mayhem and catastrophe and it doesn't make that much difference in the end. That was one of the ideas behind Consider Phlebas. There's a big war going on in that novel, and various individuals and groups manage to influence its outcome. But even being able to do that doesn't ultimately change things very much. At the book's end, I have a section pointing this out by telling what happened after the war, which was an attempt to pose the question, 'What was it all for?' I guess this approach has to do with my reacting to the cliché of SF's 'lone protagonist.' You know, this idea that a single individual can determine the direction of entire civilizations. It's very, very hard for a lone person to do that. And it sets you thinking what difference, if any, it would have made if Jesus Christ, or Karl Marx or Charles Darwin had never been. We just don't know.”]

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

1. The writing in here is very strong. It’s always nice to see an author improve—like George RR Martin did through the first book of his series, A Song of Ice and Fire. Here, Leckie is more confident in her writing.
—This comes across through her allowing the fractured perspectives of the main character to be more sudden and potentially jarring. But she uses an introductory sentence typically to set the new scene. For instance:

“Speaking of mushrooms. Shall I send Nine out for something to eat?"
On Mercy of Kalr, Seivarden sat in the decade room with Sword of Atagaris’s Amaat lieutenant.

Here, a simple paragraph break carries the weight of the shift in perspective, but also allows the reader to understand that the main character, the AI Breq, is watching the new scene through its implants and it is not physically present. This understanding comes through the context and world building.
—Leckie also allows the action to be, as the old adage goes, “hours of boredom punctuated by seconds of terror.” I do not at all want to imply that this novel bored me at any point: it didn’t. It is driven by character development and Breq unravelling the mysteries of the system it has been sent to. But when the action does occur, it’s often quickly described, giving the reader a sense of its speed and suddenness, followed by reflections on the action. This is a strong tactic to give the reader a sense of the mental speed of the characters—fast during the action, and slower rumination during the reflection. It’s akin to her tactic used throughout here and the first book with technology—name dropping first, then, after the scene is over, explaining some of the technology.
—The third tricky tactic the writing does successfully is sudden shifts in situation. This is best explained through an example:

[Hetnys] had walked about halfway across the shaded green and gray yard, was directly in front of that curving end of the bathhouse window when the bomb went off.

Here, Breq has just had a stressful conversation with Hetnys, which Hetnys extricated herself from awkwardly through a lie, when the sentence above occurs. The reader is reeling from the implications of the conversation and the way Hetnys felt the need to get out of the conversation so suddenly and falsely, and the bomb took Breq unawares—and the reader.
Through all three of these tactics, the reader is given a sense of the characters and the situations through the writing itself. This is strong writing that is often pulling double weight—both describing the situation while building characters through the specifics. Leckie is good.

2. One annoyance is that the novel’s first hundred pages or so are a bit slow. Though some important things happen, they take a while to happen and I feel like some of the situations do not entirely payoff as much as the time required to read them. I think the pace of the rest of the pages in this three hundred and fifty page book is stronger than that of the opening few. This doesn’t apply to the opening lines themselves: they carry forth from where the last book left off wonderfully, without resorting to an initial murder—thankfully. There is a sort of murder in the first hundred pages, sure, but by the point it occurs I already care about the writing, characters, and situation—allowing me to understand the import of the situation before it occurs. However, the first hundred pages plod a bit. This annoyance quickly passes though, as situations and characters gain import through reader familiarity and more information given. And yes, those first hundred pages set up the import, but I still can’t help feeling they could’ve done so more efficiently without losing effectiveness. My impulse would’ve been to keep that length, but add two more important actions to that section—there are already two important actions there: the murder thing and the complicated arrival at the new system. But I think two more would’ve worked: perhaps delving more into the medical procedures Breq went through, or a summary of the short bit of story between the two novels. What happened in that palace? What was the fight really like? I’m still curious about the space between the two novels.

