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sophia_sol) wrote2014-12-01 08:17 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2014-12-01 08:17 pm
Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie
I was slow to get into the book but from the moment where Anaander Mianaai was on Justice of Toren and ordered her to kill Awn I was super there for the rest of the story.
It's interesting, this book has SO MUCH to talk about, but I feel like the only thing I've been seeing reviews really discuss is the gender/pronoun thing. Which to an extent I understand? It's fascinating and a big deal and something that hasn't really been done before that I know of! BUT IT IS NOT THE ONLY THING WORTH TALKING ABOUT.
So I will start by talking about that but then move on to the other stuff.
So. As you may know, this is a book where the main character is from a culture that just...doesn't do gender. And so the ungendered Raadchai pronoun she uses to refer to everyone is rendered in English as "she/her". Which is FASCINATING and great because historically speaking English has used "he" as a general pronoun, and using "she" instead calls up very different associations and I love it.
I've seen multiple people comment on how soothing it is to read a book in which pretty much all the characters are read as female by default.
And idk, I think it was a little bit like that for me? But mostly it was not. See, here and there throughout the book, information about gender of some characters is revealed - eg when Breq has to use a language that genders people when you talk about/to them and she needs to make guesses about what pronoun is correct, and stuff like that. And given that of the first few gender identity/gender presentation/whatever you want to call it reveals, most of them are that the character is in fact male, it kind of put me in a mindset of seeing ALL the characters as possible stealth dudes. Instead of settling comfortably into a female-dominated world, I felt like I was on guard at all times against the possibility that all the characters were in fact dudes and I just hadn't been informed (yet).
This was only made worse when fairly late on in the book, Anaander Mianaai, the Lord of the Radch, is referred to as having a baritone voice - a vocal range that is strongly correlated in our culture with a person we would read as male. And add that to the fact of Seivarden being bodied in a way we would consider male, with Seivarden being characterized as that type of person who just oozes contemptuous and thoughtless power and privilege, which is a character trait I read as pretty male and associated with male privilege. And together those things felt like it cemented to me this notion that this world is still very dude-dominated, especially in positions of power/privilege. Whether that's a fair reading of the book or not, I don't know, but it's how I felt!
And so the gender stuff this book does WASN'T so much comforting and relaxing to me. Instead it was uncomfortable and distancing and put me on edge. Which is too bad. Because in theory I do really love what the book was doing! (And I'm sure that the use of the "she/her" pronouns did affect my subconscious reactions to things.)
And at any rate the other stuff about Breq's complete confusion about how other cultures do gender is A+, eg the excellent point she makes about how in this one culture she visited everyone dresses and acts more or less the same no matter the gender, and everyone says that gender doesn't matter/genders are equal, whatever, but EVERYONE can unerringly identify everyone else's genders, and whenever Breq misgenders someone they're terribly insulted. Or the matter-of-fact way Breq describes the way that Radch do reproduction and completely fails to realize that anything about it might be considered unusual by other cultures.
MOVING ON.
Okay so like the questions of identity in this book are SO FABULOUS? I am so into the stuff about Breq vs One Esk vs Justice of Toren and all of that being one identity but also...not quite. And Anaander Mianaai being divided within herself and trying not to acknowledge that fact to herself! And the viewpoint character of the book being an "I" with multiple bodies! And whether a spaceship counts as a person or a tool! Spaceships being friends with each other or not, spaceships having favourites among their officers, spaceships having VERY STRONG FEELINGS about things, spaceships (or parts of spaceships) having odd quirks (like One Esk's singing)! I AM SO INTO ALL OF THIS.
And speaking of One Esk's singing, gosh do I love how important music is throughout this book. All the different bits of songs One Esk has picked up from various cultures, and that she can sing choral music by herself!! And everyone thinks she's weird for singing all the time, but also get V E R Y weirded out when she stops!
