Ann Leckie's The Raven Tower

Ann Leckie is a talented writer.  I find I am never more in love with her writing than when she is exploring a supra-human perspective of the world she has created.  The first book in her Ancillary series was exhilarating in its presentation and narrator.  The two books that followed I liked less and less as the narrator became more of a Sherlock Holmes figure, human, but not.  Here in The Raven Tower, Leckie returns to that exhilaration by taking on the perspective of an ancient god in a fantasy world.

The basic plot of the story is simple and straightforward.  The heir to the throne (we’ll call it a throne for simplicity’s sake) is displaced by his uncle when the heir’s father abdicates the throne.  The heir’s best friend and aide investigates the situation and tries to set the situation right.  The whole novel takes place over only a couple of days, at least in the present time.  But told concurrently with this story is the history of our narrator, going back to their first moments of consciousness when the world was new and still covered in water, and it takes us from then up to her their present condition and intersection with the current story.

The novel moves back and forth between these stories, and each one is made more interesting by its companion piece.  Although honestly, I could have spent the entire novel going over the god’s past because I delighted in that character and their world so thoroughly.  The strongest aspect of the novel is Leckie’s world-building, which is top notch.  Her logic of godhood, their powers, their limitations, the nature of god-spoken objects, the power of speech—damn, it’s all just so good.  On top of that excellent construction is Leckie’s ability to breathe life and personality into the Strength and Patience of the Hill.  Their voice is human even as their perspective is not, and I found myself moved by their plight and confident in their abilities and ideas.

I read the entirety of the book out loud to Ann (as I do with many books), and the reading was always easy, which is the mark of accomplished writing in my book.  Moreover, I could always feel who was talking by the way they were talking, and the dialogue always felt natural, never clumsy.  The cast of characters are lean and focused, each with drives and relationships that charge the interactions.  We were driven enough by the writing to have a marathon reading session covering the last 80 pages of the novel.  And then we couldn’t sleep for some time after talking about the story and the writing and the clever way Leckie gave information throughout the novel to make sense of what is to come and reveal something gripping from the past.

This is a nice story of morality, commitment, and reciprocity.  The story itself is rewarding, but as with any wonderful book, the true power is in how the story is told.