3. However, I think Leckie’s pacing of the whole book is very interesting: she limits herself to a little over two weeks in these characters’ lives, yet so much happens that the character development is not empty. She does this through beginning in a time that is already important to the characters—the end of the last novel ensures this. But she also stays away from flashbacks. Instead of relying on flashbacks to give import and spark reader interest, she stays away from them, which allows the scenes to have an immediacy that is endearing. It feels like these scenes are all that matters. And I guess, when I’m in the now, I often act like now is all that matters. This works for her and helps her pacing really pull together for the large majority of the book. She also sticks to only a few places within the world: Garden, Undergarden, Governor’s Office and the concourse outside it, Mercy of Kalr and its shuttles, and the tea-growing compound on the planet downwell. This low number of places allows the reader to really focus in on the characters, their development, and the actions instead of being constantly distracted by new place descriptions. Also, this is straight narrative, not the two-storylines she used in the first novel. She writes straight narrative well through having so much character intrigue going on that it never really lags—other than those first hundred pages. Yeah, not a lot of physical action happens through parts of the novel, but the political maneuvering keeps me reading and interested.

4. Leckie wonderfully expands the world-building in this novel. Here she uses the same tactic she did with technology in the first novel—name-dropping it, then explaining it with a few short sentences later—but expands it to include culturally significant events. For example, by this point in the story I’m pretty interested in the Radch itself—the Dyson sphere, not the culture—so she gives a few more hints into it through the technology and artifacts she describes. An early faction in the Radch, the Notai, is mentioned, then elaborated through three technological instances: the tea set, the shuttle’s storage locker, and the ship. I think this expansion of the tactic shows Leckie growing as a writer. It also shows how she continually focuses on the characters, but doesn’t leave the world-building bereft: she foreshadows in a way that avoids deus-ex-machina techs being introduced merely to serve the immediate needs of the characters. She avoids that cheap writing tactic by foreshadowing and remaining focused on the characters. Her world building has improved: she is better at it here than in the first novel.

5. Leckie still uses the personal pronoun “she” throughout, but now that Breq is a captain, the author also uses “sir” for people of all genders who are in command. In this way, using both a masculine and feminine pronoun throughout, she effectively communicates the genderless nature of the language brilliantly here. This seems a big improvement. Not only does it appear to be more even-handed and honest through using a sampling from both genders in language, but it's also more effective at communicating the genderless language through the contrast between using both a masculine and feminine word: it’s jarring the first time Leckie uses “sir”, just as jarring as it was in the first book when she called a male character “she”. The last book worked, but this works better. Yes, I understand the last book didn’t afford that many opportunities to use “sir” due to the plot, but perhaps it could have done something similar with a similarly masculine word.

6. Leckie’s voice requires the reader's attention. Something like John Carter of Mars can be skimmed and still mostly grasped. But here, Leckie has three things happening that, in combination, require the reader to pay more attention:
—She uses a variety of word choices. No real changes here in her word choices—still above average, but not too obscure, like in the first book.
—She varies the sentence structures wonderfully—it’s not all noun-verb-adjective-noun-conjunctive-adjective-noun. She has clearly grown here, become more confident and comfortable with her variety.
—She also uses a heavily substitutive lexicon that includes a large number or pronouns and titles that suggests the reader slow down and parse it out. She finds a beautiful balance in substitutes that’s not annoyingly over-the-top, but is wonderfully both repetitive and varied. Rather than calling Breq by its name throughout, Leckie uses its titles—captain and fleet captain—its surname, its past titles—like Justice of Toren—and contextually significant substitutive words. This variety wonderfully expands the possible ways that Breq is referred to—which might be a necessity with how often characters are named due to the fractured narrative that quickly shifts from character and situation to character and situation. In my own writing, I tend to shy away from “he said” or “she said” as the direct repetition of that so often used phrase can be mildly annoying to me as a reader, and mildly boring to write. Here Leckie applies this same shyness to the ways the characters are referred to. This wonderfully varies the word choice throughout. But it does require the reader to slow down ever so slightly and pay attention just a touch closer than most voices do. This small slowing also allows readers some space to keep their mind background mulling over the situations and characters in the book. This space and simultaneous light-rumination helps readers understand the subtlety Leckie uses in her narrative and voice, helps readers understand the import and implications of what is factually presented in the novel. Personally, though she pulls it off well, it’s not something I would yet find necessary in my own work, but it sounds like a lot of fun to work with. I’ve just seen it fail so many times before, seen it become an unintelligible mess requiring a notebook on the side for the reader to keep track of who is who and what they're called, that I’m wary of trying it. An example of this substitutive writing done wrong would be Napoleon and his Marshals, which is a slog to read at times. Leckie succeeds at it though, through having a limited number of important characters, which Napoleon certainly didn’t have, and through limiting the number of titles or references.

