The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

This story strolls from strength to strength. It strikes me as similar in some ways to The Fifth Season in that both stories feature a narrator of immense age and unreliable perspective, or biased perspective, and both stories’ narrator ends up being a character in the book. Is this a thing that authors are doing now?

This story builds a wide world in a small amount of pages. The gods are everywhere, lesser and greater gods, some working together in alliances, fighting other alliances, scheming for more political power over potential prayer givers. Some gods get great power from human sacrifices, some gods choose other paths to personal fitness. Human relations with the gods often involve deals: humans will provide X, gods will provide Y. Spiritual capitalism, or bartering, from small things like a willing human sacrifice for a god providing surprise in a key battle, to big things like protecting an entire border of a country from raiding for fealty to the god. And on top of this layer of godly court politics sit multiple layers of human court politics. Leckie effortlessly weaves these together because she tells a story that involves all strata of her world’s population.

The narrator, a god, is eventually realized in the novel as a character that the human characters interact with. This ties the human story of Eolo and Muwat into the spiritual story of the gods. Eolo and Muwat are in a world where the gods act regularly and openly on behalf of their chosen people groups, which keeps the gods in mind during the human parts. Falling out of this split focus on the gods and the humans, the time-scale for either half of the story similarly spans different realms. Leckie tells the gods’ story over thousands of years, and the humans story over just a few—though, as the gods interact with humans other than Eolo and Muwat, to some extent the whole of human history in this part of this world is exposed.

And that’s a part of how she weaves so much information in so effortlessly: instead of massive info-dumps, Leckie relies on the narrator touching on all aspects, scopes, scales of the story told regularly. It can be a little confusing at first trying to determine the thrust of the story, but by showing all sides of it consistently—regularly returning to the gods, the humans, and the specifics of Eolo and Muwat—the three weave together in a complex but clear picture.

The other technique Leckie uses to weave this all together so that it makes sense: she tells interesting stories. The story of the spear meant to find its mark is more than just an explanation of the gods’ reluctance to speak, it’s a memorable parable that I still contemplate long after finishing the novel. This seems so simple, but its important: instead of throwing away explanations that illuminate characters, places, or situations, Leckie crafts microfictional interludes that stand on their own as solid stories, but serve the rest of the story in showing some aspect of the characters. Leckie spends a lot of time showing through telling—she shows why the gods do not want to speak untruth by telling the reader a story about a spear meant to find its mark. Does that make sense, or am I just confusing telling and showing? I think Leckie blends telling and showing.

A very good novel, one I took a little time to dive into, but once I groked the interrelated nature of the three-fold narrative (another similarity to The Fifth Season), I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to just about everybody. Leckie is still adding to her string of good novels.

Provenance by Ann Leckie

This book focuses in on the life of one character—her family struggles, her difficulties with money, her hairbrained scheme to jailbreak her adopted mother’s political rival’s son. But it also manages to simultaneously focus on the larger, galactic political situation—after the Ancillary events, the AI demand citizenship in the treaty, so everybody is going to come together and debate it: the Raadchai, the Presger, the AI, and the Geck, at least. But the book focuses on Ingray, and her interiority.

As such, the strength or weakness of the book is based on the strength or weakness of Ingray. I found them to be a weak character. Not a character who has weakness, but a weakly drawn character—perhaps it doesn’t help to have a simple, coming of age main character, and then have your other characters point out how simple Ingray is. The starship captain says something like, “I know you, you’re going to panic for five minutes, then grasp the situation and think of something unexpected to do.” And Ingray does, again and again.

Yet, the fact that the panic almost always takes the same form lets the portrayal of Ingray down, removes some potential complexity from them, makes them more simple. Simply put, Ingray cries every time she is put under stress, freezes up, then sucks it up and holds her chin up and gets stuff done. Ingray often finds the strength inside themself to do this, but only after an initial panic and cry. That reaction didn’t start to bother me until the last third of the book when I realized that she rarely reacts otherwise no matter the seriousness of the situation—an attempt at her life? Good thing she already had a panic and cry about the coming confrontation with her would be assassin, because she was able to chin up and get it over with. Facing task master mother after long trip abroad, coming back broke with a fugitive in tow? Get the cry in on the way home, then face her stone faced. Exchanging herself as a hostage for a pack of schoolchildren caught in the crossfire of a small invasion? Sit down with the other hostages and have a good cry, then start thinking about how to escape.

