The Sword and Laser discussion

I am settled on making Ancillary Justice our November/Laser pick. It is well received by the intelligentsia.

However our Empress Belmont has noted the displeasure amongst some of her subjects with series picks of which this is.

I maintain that if we avoid series starters we drastically reduce the available choices.

I would also submit that our last laser pick by Alfred Bester was not a series pick and our alternate pick RedShirts was also not a series.

Her Majesty's government will hear your opinions before finalizing our decision with divine guidance.

I shall not question the all-seeing, all-knowing Supreme Laser.

Cool. I guess I should get moving on October's pick. Reading and me are not getting along right now. Apparently neither am I getting along with grammar.

Along with grammar not getting is something up with which you shall not put!

Who are we minions to question the decisions of the Empress?!

I actually started reading this yesterday - I think it is a great pic as there is lots to talk about with it and it will appeal to a broad range of S&L readers.

I am all for reading Ancillary Justice. Initial reviews have been extremely positive.

You're too late! I started reading it today.

If this book is picked, Empress Belmont must refer to Tom as 'she'.

Excellent book.

If we're doing a 'no first books' that needs to be followed by both of you and regularly, not just some of the time which (see below) I think will be very hard and eliminate a lot of good books.

I've pointed to Jo Walton's Tor.com post on the various kinds of series before and I think it's really relevant here. For me, it's not a problem to read a first book in a series if, like Ancillary Justice and others, it achieves some closure and can be read as a standalone. If, God forbid, Ms Leckie got hit by the proverbial bus, the book stands on its own just fine. In many ways, these series are like reality - things go on after the end of EVERY story but the central conflict of this book is dealt with in the book. We might want to know what's next but there's a feeling of closure to the first book.

What I do think we should avoid absent good reason to read them are series that are the opposite of this where the first book is all setup and doesn't resolve anything. For example, I picked up Peter Hamilton's The Dreaming Void once, not realizing it was book 1 in a series and it was ALL setup. You need to read the other 2 books for the story to work. There's nothing wrong with this, but it's a different kind of series than, say, Ancillary Justice or other books.

Finally, I just don't see this working in most fantasy. So much of it is book 1 in a series that we'd avoid a lot of interesting stuff. I've said this before, but Assassin's Apprentice was a good read, Hobb was new to me and although it was more setup than resolution, I enjoyed it. If we can't do this in fantasy, there's no reason to do it for SF.

TLDR: Screw rules. Let's read good books.

I'm down for this, or any other book - series or not. (Whether I end up liking them is another matter.) Standalone books are cool, but finding a great series is awesome too. I never would have picked this one on my own, which is why I am in this book club. Also, it looks cool.

Don't forget to add it to the bookshelf/create a new section. ^_^

I'm confused its about a girl who was a spaceship?

Not really Alex. It's about a spaceship (Justice of Toren) whose identity was distributed among many 'ancillaries' (think troops), other small ships and the main ship. Now, only a single ancillary, Breq, is left. The book looks at, among other things, what happened to bring Breq to this point but is also a fascinating look at how such a creature might think of identity, how it might relate to humanoids (Breq has a hard time with gender), etc.

A lot of authors might have done this as an infodump but Leckie does it in the writing itself. I don't want to say too much, but the jumps between different parts of the Justice of Toren and the confusion abou gender are really well done. For example, Breq will often call a male 'she' out of confusion, even as others properly identify the person's gender. This has an interesting, disorienting effect.

I'm quite pleased Tom's chosen this. It's got a lot of things to talk about as well as just being a really good book.

It's a girl who was a spaceship and also was many soldiers. Except there's no 'he' pronoun in their language (like Hungarian?), so you're never sure of who is male or female.

Thats cool I just picked it up a couple hours ago after deciding to move it to the top of my reading Skyscraper I mean list...sooo DAMN Good timing sport...well done...cheerio and all that...

I really appreciate that we're doing a new release this time. I don't see it on Audible. Am I just missing it?

I'd heard so many raves from such different sources I was going to get it anyway. I'd say go for it!

I believe I heard there was no audio version

No audiobook yet. That's the downside of new releases sometimes.

Maybe audible don't know whether to hire a man or a woman narrator.

That's okay. I just started listening to It by Stephen King. It's huge and will probably take a couple of weeks to get through.

I totally get that some prefer audiobooks but haven't we covered this before? Sometimes good books aren't available in one's preferred format and at that point each reader needs to decide whether they're going to be so strict that they refuse to read anything not in that format or if they want to read a book and will bend their self-imposed rule.

@tamahome - Perfect! :)

As long as the book isn't incredibly notorious for lacking closure whatsoever, I'm fine with it.

The last few couple we've read have been excellent w/r/t not forcing the reader to continue on the series, and I'd hate to miss out on the chalion-esque in the future

I think I'll sit this one out. I have way too many series I need to finish as it is.

Also it might be helpful to point out that this seems to the ONLY book in this series currently published (right?). So you won't finish it and then have a dozen novels to add to your backlog.

