Ancillary Justice By Ann Leckie

Audiobook version, narrated by Celeste Ciulla

Finished on 1/16/2017

1.11 Ancillary Swords and 3.89 Ancillary Mercies out of 5

Spoiler-tastic Review

I would say this book was very good in a technical sense, especially the first two thirds. The character of Justice of Toren was surprisingly believable. We got to know that she was a fan of music, an interesting quirk one does not usually ascribe to a spaceship. Further, her personality changed between when she was a hive mind and when she was an individual. If that’s not character development I don’t know what is.

A few things I did not like were the non-chronological approach to storytelling. Past and future Toren had to be jumbled up to maintain the mystery for as long as possible, but I was left unpleasantly confused for good bit and in retrospect it was a very contrived storytelling device that Toren didn’t think once about the twist in the future bits before the twist occured in the past bits later on in the book.

It is very easy to understand why this book is so well loved- it effectively won the Triple Crown of characterization, plot and setting. What few mistakes it made it made in service of one of these three ideals. If you have not yet given this book a chance, please consider giving it a whirl. For medium to big fans of the scifi genre.

One additional thing. I listened to the audiobook, and I think the voice actor did an ‘okay’ job. Not fantastic, but okay.