My problem with this mono-reaction: going to the same well to draw tension into your novel starts to fade after time. George Martin fakes character deaths again and again, and I don’t believe him that characters are dead anymore. It takes the bite out of death. Here, I don’t really care that Ingray is crying again, just skimming a couple of sentences or paragraphs until she’s over it and gets onto the solution to the problem—no tension added from her crying. Her crying shows a realistic, relatable reaction profile, but until the second to last conflict, it’s the only one Ingray shows. Her coming of age becomes acting first, telling her mother “no”, then crying afterwards. And this new reaction unlocks a third one, telling her competitive brother “no”, and then not crying afterwards—the final conflict in the novel.

These split-focus books—the interior emotions of a single character who isn’t some all-powerful emperor played against a wider political background that intrudes in increasing ways throughout the book—strike me as sensational. NK Jemisin’s The Fifth Season pulls it off brilliantly, as does Leckie’s Provenance here. However, that style of narrative does somewhat depend on how well the main character holds the interest and sympathy of the reader. And here, Ingray was just too one-sided for me to invest in like I invested in Jemisin’s Essun. Yes, Ingray changes, but only finally in the last ten to twenty pages, too little too late.

The theme of the book examines vestiges, historical artifacts, in their present relationship with society. In America, something like the Liberty Bell probably wasn't actually rung out after the Declaration of Independence was Signed, but it was there at the time, and so we respect the cracked hunk of metal. Leckie tries to dive more deeply into these relationships between artifacts, the truth of their historicity, their role and place in society, and our personal feeling about them. It's a fascinating discussion that held my interest throughout the novel. She uses the word "Vestiges" to cover post-cards and declarations of independence alike—as well as all manned of keepsakes and mementos and souvenirs in between. I'm not sure she comes to any new idea here, but she examines the concept and concludes that they are, ultimately, replaceable and repairable, but still somehow invaluable to a culture. So, though the reflection doesn't provide any major insights, it does trace pathways of thought that broaden the discussion around artifacts, rather than deepen them. Some characters try to use vestiges for racial arguments, some for personal glorification, some for gravitas, some for pure monetary profit, and Ingray sees all these characters in her homespun adventure and reflects on them all.

I found this a fascinating world and a fascinating story, but I found Ingray to be a flat character that let the whole thing down a little.

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.

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.

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

1. To tackle the big one first, Leckie uses the personal pronoun “she” throughout to refer to everybody. This makes sense in context though, because the main character is mentally genderless and exists in a culture that is mentally genderless and uses a genderless language. The main character is a piece of a ship’s AI, an “ancillary”, so it is genderless. In the culture, gender roles and traits, such as long hair or makeup, are entirely mixed up and the language reflects this by being genderless. So, instead of using “it” and “they” throughout, Leckie uses “she”. I think this actually works: Leckie probably should use “she” or “he” in order to retain the personality and relatability of the characters, but she also uses it to communicate the humanity of the main character, who goes by Berq through the last two-thirds of the novel. However, if she is trying to make a point about gender identity in our culture, I think it’s slightly unsuccessful. Yes, it is jarring to hear a character use “he” in dialog, and I assume this is Leckie’s way to point out how jarring it is to read “she” in a novel of predominantly male characters. But those readers who would understand her gender-writing argument and give it a good thinking over, I think these readers are likely already there with her, and this novel probably won’t convince anybody new. This tactic is strange and unfamiliar, as a reader, but it works well to illuminate the unusual genderless nature of the culture. Without this, the strangeness of this specific genderless culture would've been much harder to communicate. So for me this tactic works, but not necessarily as a critique of our gendered language today.

2. Outside of this personal pronoun tactic, which helps build the world, the rest of the worldbuilding is strong. She introduces technology and organizational concepts through name-dropping, leaving specifics as mysteries, before explaining them later when it becomes beneficial to the story to do so. Rather than intro-info-dumping, she uses a noun to name a technology, than uses the explanation later to describe its effect on the story or characters. This is long-term world-building: it comes off like she has this planned out from the start. For instance: the title, Ancillary Justice. Both words in the title exhibit this tactic. The main character is an ancillary of a Justice, a troop-carrying class of starship. Within the first two chapters, these two words are fully explained, but not in an info-dump such as, “Ancillaries are physical representations, parts of a ship’s AI embodied in a human body that are capable of acting outside of the ship to great distances.” Rather, the first chapter explains this through showing instead of telling, and Leckie does it very well. She only shows how the technology affects the world, characters, and plot, keeping away from made up back story or discussing unimportant aspects of the technologies. She uses this noun-first, deferred explanation tactic throughout to explain most of the technologies and aspects of the world that contribute to building the reader’s conception of this culture and world. Her technique successfully illuminates the world, even though it doesn't give the reader all of the information about all of the technologies: certain things are left mysterious and not fully explained.

