Ancillary Sword is a science fiction novel by the American writer Ann Leckie, published in October 2014. It is the second novel in Leckie's "Imperial Radch" space opera trilogy, which began with Ancillary Justice (2013) and ended with Ancillary Mercy (2015). The novel was generally well-received by critics, received the BSFA Award for Best Novel and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and was nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards.
Ancillary Sword is a science fiction novel by the American writer Ann Leckie, published in October 2014. It is the second novel in Leckie's "Imperial Radch" space opera trilogy, which began with Ancillary Justice (2013) and ended with Ancillary Mercy (2015). The novel was generally well-received by critics, received the BSFA Award for Best Novel and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and was nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards.
I liked the book a lot, but I don't recommend it as much as I do the trilogy as a whole. It didn't really have my investment at the start, but by the end I was excited for Ancillary Mercy.
I liked the book a lot, but I don't recommend it as much as I do the trilogy as a whole. It didn't really have my investment at the start, but by the end I was excited for Ancillary Mercy.
It's funny. In retrospect I feel like I should have rated Ancillary Justice higher; in terms of world-building, in terms of ideas, it's often brilliant even when the plot meanders a bit, and ends up leaving a lot of threads hanging for this sequel.
So maybe upon reading Ancillary Mercy I'll have to go back and redo the whole trilogy and see how it all fits together. Because what I liked about the first one - the narration, the language/power/gender fuckery, the central character struggling to actually be a character, all the little nooks and crannies of what we call humanity that she gets into - is still very good here, and Leckie writes with both heart and guts. At the same time, the plot itself feels like... well, I think back to when I'd waited for a while to read the fourth book of Stephen King's Dark Tower, …
It's funny. In retrospect I feel like I should have rated Ancillary Justice higher; in terms of world-building, in terms of ideas, it's often brilliant even when the plot meanders a bit, and ends up leaving a lot of threads hanging for this sequel.
So maybe upon reading Ancillary Mercy I'll have to go back and redo the whole trilogy and see how it all fits together. Because what I liked about the first one - the narration, the language/power/gender fuckery, the central character struggling to actually be a character, all the little nooks and crannies of what we call humanity that she gets into - is still very good here, and Leckie writes with both heart and guts. At the same time, the plot itself feels like... well, I think back to when I'd waited for a while to read the fourth book of Stephen King's Dark Tower, only to get a novel that for the most part digresses away into a long plot that had little to do with what the books had been about up until then. And it wasn't a bad plot, it just felt like someone had hit "pause" on the main storyline. After the way Justice built up, I'd expected more follow-up rather than something that at times feels like Woody Guthrie's "Deportees" in space. Not that it's a bad song, or a bad plot, it's just that it feels like she could do more with this. But there's at least one more novel to go, and I want to see where all this ambition will take her.