And this ties into something else the book does very well, which is in interesting and diverse and believable representations of different cultures and religions. I really appreciate that this is a scifi book that doesn't shy away from the fact that humans generally tend to be pretty into religion and RELIGION WILL PROBABLY ALWAYS BE A THING even if in very different forms.
Also: hahaha wowwww I super appreciate that this book does not shy away from the awful side of empires. Empires (good or evil) tend to be...set-pieces in certain kinds of sff, but this book recognizes things like how a) most people within an empire are perfectly good people who think that they aren't doing anything wrong while still b) DOING SOME PRETTY TERRIBLE THINGS. This empire felt recognizably empire-like to me in a whole variety of ways! I appreciate that fact.
Relatedly, this book understands stuff about power and privilege and oppression and all that.
On another note something I want to talk about is Breq's relationship with Seivarden? I am just so intrigued! Like, there are obviously strong and not-particularly-positive feelings involved there yet Breq still feels very protective of Seivarden and Seivarden eventually feels the same way about Breq. And I rather agree with Breq that Seivarden is not super likeable, and I rather agree with Seivarden that Breq is occasionally rather out to lunch. SHE JUMPED OFF A BRIDGE FOR SEIVARDEN. Like. What. And I don't know where I'm going with all of this, except that I am very intrigued by everything we're shown in the book about their relationship and its history and how it changes and progresses over the course of the book and I want more!
Actually that's really the conclusion to the entirety of this post: I WANT MORE. Thankfully a sequel exists! Which I will have to get my hands on at some point.
OH! but looking back at the point-form list I made of things I wanted to make sure I covered in this write-up, I seem to have missed two points.
One: Daos Ceit, the wee flower girl from the temple, now all grown up and doin' things but still having strong feelings about the injustice she witnessed as a child! Awww, I like her.
And two: SPACESHIPS!! That is a direct quote from my list, double exclamation and all. I already talked about this a bit up above in the section on identity, but I just want to reiterate that I am really into spaceships as characters. And the main character as a spaceship embodied in a single human body is great! And then OUR SPACESHIP MAIN CHARACTER BECOMES CAPTAIN OF A SPACESHIP at the very end of the book and CAN I JUST SAY HOW EXCITED I AM BY THIS PROSPECT.
It's interesting, this book has SO MUCH to talk about, but I feel like the only thing I've been seeing reviews really discuss is the gender/pronoun thing. Which to an extent I understand? It's fascinating and a big deal and something that hasn't really been done before that I know of! BUT IT IS NOT THE ONLY THING WORTH TALKING ABOUT.
So I will start by talking about that but then move on to the other stuff.
So. As you may know, this is a book where the main character is from a culture that just...doesn't do gender. And so the ungendered Raadchai pronoun she uses to refer to everyone is rendered in English as "she/her". Which is FASCINATING and great because historically speaking English has used "he" as a general pronoun, and using "she" instead calls up very different associations and I love it.
I've seen multiple people comment on how soothing it is to read a book in which pretty much all the characters are read as female by default.
And idk, I think it was a little bit like that for me? But mostly it was not. See, here and there throughout the book, information about gender of some characters is revealed - eg when Breq has to use a language that genders people when you talk about/to them and she needs to make guesses about what pronoun is correct, and stuff like that. And given that of the first few gender identity/gender presentation/whatever you want to call it reveals, most of them are that the character is in fact male, it kind of put me in a mindset of seeing ALL the characters as possible stealth dudes. Instead of settling comfortably into a female-dominated world, I felt like I was on guard at all times against the possibility that all the characters were in fact dudes and I just hadn't been informed (yet).
This was only made worse when fairly late on in the book, Anaander Mianaai, the Lord of the Radch, is referred to as having a baritone voice - a vocal range that is strongly correlated in our culture with a person we would read as male. And add that to the fact of Seivarden being bodied in a way we would consider male, with Seivarden being characterized as that type of person who just oozes contemptuous and thoughtless power and privilege, which is a character trait I read as pretty male and associated with male privilege. And together those things felt like it cemented to me this notion that this world is still very dude-dominated, especially in positions of power/privilege. Whether that's a fair reading of the book or not, I don't know, but it's how I felt!