3. The writing itself is solid. There are some beautiful sounds in here, but it’s more her efficiency that astounds me. She manages to say so much through her evocative word choices. This isn’t an eight-grader’s vocabulary mated to standard sentence structures that repeat themselves. Various words and sentence structures keep the reading interesting. Here is a passage that I found beautiful:

“I had no information about her internal state. She seemed calm. Impassive, emotionless. I was sure that surface impression was a lie, though I didn’t understand why I thought that.”

This is efficient and beautiful prose that does well by being wrinkled with world-building import. For instance, the point-of-view character in the example above can read any internal physical data for some of the characters, but feels unsure of itself when this information is unavailable—like in the sentences quoted. The vocabulary is above an eight-grader, but not obscure, not too far into the thesaurus. It’s a quality, fun read.

4. The structure of the story effectively pulls the reader along while simultaneously communicating the backstory and history of the world. The structure starts at a point we’ll call now. The next chapter begins about twenty years in the past. The chapters then alternate from now to past to now to past for two-thirds of the book before the past storyline is completed and only continued through the now taking over the novel and driving towards the end of the story. This allows Leckie to focus on important moments of the past without needing to be linear in the past—it allows Leckie to skip large spans of time in order to focus on important points, allows her to bridge gaps in the past or now narratives where nothing important happens, keeps the novel from needing filler. She also skips a good eighteen years or so of the past narrative because it doesn’t matter to the story: we understand what happened between nineteen years ago and now because of what now is like. The chapter breaks effectively fracture the twin narratives, letting her focus on important parts instead of worrying about every scene change. It’s a good structure for this story and Leckie deals with it deftly. Outside of this, when the Justice's AI is whole, she shatters the narrative between different viewpoints of the Justice in a way that at least equals the skill of the third chapter of Alduous Huxley's Brave New World. Leckie jumps from point-of-view to point-of-view in an interesting, confident way that illuminates the character of the Justice's AI, all while retaining legibility well. She is a strong storyteller.

5. Leckie uses the structure described above to pace the story perfectly. Each chapter begins on a slower note and builds action through to the end—sort of. Chapters generally have two major action points, with two portions of rumination—sometimes taking place in the middle of an action phase. This allows each chapter to be fairly self-contained and Leckie rarely relies upon cliff-hanger chapter endings to drive the reader to keep reading. Instead, her chapter structures and consistent chapter length allow the story to be told in a slow, self-contained way that reflects the way the main character would think through the story, conscious of its mental limitations as an ancillary, a part of itself, not a whole being, but a mere single human, and not even that.

6. One fault is that the novel, like so many other speculative fiction novels, begins with an apparent murder. Yes, she subverts this typical tactic, but it’s still an annoyance in the first line:

“The body lay naked and facedown, a deathly gray, spatters of blood staining the snow around it.”

So many speculative fiction stories do this—start with a murder or rely upon violence to change the characters or progress the plot—that it gets tiresome as a reader. A little more variety would be nice. Here though, like in China Mieville’s The City and the City, it works. It works here because it’s a familiar reference point to start the story at—something recognizable before the world building brings the strangeness in; because it’s used skillfully—even though I don’t yet care about the characters, world, or writing, this situation allows the main character to be introduced sympathetically; and because Berq’s response to this body is an important aspect of her character that continues to be important throughout the novel—like in Mieville’s novel, the body is not forgotten, it exists in a context, and it grows in importance and complexity throughout the novel. So this opening murder works because Leckie has thought through it and uses it in an interesting way rather than as a cheap writer's trick. But it’s still initially annoying.