Rob wrote: "Also it might be helpful to point out that this seems to the ONLY book in this series currently published (right?). So you won't finish it and then have a dozen novels to add to your backlog."

That is correct.

Jeff wrote: "I think I'll sit this one out. I have way too many series I need to finish as it is."

So you're not reading anything else until those are done?? :)

I'm ready. I got the Kindle edition. It was less expensive than Kobo.

I'm in!

I don't have any issue with it being the first book in a series. I do have a bit of an issue with it being a new book by a fairly new author because my library doesn't have it, it's not available through my library's e-book system, and I did a statewide search and apparently no library in Connecticut owns a copy (and even if one did, libraries generally won't ILL new books). I will try to get a copy ordered for my library's collection, but I don't if that will arrive and be cataloged in time.

The last time I bought a book for S&L was actually the month I joined the club and that book was CLOUD ATLAS. That did not turn out to be a good decision... (though I did finish it, like, 6 months later). And I think the last time we read the first book in a new series it was last November's pick, THE DIRTY STREETS OF HEAVEN, which I lemmed after about 150 pages. So I guess what I'm saying is I think the universe might be telling me to skip ANCILLARY JUSTICE.

I read this a couple of weeks ago, but I may well read it again in November. It's easily good enough to justify it and there's plenty to discuss.

Ancillary Justice sounds all kind of awesome to me. It gets my vote.

Picked it up not too long ago, so I'm ready to go.

Looks good, I'm in.

I'd love an extra excuse to read Ancillary Justice. I picked it up on Kobo the week it came out. All review buzz is extremely positive.

I'm most definitely down for Ancillary Justice. Initial response seems pretty positive. Also, I haven't read a book by a total unknown (to me) author in a long time so this is a good opportunity.

Oh, and the Chapters nearest me even has a copy in stock! If it's gone by the time I'm off work tomorrow I'm going to have a Will Ferrel level hissy fit in the middle of the store.

Real shame about it not being available on audible so I can't use my free trial for it but the kindle edition seems pretty cheap so I'll probably pick it up there.

Somewhat happy there is no audiobook version of this. Seems like a book that I will need to pay a little more attention to.

"Ours not to reason why, ours but to read and die." Except for the no audible part which is disappointing.

Sounds neat! I can't imagine it's possible to find that many books anymore that arent a series and I feel like the point of the book club (for me) was to have an easy way to find out about new things to try.

Last year I made it my new year resolution to read the next book of each series I had going between picks. I was able to increment each series by 1 by like april, and it was really fun to revisit everything. I'm doing to do it again this year.

This will be my first pick I'll be reading. (New to here)

Looking forward to it!

Anne just answered me on twitter that the audiobook is due out Dec. 1. Maybe we could put this off a month? I dunno, I'm fine with just an ebook but at least those who want to listen can wait and not be too far off when they want to comment.

December is Sword tho (if we alternate). Are the audiobook people really so adamant about only listening?

It has been noted that the benevolent dictator hath bestowed a pick upon a writer of the female persuasion, a subject which as received great discussion among the plebian masses.

To the complainers, I would say you just can't always haveth what you wanteth.

There are only two people actually complaining about it not being available in audiobook and both of those are not about format preference but rather availability/affordability which I see as perfectly valid reasons. Hell, I specifically started my free trial this month in order to use it for this pick but life's life, I've just ordered Raymond E. Feist's Magician instead. I'll live.

Ah, I forgot the free trial thing. BTW, not looking to fight over it, I was/am genuinely curious, not ever having gotten into audiobooks.

I'm fine with it not being on audio and I'm fine with it being a recently published book, as long as it's in paperback. I'm lucky because my library DOES have it. I think most people join book clubs knowing they'll at least be buying a few paperbacks a year. I try to keep costs down by visiting my library, but they can't have everything.

The only time I am disappointed format-wise is when it's a new pick only in hardcover. Usually even the ebook is expensive then hand it's very iffy that libraries will have it. I've said before that while it might be nice if it's in various formats, if it's at least in paperback I'm cool with that. I think giving them about six months (to make sure they're as good as initial reviews would have you believe and availability is more insured) would be about right, but then it's not my book club. It's Tom and Veronica's so they get to call the shots.

Good for them.

The blurb mentions corpse soldiers ... that sound like more zombies so I am going to skip this one.

AndrewP - They're NOT zombies at all (I hate zombies too). Skipping this would be a very big mistake if you like SF. See the spoiler if you'd like an explanation.

Minor spoiler (view spoiler)[The term refers to people whose consciousness is overwritten by that of the ship AI. They're regular people, but the original person is 'dead' and they become, in some sense, an appendage of the ship. This interaction is central to the book since the perspective of the ship is alien to us (it can see from many sets of eyes, etc). It also, obviously, calls into question the morality of the political structure which the ship serves. The main character is one of these... but there's no more ship. So, the question of identity is also important). (hide spoiler)]