And so the gender stuff this book does WASN'T so much comforting and relaxing to me. Instead it was uncomfortable and distancing and put me on edge. Which is too bad. Because in theory I do really love what the book was doing! (And I'm sure that the use of the "she/her" pronouns did affect my subconscious reactions to things.)
And at any rate the other stuff about Breq's complete confusion about how other cultures do gender is A+, eg the excellent point she makes about how in this one culture she visited everyone dresses and acts more or less the same no matter the gender, and everyone says that gender doesn't matter/genders are equal, whatever, but EVERYONE can unerringly identify everyone else's genders, and whenever Breq misgenders someone they're terribly insulted. Or the matter-of-fact way Breq describes the way that Radch do reproduction and completely fails to realize that anything about it might be considered unusual by other cultures.
MOVING ON.
Okay so like the questions of identity in this book are SO FABULOUS? I am so into the stuff about Breq vs One Esk vs Justice of Toren and all of that being one identity but also...not quite. And Anaander Mianaai being divided within herself and trying not to acknowledge that fact to herself! And the viewpoint character of the book being an "I" with multiple bodies! And whether a spaceship counts as a person or a tool! Spaceships being friends with each other or not, spaceships having favourites among their officers, spaceships having VERY STRONG FEELINGS about things, spaceships (or parts of spaceships) having odd quirks (like One Esk's singing)! I AM SO INTO ALL OF THIS.
And speaking of One Esk's singing, gosh do I love how important music is throughout this book. All the different bits of songs One Esk has picked up from various cultures, and that she can sing choral music by herself!! And everyone thinks she's weird for singing all the time, but also get V E R Y weirded out when she stops!
And this ties into something else the book does very well, which is in interesting and diverse and believable representations of different cultures and religions. I really appreciate that this is a scifi book that doesn't shy away from the fact that humans generally tend to be pretty into religion and RELIGION WILL PROBABLY ALWAYS BE A THING even if in very different forms.
Also: hahaha wowwww I super appreciate that this book does not shy away from the awful side of empires. Empires (good or evil) tend to be...set-pieces in certain kinds of sff, but this book recognizes things like how a) most people within an empire are perfectly good people who think that they aren't doing anything wrong while still b) DOING SOME PRETTY TERRIBLE THINGS. This empire felt recognizably empire-like to me in a whole variety of ways! I appreciate that fact.
Relatedly, this book understands stuff about power and privilege and oppression and all that.
On another note something I want to talk about is Breq's relationship with Seivarden? I am just so intrigued! Like, there are obviously strong and not-particularly-positive feelings involved there yet Breq still feels very protective of Seivarden and Seivarden eventually feels the same way about Breq. And I rather agree with Breq that Seivarden is not super likeable, and I rather agree with Seivarden that Breq is occasionally rather out to lunch. SHE JUMPED OFF A BRIDGE FOR SEIVARDEN. Like. What. And I don't know where I'm going with all of this, except that I am very intrigued by everything we're shown in the book about their relationship and its history and how it changes and progresses over the course of the book and I want more!
Actually that's really the conclusion to the entirety of this post: I WANT MORE. Thankfully a sequel exists! Which I will have to get my hands on at some point.
OH! but looking back at the point-form list I made of things I wanted to make sure I covered in this write-up, I seem to have missed two points.
One: Daos Ceit, the wee flower girl from the temple, now all grown up and doin' things but still having strong feelings about the injustice she witnessed as a child! Awww, I like her.