7. Leckie has obviously thought deeply about this world. For instance, one of her ideas is that ship and station AIs are programmed with emotions in order to prioritize data, experiences, and commands. This allows negatives—there are legends of ships going insane with grief when their captain dies—but also positives in that the ships more inherently understand their human crews and captains because they can understand their emotions intuitively. This example shows that Leckie has thought deeply about the issues inherent in earlier AI stories within science fiction. She has realized that the emotionless AI is problematic through misunderstanding the humans who work with it—when working together, communication and understanding are key, and many tensions in earlier science fiction stories arise from this lack of basic understanding of emotional context. Here she takes science fiction forward. Like so many others, she's using AI characters as centers of tension in the novel. But Leckie's doing it in a way that is distinctly her own. And most of the ideas in the novel are deeply thought through like this.

8. Leckie’s deep thinking about what other authors have done in the field shows a characteristic of her writing that some readers appear to have disliked: this is space opera. Some people are annoyed with some of the tropes and tactics that space opera typically engages, and they were annoyed by this novel. I was not. My bias is that I think all genres of music are interesting and I’m happy to listen to “Little High Plains Town” by Ian Tyson right after “Alfadanz” by Burzum—because they are both quality songs despite their widely different genres. I'm the same with writing. So the fact that a novel is space opera doesn’t annoy me unless it’s bad space opera, unless it is being used by the tropes and characteristics as some sort of catharsis for the author’s personal wish fulfillment. To me, this novel is good space opera. Leckie isn’t indulging here. She’s thinking deeply and modifying characteristics and tropes to inform the reader about the characters and world. The example above about emotional AI proves that Leckie is using the tropes and traits, but she's expanding them, modifying them, not being used by them or using them thoughtlessly. She’s writing in a way that makes sense to her story and characters here, and some of it seems to fall near some tropes. And that’s fine by me because she’s doing her own thing with them, expanding and changing them, not re-doing what other authors have done. However, it could be a bit baffling to non-science fiction fans because it is drawing from other texts. But I don’t think it’s possible the novel is entirely baffling to a new science fiction fan. I think a new science fiction reader would need to put in more effort than an old-hand, but it’s still legible and effective.

9. If you can’t yet tell, I think this book successfully tells an interesting story. Leckie writes well, structures the story well, consistently paces the novel, and deeply thinks about interesting ideas. I really appreciate the craft and care and thought she put into writing and structuring the story and characters. I cannot overstate how refreshing it is to read a well-written speculative fiction novel. Her training and study at a writing school shows here. This would've been a New York Times best seller if it didn't draw so heavily from the history of science fiction. This is confident, good writing and storytelling. She knows what she’s doing. She focuses on the characters, yet the overarching plot and world lives up to the strength of characterization throughout. With my past university studies into literature, this good writing breathes freshness into speculative fiction, reinvigorates my love for what a well-done speculative fiction novel can do when it really is novel. This leaves me applauding the writer, appreciating her craft, and pondering the ideas she presents believably in the text. This debut novel strengthens science fiction.

[Added 10/26/15: 10. The theme here is "what is human?" At the end, an AI in a human body gains some of the trappings of humans by gaining a surname. But really, this questions is shot through the whole book.]

73rd World Science Fiction Convention: Worldcon 2015: Sasquan in Spokane, Washington

Panel 1:
The Future of Short Fiction: Online Magazines Today

1. This panel was interesting, but more from a business perspective. Since I don't find business informative to my writing process, there's not much I can say here about this panel. The only take away is that the science fiction magazine is still alive and well, it's just online now.

2. My reading list from this panel:
Lightspeed Magazine, which won a Hugo later that evening.
Clarkesworld Magazine
Strange Horizons Magazine

Panel 2:
The New Space Opera

1. This panel was packed. Standing room only, and very little of that. The first argument was that space opera never fell out of production. The authors assembled believe there is not an inherent difference between old space opera and new space opera. Though much space opera fell out of popularity after the space operas of the 1930s and forties were deemed not literary enough, there were still authors writing good space opera and bridging the gap between then and now. Iain M Banks was a major bridge, and all the authors agreed.

2. Space opera was typically defined 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. I rather liked this definition that they gave, I think it's useful and informative. It fits my conception, and expands it as well: I hadn't previously thought about the emotional content of many space operas.

