Sami Sundell reviewed Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
Review of 'Ancillary Sword' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Continuing from where Ancillary Justice left off, Ancillary Sword doesn't dwell in the past; the story happens firmly in the current time (for the book, of course), and it sets Breq off to correct the wrongs made in the Raadch Empire.
Where the first book gave us a new idea, this book continues an established theme but it's much more heavily focused in one hand on political issues of the Empire (and, lets not kid ourselves, our world as well) and, on the other hand, the feelings and persons of the main characters. The story in itself is a bit more straight-forward - what with not having the flashbacks and because it happens mainly in a single solar system.
I had some minor gripes with the structure and the development of the book. While this is a second book of a series, Leckie seems to have made an effort so …
Continuing from where Ancillary Justice left off, Ancillary Sword doesn't dwell in the past; the story happens firmly in the current time (for the book, of course), and it sets Breq off to correct the wrongs made in the Raadch Empire.
Where the first book gave us a new idea, this book continues an established theme but it's much more heavily focused in one hand on political issues of the Empire (and, lets not kid ourselves, our world as well) and, on the other hand, the feelings and persons of the main characters. The story in itself is a bit more straight-forward - what with not having the flashbacks and because it happens mainly in a single solar system.
I had some minor gripes with the structure and the development of the book. While this is a second book of a series, Leckie seems to have made an effort so that it would also be readable as a stand-alone book. That may be successful, but having just read the Ancillary Justice, the beginning of this book has a tad too much of repetition. And, in the end, the book leaves perhaps more things open compared to the first book of the series.
The protagonist, Breq Mianaai, comes out as just and proper - a true white knight that had his dark moments described in first book and is now squeaky clean. He's also too omniscient; being able to see everything his soldiers see and even their emotional state, combined with his 2000 years of experience, makes him just a tiniest bit too supernaturally able. The first book gave as a ship that became human; I would've liked to see more of the human side. Maybe that'll come in the third book.
And, finally, those emotional states... Breq is continually angry, another person is miserable, third one anxious and uncertain, and those emotioanl states stay pretty much the same through the whole book but we don't really get a good reason for those.
Still, having said all that, I enjoyed this book tremendously. The action is sometimes slow but the world is wonderfully interesting, the story flows effortlessly and it continues to build a picture of both the main characters and the whole Empire in a way that made me devour the book.
The first book raised the bar high, and while Ancillary Sword doesn't quite reach the level of Ancillary Justice, these two are still by far the best books I've read so far in 2015.