And two: SPACESHIPS!! That is a direct quote from my list, double exclamation and all. I already talked about this a bit up above in the section on identity, but I just want to reiterate that I am really into spaceships as characters. And the main character as a spaceship embodied in a single human body is great! And then OUR SPACESHIP MAIN CHARACTER BECOMES CAPTAIN OF A SPACESHIP at the very end of the book and CAN I JUST SAY HOW EXCITED I AM BY THIS PROSPECT.
no subject
I could not figure out why the reviewers went crazy over the pronouns. It was interesting and worked, but totally in the context of the way the character and her world were set up. I adopted it readily, but sometimes I found myself annoyed because I couldn't figure out what gender a character was, and it interfered with my mental picture of them -- especially the two lieutenants who were awkwardly dancing around each other. I could imagine them in pretty much any combination of genders or sexes, but I wanted to KNOW. LOL.
Oddly, I experienced Anaander as female, full stop. Couldn't tell you why.
Seivarden I definitely experienced as male and ended up with a very specific actor cast in his role.
I am a very visual reader and tend to play the movie in my head as I read, and for these books that worked splendidly.
I too loved the inclusion of music and religion. I adored the second book and will reread them all, I'm sure. So much to love.
no subject
no subject
IDENTITY. The multiplicity of a single personality! Coping with having that stripped away! I will say I was fascinated from the beginning mostly for those reasons. The music was a wonderful addition to individualize One Esk within a collective (and yet maintain a sub-collective), to maintain a continuity for the character, and to add a significant richness to the world building.
Re: Seviarden, I was so done with her by... the bridge, I think, completely exasperated that she was still there, but I felt very different by the end of the book, and even more so through the sequel. Which was all wonderful in hindsight, not only because of how the character had changed, but how I felt about the character had changed. I appreciated that she wasn't supposed to be an easy character, but I didn't expect to end up liking her.
There really is just so many fascinating things about these books.
no subject
Interesting re: the pronouns! I hadn't thought of that about it possibly hiding a male-dominated society... I guess that when I step back I sort of feel as if given the way Raadchai society is presented, "male" and "female" don't make sense as categories for them - basically, that their society only has the one gender ("default") and all Raadchai we see are that. Which may be a cop-out or may be a very trans* view to take, idk. However, reading I was definitely just picturing everyone as female with the occasional staticky blip (as
Agree on being bugged by Seivarden. I guess what annoyed me about her (...him...) is that I could never make sense of Breq's actions regarding her (...fuck it I'm sticking with 'her') and I feel like this was kind of hand-waved away with 'traumatised ex-spaceship dealing with MAJOR identity issues is traumatised'. But Breq's actions *always* followed a certain logic, if sometimes a rather corkscrewy one that was not apparent at first glance... except at the start re: Seivarden. It's jarring. And then Seivarden's character development seemed a bit out of nowhere? IDK.
Anyway, I also went squee! over the identity stuff way more than the pronouns, the identity stuff was why I read the book and what hooked me from the very start. SO FREAKING COOL. I want Ann Leckie's brain because hoooooly shit things I had NO IDEA you could do with first person.
INCIDENTALLY if you are interested in a rec for another "holy shit identity I had no idea you could do this with pov" book, I've got the Matthew Swift series by Kate Griffin... main character is sort of a mind-merge between a human and a collective consciousness and the book is therefore written in first person singular and first person plural simultaneously. The identity stuff is not quite as forefronted in the plot but there are all sorts of subtle interesting things going on regarding when the 'pov' if you want to call it that switches and how 'we' reacts to a situation versus 'I' and how much they *realise* that they are having separate reactions if you pay attention.
no subject
I think what binds them is their history, not necessarily with each other but in general. They're both misfits, and they're the only two in the universe (except for other old ships) that remember the time/cultural milieu in which they were more themselves. That's a bond, even if it's not an easy or acknowledged one. (Incidentally, I love that not only are there different cultures in different parts of the empire, but the cultures change over time, which is one reason Seivarden has such difficulty reintegrating into Radchaai society.)
Also, from Breq's POV, Seivarden was one of her officers; even if she didn't think much of him, I guess that might be why she has residual protective instincts.
I experienced Anaander as female, and I liked how the pronouns caused a kind of dissonance in my reading, where one part of my brain kept poking character discriptions going "man or woman?" and another part of my brain would respond "shhhh, not relevant."