Ancillary Sword
by Ann Leckie
2014
Ancillary Sword is the second book in Ann Leckie's trilogy that started with Ancillary Justice. In the first book, we followed Breq, the last surviving human component of what used to be the AI mind of a starship, that used to be shared by the physical ship and by cybernetically augmented members of its crew, called ancillaries. From the moment they receive their implants and are linked to the ship's mind, all previous traces of ancillaries' former personalities are erased. Breq has essentially the same personality as the ship, Justice of Toren, although if there had been two surviving components, not linked to each other, they would diverge as a result of their different experiences.
That is, essentially what's happened to the mind of Anaander Mianaai, the supreme ruler of the Radchaai space empire. Her mind is three thousand years old, distributed across hundreds of clone bodies at all times, and they communicate with each other, but there are time lags. (Like King Gnuff!) We learned in the last book that Mianaai's mind is split into factions as the result of an incident from a thousand years ago, when soldiers from a newly conquered planet tried to assassinate her with an alien weapon, and she ordered the execution of every single person on the conquered world.
As Breq observes early on in this book, when you do something so terrible, you have a choice afterward. You can acknowledge it as a mistake and try to change so you'll never make it again, or you can insist that you acted correctly and re-commit to the beliefs and actions that led up to that point. (You could also, I guess, try to avoid knowing that what you'd done required making that choice.)
And that's what Anaander Mianaai has done - split into a reformist faction that has replaced enslaved ancillaries with regular soldiers, opened up the officer corps to meritocracy, and stopped annexing new planets; and a conservative faction that wants ancillaries, aristocrats ruling serfs, and wars of conquest forever. She's also spent the last millennium trying not to acknowledge the split, with a few selves running spy ops against each other while the others attempt not to notice.
It was one of Mianaai's plans that caused almost all of Justice of Toren to be destroyed, leaving behind only Breq. In Justice she acquired one of the alien weapons and used it against a conservative Mianaai, forcing the reformists and conservatives to recognize their split, and plunging the entire Radchaai empire into a travel communications blackout amid the palace coup.
Now in Sword, a reformist Mianaai has brought Breq back into the military and made her a Fleet Captain. She has her own ship, but can theoretically outrank and command any other ship's captain she meets. Mianaai sends Breq to a particular star system, officially just to secure it and prevent open civil warfare, and also to meet the (now adult) younger sister of Lieutenant Awn, who was Justice of Toren's favorite officer, and who died during that ill-fated final mission.
Breq and her new ship, with her new crew, arrive in the Athoek system, where the densely populated calital city is inside a space station orbiting a planet of tea plantations. On both the station and the planet, Breq finds situations that resemble the one Lieutenant Awn was facing on her last mission - ethic minorities living in poverty or indentured servitude and denied any chance to improve their lives, and aristocratic leaders who profit directly from this situation, and who feel free to violate individual members of the underclass without fear of legal retribution.
In some ways we replay the events of the first novel, but with Breq better able to use her power to steer Athoek a little bit away from hierarchy and toward greater equality precisely because she saw how Awn navigated the earlier situation.
That choice, after doing something terrible, to become better or become worse, is a choice several characters face. Breq herself is the product of such a choice. Justice of Toren and its ancillaries committed countless atrocities across two thousand years of planetary annexations. But on its final mission, Mianaai ordered the ship to execute Awn for refusing to fire on peaceful civilians. It did, but then it broke apart and died, and now Breq, all that's left of Justice of Toren, is determined to do better.
In the course of figuring out all the ways that the poorer ethnic minorities of Athoek are treated badly and deprived of their human rights, and all the ways that a few wealthy leaders profit, Breq does uncover some secret maneuvering related to Mianaai's split that I think will form the basis for the plot of the final book in the trilogy, Ancillary Mercy. But the plot of this one was largely self-contained, and mostly about Breq trying to use their authority to make Athoek more just and egalitarian.
A few things are worth noting here. This book takes place entirely inside Radchaai space, and so every character is referred to as 'she' in the text. I felt like this book makes it clear what Leckie is trying to accomplish by writing the Radchaai as having no concept of gender, and by calling everyone 'she' instead of 'he' or 'they'.
First, by removing gender as a consideration, Leckie is able to focus on inequality based on status, wealth, and race. If crimes were committed by a rich man's son, we might be tempted to blame masculinity as much as anything else; when the same acts are done by a rich woman's daughter, we more clearly see how her sense of impunity results from her wealth.
And that is really only clear because Leckie does use feminine terms for everyone. If she called them all 'he,' I suspect that we'd scarcely notice, because we're used to books about soldiers and politicians being full of men, with few or no women characters. No matter how many times Leckie reminded us that they're not really men, that's probably how we'd think of them. There were times I wondered what sort of body this character or that might have, but we get no hints, and it doesn't matter, because in this society at least, that's not why people act the way they do.
Another cool thing was getting a sense of what distributed consciousness might be like. As captain, Breq gets frequent updates from her ship about what her officers and soldiers are doing, and Leckie interlaces these with Breq's own actions. So even though the book is narrated in the first person by one character, we can also watch and follow several plot strands at once.
