Ancillary
Sword is the middle chapter of the Imperial Radch Trilogy by Ann
Leckie. I have read and reviewed the
first book, Ancillary Justice, and you can find that review at my blog
insearchofsmarts.blogspot.com or at GoodReads.
Be warned: both that review and this review are full of spoilers, and I
write with the expectation that you are reading this after you have read the
novel itself.
Ancillary
Sword picks up at almost the exact spot we left off. Our narrator, Breq, has been given the
surname Mianaai, the rank of Fleet Captain, and charge of the ship Mercy of Kalr. Breq is assigned to travel through the gate
to the station at Athoek, but Breq cares nothing about her orders, only about
seeing Lieutenant Awn’s sister, Basnaaid.
At Athoek Station, Breq uncovers abuses of power and attempts to right
some egregious wrongs.
Had I not
known this was part of a completed trilogy, I would have thought Leckie
intended to make a 20+ book series in which Breq travels from planet to planet
to use her Sherlockian powers of observation and deduction to solve local
mysteries centering around the way those in power and cultural dominance
systemically oppress those over whom they rule.
By that I mean that the world and characters are as clever as they were
in the first book, but the action centered on much more immediate issues of
plot than they did in the first novel.
The first novel spend a lot of time exploring what it meant to be an AI
passing as human and exploring gender construction. Similarly, there was a whole world and past
to uncover. In the second novel, all
that has already been covered, and Leckie wisely avoids retilling the same
ground. Unfortunately, it means that the
stuff that was most compelling in the first book, the stuff that made it
original and exciting, was largely missing in this book.
What Leckie
does instead is thematically ground her novel by looking at all manners of
abusive and exploitative relationships.
At its heart, this is a novel about the fucked up ways people interact
with each other. The most obvious case
of this is Raughd and the way she uses everyone, especially Piat. But it goes beyond someone being a jerk. Tiserwat is literally enslaved to Anaander
Mianaai, her brain physically altered to supplant her own thoughts and desires
with those of the Lord of the Radch.
Breq, who was once equally controlled by Mianaai, has to pose an
intervention to free Tiserwat from Mianaai’s influence. And Leckie plays out the trauma of such
mistreatment, but continually observing that in the wake of her abuse, Tiserwat
is permanently changed, unable to be the young woman she was as these toxic
traces of Mianaai will forever be with her.
The bulk of
the relationships in the novel are unequal.
Piat loves Raughd, but Raughd just uses Piat. Seivarden reveres Breq, but Breq doesn’t much
care. Raughd wants to impress her
mother, but Fosyf talks casually of creating a new clone and trying again. All these imbalances lead to pain and
abuse. The unique example is Breq’s
desire to pay her respects to Awn (and to apologize for her actions) by helping
Basnaaid, who in turn wants nothing from Breq.
Breq respects Basnaaid’s wishes and does not try to manipulate or force
anything on Basnaaid to address Breq’s own sense of guilt. That basic respect for the desires of another
stands in stark contrast to the other relationships highlighted by the novel.
This
analysis of dysfunctional relationships goes well beyond individuals as the
novel looks at the way whole peoples are mistreated. The Ychana and Xhai in the undergarden. The Valskayaans and the Samirend. Ancillary Justice, the first book,
explored the imperial nature of the Radch at the 30,000-foot level, criticizing
the imperialist drive to discuss murder and displacement as “civilizing” the
people. That exploration and criticism
continues in Ancillary Sword. The
defining trait of the Radch, the very hallmark of their civilized stature, is
their drinking of tea. In this novel, we
see how that tea is made at the expense of an entire people. The Valskayaans are trapped in a system that
will not let them escape so that tea can be made profitably for
exportation. Civilization always exists
on the blood and sweat and permanent entrapment of an underclass. And of course the Valskayaans are blamed for
their own entrapment as a way of dismissing the system that holds them there. Moreover, the slight elevation of the
Samirend are used to point to the system’s fairness.
These
abusive and exploitative relationships exist at every level of the Radch’s
civilization, interpersonally and interculturally. Breq, our hero such that she is, sees through
these systems and relationships (and systematized relationships) and does what
one person (with a lot of authority) can to right a handful of those
wrongs. Leckie does not over-romanticize
Breq or her actions, which is one of the novel’s strengths.
The novel
was focused and thematically tight, but overall I found it less gripping the
previous novel. We will see what happens
in the final segment, Ancillary Mercy.
There we will either find that this novel set up everything for a grand
and unified climax or that it killed some time while we got there. I suspect the former, but I have been
disappointed before. As with any tight
trilogy, the success of Ancillary Sword will depend entirely on the
finale of the tale, so I’ll hold off on any further comments until we have read
it.
