I finished Ancillary Justice! I’m definitely not as into it as some people, but I did enjoy it. More spoilers below the cut.

Like I’ve said in my daily journal entries, it took me a while to warm up to this one, and a big part of the reason I stuck with it is because other people told me to.

I’m glad I stuck with it, and I enjoyed it overall – the world-building is great, I’m intrigued by the politics, the idea of an adversary who’s simultaneously one person and multiple entities is a new one to me. I’m hooked to see what happens to Breq, and I’ll get the next book from the library soon.

But I’m also a bit confused. Possibly some of this is my difficulty remembering names – when Skaaiat Awer appears as the Inspector Supervisor, I was really struggling to remember where we’d met them (him? her?) before, or why they were significant. I’m expected to remember their relationship with Lieutenant Awn, the different houses, juggle the two timelines, and I couldn’t quite manage it. A second read will help, I hope.

And maybe I missed this, but the book barely touches on ancillaries, even though they could be one of the best bits of the worldbuilding. (The first page of my book is a quote from the High Priest on Ors: “I used to be horrified by the idea of ancillaries, but now I’m horrified by willing human soldiers.”) Where did that stuff all go? We find out that creating new ancillaries is banned, and that’s about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it, but I don’t love it in a way other people seemed to. Will I get more out of it on a reread? Do the sequels make it stronger? Have I missed something? Happy to discuss this more in the comments.

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And then, another idea, based partly on Ancillary Justice and partly on something from kaberett’s recent post:

I also find massively off-putting the idea that seems to be taken as axiomatic that Humans Are A Good Thing and it is Objectively Important to Keep The Species Going.

Between climate change and pollution and trashfire politics and wars, certain bits of human civilisation are really screwing up the planet – and a lot of the pain will be felt by people who didn’t cause it. The Radch Empire builds heavily on the distinction between the “civilisation” and “the uncivilised”, and a clear belief that being annexed by the Empire is the route to civilisation, which is better. The book seems to be disagreeing with the Empire, and suggesting that occupation isn’t such a great thing for the occupied.

More generally, a lot of sci-fi is about plucky humans fighting off an invasionary alien force. They attack, we resist, everyone goes home happy. I wonder if you could write a story where becoming part of an Empire ends up better, overall? Humans get cleaner tech, or we’re told to knock it off with the rainforests, or something. I don’t think I’ve seen that idea explored.

It would be easy to take that idea and write something really crass or insensitive. A story that just says “empires are great, actually” has decades of bad politicians to compete with. You’d have to be super careful, and I’m not sure there’s an author I trust to do it well.

And maybe it just doesn’t work?

If you’re the Federation and everything is happy go-lucky and nobody goes hungry and there’s no pollution, maybe you’re too nice to go around invading other planets? The fact that you invade people (or act in a way that gets misinterpreted as invasions) means you can’t help them.

On the other hand, attitudes towards the EU in Britain. Mmm.

I don’t have any plans for this idea and it might be a complete dead end, but I’m writing it down in case it sparks something else later.

(originally posted on Dreamwidth)

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