From the Bookshelf of The Sword and Laser…

Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, #1)

Ann Leckie

Start date: November 1, 2013

Finish date: November 30, 2013

Discussion: 2013 Reads

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2013 Reads

ANHoD: Looking to buy Within the Sanctuary of Wings in Paperback
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What Members Thought

Oct 23, 2013 Tom Merritt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book started for me as a fascinating challenge in perspective shifting both with the change of personal pronouns and the multiple segment personality of the ship both when complete and when torn as Breq. Left there it would hVe been a good and fascinating story. But Ms. Leckie did not rest on that laurel. By the end of the book I was surprised to learn that not only had my brain been well accustomed to accepting 'she' as irrelevant to the gender of a subject, but I was enjoying a rich and s ...more

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Oct 27, 2013 Jlawrence rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sword-and-laser

Best science fiction novel I've read in quite awhile, just barely edging out Wool in that category. Fascinating narrator, an artificial intelligence that once ran a ship and its corp of networked but independently functioning 'ancillaries' - human bodies repurposed as AI-driven soldiers. The AI been reduced to just one of its soldiers, One Esk (aka Breq), and for a good portion we alternate between Breq's present as a solitary consciousness and flashbacks to when the AI was whole.

This idea coul ...more

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Jan 13, 2015 Brittany rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, sciencefiction, optimistic-cozy-sf

WOW.

Wow wow wowwow. This is an awesome book. Astonishingly original, delicately executed, deftly paced, and extraordinarily well-told. The whole premise is fascinating enough, and could have been interesting in the hands of a merely competent author. But Leckie takes the book, which could easily have come off as stilted or a thought exercise, and breathes life into it. Wonderful characters, and an amazing story.

It is true science fiction, in that she drops you in the middle and lets you figure ...more

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Dec 30, 2013 Raq rated it liked it

This is probably a four-star book, but something about it didn't stick with me. I was hoping to love it, and there are so many great ideas and great world-building and great writer tricks (instead of an unreliable narrator, she uses several who are all perfectly reliable in their own ways while all being the same person... it's hard to describe) and great cultural assumptions. but the story didn't matter to me, so ultimately I had to dock it a star.

I am tough on books, though, and I would totall ...more

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Apr 24, 2014 taeli rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobook, audible

finished 8/15/14

I really liked this book and upon finishing, wished the second was out so I could keep reading about Breq, Seivarden, and the politics of the Radch. It was difficult to get past the female pronouns and envisioning ladies when it was used, even when I knew a character was male. Many characters don't get any gendering outside the default "she" that the Radch use, leaving much to the reader's imagination, but I think that in using that convention Leckie is trying to bring attention ...more

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