{"id":2059,"date":"2014-11-20T11:00:40","date_gmt":"2014-11-20T16:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/?p=2059"},"modified":"2024-01-21T11:31:28","modified_gmt":"2024-01-21T16:31:28","slug":"leckie-ann-02-ancillary-sword","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2014\/11\/leckie-ann-02-ancillary-sword\/","title":{"rendered":"Leckie, Ann: (02) Ancillary Sword<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I liked Ancillary Justice<\/cite><\/a> very much. I . . . don’t actually know what I think about its sequel, Ancillary Sword<\/cite>. <\/p>\n

For me, Sword<\/cite> is such a middle book that I can’t fully assess it until I know the shape of the whole series. It’s doing fascinating and important things in terms of character growth and worldbuilding (which, because the Imperial Radch is an empire built on conquest and economic exploitation, involves a lot of examination of systems of oppression). It has some great bits like a character who reminded me of Delirium in a particularly dangerous state, and four-fifths of a limerick that I was sad to learn<\/a> doesn’t have a last line. But it’s also a trip away from the main action set up in the last book that, by the end—as one character explicitly says—has added at least one entirely new complication and not resolved any old ones. And so I feel my assessment is on hold, waiting to see if the character growth and worldbuilding pays off sufficiently to justify the somewhat slower pace and the change of focus.<\/p>\n

(I’m also a little uneasy about the combination of forced labor on plantations and this being a fantasy of Breq’s political agency. But people who I trust to be more clued-in on things like this than me, such as N.K. Jemisin<\/a>, don’t seem to have had a problem with that, and I can see ways in which the book attempts to address the problems with that setup. For me it’s more a balance\/tone thing than anything, and I’m feeling a little raw on these topics right now, so I’m not sure how far I trust my uneasiness.)<\/p>\n

Anyway. Pretty much every other review I’ve seen seems to like this book as much or more than the first, so chalk me up as a tired outlier who is, nevertheless, very much looking forward to the next book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I liked Ancillary Justice very much. I . . . don’t actually know what I think about its sequel, Ancillary Sword. For me, Sword is such a middle book that I can’t fully assess it until I know the shape of the whole series. It’s doing fascinating and important things in terms of character growth … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Leckie, Ann: (02) Ancillary Sword<\/cite>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123,48,88,15],"tags":[284],"class_list":["post-2059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-hugo-campbell-nominees","category-books","category-imperial-radch-series","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-leckie-ann"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2440,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059\/revisions\/2440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}