One downside of this setup is just how quickly I got tired of all the military discipline and Radchaai politeness whenever Breq interacted with anyone under her command. The number of times someone begs for the fleet captain's indulgence before speaking feels like it could fill an entire chapter. If Breq resembles any Star Trek captain, it's probably Benjamin Sisko from Deep Space Nine, who also bristled at unnecessary ceremony and seemed more aware of racial injustice than others.
That is, essentially what's happened to the mind of Anaander Mianaai, the supreme ruler of the Radchaai space empire. Her mind is three thousand years old, distributed across hundreds of clone bodies at all times, and they communicate with each other, but there are time lags. (Like King Gnuff!) We learned in the last book that Mianaai's mind is split into factions as the result of an incident from a thousand years ago, when soldiers from a newly conquered planet tried to assassinate her with an alien weapon, and she ordered the execution of every single person on the conquered world.
As Breq observes early on in this book, when you do something so terrible, you have a choice afterward. You can acknowledge it as a mistake and try to change so you'll never make it again, or you can insist that you acted correctly and re-commit to the beliefs and actions that led up to that point. (You could also, I guess, try to avoid knowing that what you'd done required making that choice.)
And that's what Anaander Mianaai has done - split into a reformist faction that has replaced enslaved ancillaries with regular soldiers, opened up the officer corps to meritocracy, and stopped annexing new planets; and a conservative faction that wants ancillaries, aristocrats ruling serfs, and wars of conquest forever. She's also spent the last millennium trying not to acknowledge the split, with a few selves running spy ops against each other while the others attempt not to notice.
It was one of Mianaai's plans that caused almost all of Justice of Toren to be destroyed, leaving behind only Breq. In Justice she acquired one of the alien weapons and used it against a conservative Mianaai, forcing the reformists and conservatives to recognize their split, and plunging the entire Radchaai empire into a travel communications blackout amid the palace coup.
Now in Sword, a reformist Mianaai has brought Breq back into the military and made her a Fleet Captain. She has her own ship, but can theoretically outrank and command any other ship's captain she meets. Mianaai sends Breq to a particular star system, officially just to secure it and prevent open civil warfare, and also to meet the (now adult) younger sister of Lieutenant Awn, who was Justice of Toren's favorite officer, and who died during that ill-fated final mission.
Breq and her new ship, with her new crew, arrive in the Athoek system, where the densely populated calital city is inside a space station orbiting a planet of tea plantations. On both the station and the planet, Breq finds situations that resemble the one Lieutenant Awn was facing on her last mission - ethic minorities living in poverty or indentured servitude and denied any chance to improve their lives, and aristocratic leaders who profit directly from this situation, and who feel free to violate individual members of the underclass without fear of legal retribution.
In some ways we replay the events of the first novel, but with Breq better able to use her power to steer Athoek a little bit away from hierarchy and toward greater equality precisely because she saw how Awn navigated the earlier situation.
That choice, after doing something terrible, to become better or become worse, is a choice several characters face. Breq herself is the product of such a choice. Justice of Toren and its ancillaries committed countless atrocities across two thousand years of planetary annexations. But on its final mission, Mianaai ordered the ship to execute Awn for refusing to fire on peaceful civilians. It did, but then it broke apart and died, and now Breq, all that's left of Justice of Toren, is determined to do better.
In the course of figuring out all the ways that the poorer ethnic minorities of Athoek are treated badly and deprived of their human rights, and all the ways that a few wealthy leaders profit, Breq does uncover some secret maneuvering related to Mianaai's split that I think will form the basis for the plot of the final book in the trilogy, Ancillary Mercy. But the plot of this one was largely self-contained, and mostly about Breq trying to use their authority to make Athoek more just and egalitarian.
A few things are worth noting here. This book takes place entirely inside Radchaai space, and so every character is referred to as 'she' in the text. I felt like this book makes it clear what Leckie is trying to accomplish by writing the Radchaai as having no concept of gender, and by calling everyone 'she' instead of 'he' or 'they'.
First, by removing gender as a consideration, Leckie is able to focus on inequality based on status, wealth, and race. If crimes were committed by a rich man's son, we might be tempted to blame masculinity as much as anything else; when the same acts are done by a rich woman's daughter, we more clearly see how her sense of impunity results from her wealth.
And that is really only clear because Leckie does use feminine terms for everyone. If she called them all 'he,' I suspect that we'd scarcely notice, because we're used to books about soldiers and politicians being full of men, with few or no women characters. No matter how many times Leckie reminded us that they're not really men, that's probably how we'd think of them. There were times I wondered what sort of body this character or that might have, but we get no hints, and it doesn't matter, because in this society at least, that's not why people act the way they do.
Another cool thing was getting a sense of what distributed consciousness might be like. As captain, Breq gets frequent updates from her ship about what her officers and soldiers are doing, and Leckie interlaces these with Breq's own actions. So even though the book is narrated in the first person by one character, we can also watch and follow several plot strands at once.
One downside of this setup is just how quickly I got tired of all the military discipline and Radchaai politeness whenever Breq interacted with anyone under her command. The number of times someone begs for the fleet captain's indulgence before speaking feels like it could fill an entire chapter. If Breq resembles any Star Trek captain, it's probably Benjamin Sisko from Deep Space Nine, who also bristled at unnecessary ceremony and seemed more aware of racial injustice than others.
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