3. A theme of some of the comments was how to get away from the fascist or regal galactic empire so commonly a backdrop in space opera stories. Jokingly, one of the authors suggested the next new thing in science fiction would be "committee punk". But Ann Leckie quickly pointed out what they all agreed to: that she does not enjoy overly complex political committees in her day-to-day life, so why does she want to read about them? The conclusion was simply that we need a backdrop more honest to humans and life, but not boring or dreary. We have complex democracies, and yet the space opera is still caught in the feudalism of the past. At this point, a fan pointed out that from a long-term perspective on the history of humanity, really feudalism is king and has been the major governmental force for well over 90% of history. So, the problem I was left with was how to create a system that is honest to the complexities of human politics, but not bogged down in essentially reading minutes of committees.

4. There was a brief discussion about hard science fiction space operas. With Charlie Stross on the panel, that discussion was on point. He stated that he never finished his earlier trilogy because he had realized that there were inherent inconsistencies in the science behind his story. He walked away from it embarrassed, despite both volumes being nominated for Hugos. However, he acknowledged that he is attempting to use science that humans believe is possible in his new planned space opera trilogy. He intends to stay as scientifically rigorous as possible, to avoid the inherent contradictions of his last series. He made no value judgment between his scientifically-rigorous work and the work of others—he actually seemed to support other authors treating future science as if it was space magic. He felt that it was honest for somebody to include faster than light travel in their space opera, but exclude a pseudoscientific attempt at explaining it. We simply don't know how it would work if it could, therefore if you want to use it use it, but don't try to explain it.

5. In a lot of ways, the space opera comes out of the horse opera. This is most apparent in the series Firefly and Star Wars—especially A New Hope, which steals some shots from John Ford's The Searchers. A lot of the early space opera simply switched the horse to a spaceship, the six shooter to a blaster, the ten-gallon hat to a space helmet, and Main Street to Planet OK Corral. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but to me it seems lazy because it shows authors not really exploring the potential effects of their set pieces. For instance, I think a large part of the characterization of some of the major characters in science fiction comes from their interaction with their environment: whether that's being predisposed to keeping to themselves because they spend a lot of time on a very small spaceship, or Paul really learning who he is through experiencing and understanding the desert of Dune, or Elijah's life in the titular Caves of Steel creating an outlook in him that is negatively insular and xenophobic. These are just three examples, but there are hundreds of other examples of authors exploring, thinking about, and theorizing about their set pieces, their window dressing, to the point where it isn't a set piece or window dressing anymore: it's an integral part of the story, driving philosophy and ideas, and it has effects. For Charlie Stross, this means being as honest with science as he can. For Frank Herbert this meant allowing the desert to inhabit his characters, to change them deeply, rather then just having it be a desert planet because deserts are cool.

6. My reading list from this panel:
"Anything published by Iain M Banks will be worth your time and interest." Charlie Stross said this and much of the crowd and panel agreed. It seems the consensus is to read Excession, Inversions, Use of Weapons, and The Player of Games at least.
Charles Stross' own books Saturn's Children and Neptune's Blood (These are the ones that contradicted themselves), and his forthcoming novel, where he claims he doesn't mention singularity once.
Ann Leckie's Ancillary Blank series, which was already on my list.
Doc Smith (EE Smith) for the pulp foundation of the Space Opera.

Panel 3:
Demigods, Chosen Ones, and Rightful Heirs: Can Progress, Merit, and Citizens Ever Matter in Fantasy?

1. This was one of the worst moderating jobs I've ever seen. The moderator actively discouraged much of the more interesting questions and discussions because she couldn't allow others time to think—the silence of the room seemed to drive her mad and she kept trying to move things forward. She missed so much. All this after admitting at the beginning, "My day job is writing award winning historical fiction, like The Pirate's Secret Baby, available soon from such and such a press. So I don't know much about this topic and I'm going to let the other four really take the show." Then she proceeded to ask every question, time every answer, and allow only the minimum of discussion, as well as inadvertently insult two of the four panelists, shut down panelist comments, go off on tangents from statements its obvious that she didn't understand, and generally be in the way of the panel. That said, the four others on the panel had some fascinating ideas and opinions. I only wished that I could watch them all talk, rather than this sort of speed dating panel thing the moderator attempted. These notes will be short because the authors weren't allowed to really explore any of the ideas that they brought up.

2. One interesting idea was that humans are never existing alone, they're typically in a group. Therefore, perhaps narratives of a chosen group would be more honest to humanity then narratives of a chosen one. Because everybody works together, there is some complexity to a group dynamic that just isn't there in the typical chosen one narrative. Because everybody could work to their strengths, this could allow a wide diversity within the group. This seems much more based on reality than the chosen one.

