Book Review - Ancillary trilogy

Ancillary Justice - 4.5/5

Ancillary Sword - 3.5/5

Ancillary Mercy - 3/5

By Ann Leckie. 

Ancillary trilogy is a space opera. The protagonist is an AI - Breq. The space is ruled by an emperor Anaander Mianaai, the emperor has cloned them into hundreds (or may be thousands of copies) to rule over the entire universe over 3000 years. Our protagonist is on the mission to kill the emperor. The emperor is on a war with herself, apparently some of her clone copies are corrupted or have ideas that are not compatible with other clone copies. The space opera is the story of Breq on how he goes about his mission.

Ann Leckie breaks many new grounds with her first novel. First, this is a genderless society and she uses the pronoun 'she' to address each character. Second, the AI itself. It is a world of Ships and its ancillaries. A ship is an AI and the ancillary soldiers are also AI connected to the ship, it is the same AI that runs the ship and has its eyes and ears across each one of its ancillary soldiers. Soldiers have human bodies and there is a painful procedure in which the human body is converted into an ancillary AI. Ann Leckie does a tremendous job to narrate this complex AI world with parallel story lines filled with intrigue. Her narration does not give away all details in one go. The other interesting bits are the language

The main character is likeable. Does things that are counter intuitive and there is a momentum in book 1 which makes it a page turner. The world building and the space opera bits are amazing.

Book two takes the story more local, fixed in one planet of the ecosystem. Introduces new characters, customs, and in general looks at the space opera from a microscopic lens. At the end of book one, both sides of the emperor are at an open war with each other. We do not know about the war or how it is playing out in the space, we are conncerned with this microcosm of what is happening in a tiny hamlet in this one planet. It was readable and good addition to the cannon.

Book three is meant to conclude this series. Ann Leckie  has no interest to close the larger emperor-emperor war. She limits her focus to this planet of book two and its nearby ecosystems.  This is an interesting take. It does not offer a satisfying end to a trilogy that many including me were looking for. 

What does not work also is that the representation of emperor is mostly villainous. The emperor has ruled the world for over 3000 years, surely they would have some good things going on to do so. But none of that is explored. 

Book three creates the confrontation between Breq and the emperor that was anticipated. However, at the confrontation, there is a plot twist which was kinda there but not completely explored either. Without spoiling, it has something to do with the alien species and its treaty with the humans. It would have been good to explore how the treaty came into place. 

The other thing that bothered me is the subservience of humans to AI. The people who serve Breq are humans and they try to behave like AI. It is a book where AI behaves like humans and humans pretend to be like AIs. I can buy the AI -> human part but the other one seems contrived. For example, at the peak of the novel, when humans try to attack the emperor, they are captured but then very next thing they are assigned city rebuilding tasks which they do without discussing any plans to get back to the war or emperor. 

Book three is an interesting read though. The new characters, specially translator Zeiak and Sphene are fun and well shaped up. World building is impressive. There are many good things going in the book. So, it is a good one time read but it does not as satisfying as I had hoped it to be.