7. The theme here is learning to live with a duty and a personal goal that might not fully mesh together, but finding a way to make them work simultaneously and still achieve both. Anaander attempts to twist Breq’s ambivalence into an asset by sending it to a duty in a place Breq actually wants to be, outside of the influence of Anaander. She allows Breq to travel there, but only if Breq does something for her—security in the system. Breq then murders a safeguard Anaander put into place that Breq didn’t agree to and wasn’t supposed to discover. Then Breq completes the task—and it isn’t some easy one: Breq overcomes big difficulties while actually attempting to complete the duty. Breq spends a lot of effort and time on its duty. But Breq does so much more that Anaander didn’t really intend and probably doesn’t want: it twists the intentions of Anaander to its own purposes. This basic plot outline shows the theme of the novel: working with difficulties and allowing them to influence oneself, but also making sure to keep the personal goal always in mind and, if possible, killing two birds with one stone. An example would be if a judge was supposed to decide if a personal friend got the death sentence or not. Breq is put into these conflict-of-interest situations, like we all are, and is forced to face up to them and try its best. I think that this is the main theme here, but certainly not the only one: Tor.com suggests that the book is “an extended meditation on power, and identity, and morality.” And this is a valid way to view the book. Identity makes the most sense because “what is a human?” is a major question: the Preseger can’t distinguish differences between humans; pre- and post-annexation humans are vastly different; each system in the culture exhibits slight cultural differences—like the male genitalia festival; the various cultural groups encountered are seen as varying levels of human—the harvesters are seen as sub-human effectively, though lip service to their inherent humanity is given by most; as well as Tisarwat and the ever-present ancillaries—Breq is made a human citizen from an ancillary, the translator, Breq’s crew that apes being ancillaries, and the captive from the Ungdergarden all approach this question. But I feel like this theme is carried over from the first novel, so the new theme, finding a way to complete public duty and personal goals simultaneously, stands out more to me. But it might just be my time of life that gives this new theme predominance in my mind.

8. Leckie is bad at attempting to introduce new readers to the story. She uses awkward sentences to remind old readers of the events of the first novel and introduce new readers to them. I think these type sentences are typically bad: most writers are bad at this. But Leckie uses sentences that stand out from her voice. They’re not terrible, they’re just not up to the quality of the rest of this work. They don't fit in her voice. I think George RR Martin does this the best that I’ve read in a long time. At this year’s Worldcon, Leckie and Martin were sitting on a three-person panel before the awards ceremony, discussing the Puppy Wars, or whatever that kerfuffle was called. Leckie could learn from Martin here. I think Martin does it through trusting the reader to remember most of it, then using one, maybe two sentences to recall the prior plot points. His sentences also usually show something that wasn’t shown before: how a character felt about an event, what changes an event had on a character and why, or the affects that event had on the world. Leckie's sentences are simply recap. Ugh.

9. A few short thoughts to close with:
—Leckie uses her descriptions well, though the descriptions themselves are good, not spectacular;
—if the next novel ends with Breq being faced with death-by-vacuum I’m going to be more than slightly annoyed—she uses such a wonderful variety of words, sentence structures, and character motivations that another ending almost-death-by-vacuum felt a little cheap, she'd already used that threat before so it lacks some effectiveness here;
—her plot is convoluted in a legible, interesting way;
—she’s good at making Breq seem intelligent without relying upon deus-ex-machina reveals that the reader couldn’t have figured out, like Foundation, or an over-abundance of set pieces;
—where the last novel made science fiction better by doing space opera well, this one does it by doing character drama in space so well;
—and I am excited to read the next novel, which came out this month.