3. Another interesting idea was that ensemble casts were a simple way to get away from the chosen one narrative. Different points of view would also effectively entice the writer to humanize some villains, demonize some heroes. This would effectively get away from a messiah, or the typical story ending of the hero taking back the throne that is theirs.

4. Katherine Addison was up for a Hugo that evening. Though she didn't win it, she had great comments: she finds it difficult to get away from the chosen one narrative, because it is so prevalent. It seems that in her mind, and the mind of most fans, the setting of fantasy is synonymous with a messianic narrative. This is fascinating, but was entirely unexplored. She ended with saying, "Think about what you read, think about what you write." And boy did that ever need to be said now.

5. Annea Lea stated that she was prickly with any rules in fantasy that something has to be done a specific way. She advocated variety in everything: story arcs, characters, settings, writing styles, etc. It was awfully exciting and persuasive because she argued that fantasy today does not embrace the variety and reality of humanity or history. By being so focused on the chosen one narrative, fantasy is digging its own grave.

6. Of course the elephant in the room that nobody talked about was A Song of Ice and Fire: instead of the chosen one, this is the chosen none; he has variety through an ensemble cast and different points of view; and it's revitalizing and repopularizing fantasy.

7. My reading list from this panel:
Katherine Addison's Goblin Emperor
Setsu Uzume's anthology Happily Never After
Mary Soon Lee's short stories & poetry

Panel 4:
Seiun Awards and Science Fiction in Japan

1. This was sad: at a time when the science fiction community is spending too much time spilling pixels over issues like merit, diversity, and how to judge a book, the international presentation of the Seiun Awards were attended by 21 people, including myself. I expected a ton of people in there simply to support the diversity inherent in Science Fiction. But no, it was a large, empty conference room capable of housing probably 300. Yet there were only 21 of us. The discussion was great though!

2. The Japanese government is currently studying science fiction, anime, and mecha by giving grants to the universities to establish departments to historically collect, collate, and document, as well as study these through the scholarly tactics of comparative literature, cultural anthropology, and human psychology. This has been going on for some time now. This scholarly research is prioritized and highly-regarded in Japan. They didn't really have time to talk about much of the actual research findings, but they did mention that where the western world calls the cyberpunk of today post-cyberpunk, lumping everything together, the Japanese scholars see at least three distinct generations of cyberpunk, and some argue for four.

3. There was the general agreement, as with all cyberpunk of the last 20 years, that we're living in the future that cyberpunk predicted for us. The example given was left-behind construction projects and buildings in the video game Second Life. These were simply left-behind because the players moved on to other games. Because of the textures, they still look brand new and sparkling and clean, but there is no habitation, no age, no pattern of memory worn into the textures, and their abandonment is completely strange.

3. A characteristic of cyberpunk today appears to be a focus on tangibility. But more important than that, is this sense of cyberpunk pushing itself out of its comfort zone. "It's one thing to write your strengths, but it never pays to get too comfortable in your writing," said 2015 Seiun award winner and founder of cyberpunk Pat Cadigan. And of the three stories that were discussed from this year's Seiun awards, at least two showed this. In brief, cyberpunk can be loosely classified by about five characteristics: a street smart anti-hero, an earthbound or near earth culture, a depressing dystopian future run by corporations, rain slicked neon-lit streets, and body modifications with invasive interfaces with the internet. Pat Cadigan's winning story, "The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi", takes place on Jupiter, breaking the earth-bounding typical of cyberpunk. Taiyo Fujii's Gene Mapper explores a happy future earth, instead of the dark, depressed dystopia typical to cyber punk. This shows cyber punk growing and embracing new tactics, techniques, and variety. How exciting!

5. My reading list from this panel:
Pat Cadigan's "The Girl-Thing Who Went Out to Sushi", which was already on my list.
Taiyo Fujii's Gene Mapper
Andy Weir's The Martian
More cyberpunk from today.

Hugo Awards Ceremony:
Watch them here, they're uploaded online. We were all laughing and in tears at points, there were some very funny people on stage. The winners are listed here. George RR Martin said, "I wish the internet did not have this horrible effect on the discourse. It tends to political toxicity and hardened battle lines."

Wired's post-award breakdown and recap of the kerfuffle.