Imperial Radch (spoilers spoilers everywhere!) (rats don't look)

(I found it on Sunday. I don't know why all the bookstores in my area had it already.)

 

@rats you can borrow my copy after I'm done! possibly after my dad's also done, but I think you read novels faster than him? but then you also have school. hmmmmm

 

aaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAA I FINISHED IT

 

...fun story, I legitimately had thought that all the tumblr references to this series were some bizarre inside jokes about @roach

...and have just now realized that it's an actual thing

and read the sample

and now I have no way to buy it because all of my money is in cash because I'm moving what the hell is this

what hell is this

 

i am so pleased.

 

The first one has been out for a while! You should be able to find Ancillary Justice at your local library.

 

(CONTINUES YELLING INCOHERENTLY* ABOUT ANCILLARY MERCY)

*because I don't want to deal with spoiler tags, and don't know what I would say even if I did, but. WOW.

 

I'm moving, so i'm at my parents' rn
i haven't lived here in like 5 years, (my library card apparently expired?? how does this happen), and this library is laughably small and underfunded, but in a week i should have a library card for a library in sacramento. and also a bank account, for that matter

i just have to hold on till then

 

currently reading mercy, and something occurred to me about translator dlique

Spoiler: just in case

what if translator dlique and translator zeiat aren't names but titles, like amaat one? zeiat takes it in stride that she might be zeiat and not dlique, and she says things like 'well dlique would do this but zeiat would do that', and we know that the presger have observed human ships but don't really get how people work...

(plus i want to believe that there's dozens of dliques and zeiats running around)

 

Thank y'all for not spoiling...I haven't finished yet but I just want to say I keep thinking the following:

"Wow, Lt Tisarwat REALLY didn't predict this..."

Also I agree with @budgie about the thing.

I am sitting here debating whether to pick up the book again.

Pro:

OMG IT'S SO GOOD
I WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

Con:

I should really call home care and get the housekeeper in
I should really let Ana know I can't make Halloween Tea
I should really write to work and let them know it's gonna be 2 more weeks because they won't let me walk yet
I DON'T WANT IT TO BE OVER

 

OMG OMG OMG.

should we make a spoilers thread for those of us who finished

 

Well, spoiler tags work fine?

 

True, true. I'm just not used to bb code because I spent all the years most people spend on forums on LJ and DW where it's actual HTML.

Spoiler: singularity shenanigans

I think my favourite thing about the ending is how usually when people write AIs taking over ships/stations/installations it's treated as something horrible and awful and everyone thinks they will hate freedom and Leckie does kind of the opposite; the humans are a bit concerned about not having a voice in some things but there's no reason to think that they are going to be oppressed, just not allowed to blow holes in each other and everything around them. It also reminded me of the ending of Errand of Mercy in the original one true Star Trek, except that instead of energy beings enforcing the peace it is computers. I really loved Station.

Though I would have to disagree that everything about Breq and Tisarwat is programming. There are probably bits of the people they used to be floating around in there, brains hide things in weird places.

This may however be because I am slightly uncomfortable with the notion that the only real way to stop people from killing, raping and oppressing each other is to put them under AI rule. I am not the least bit uncomfortable with the actuality of what happened in the books, just the potential Unfortunate Implications.

I also really hope that this is not the end of the series. It's not like she hasn't left room for all kinds of stories in the future.

Spoiler: reversed-multiplicity shenanigans

Especially since there are so many Anaanders left out there. Really, with that many bodies it's surprising there are only apparently 3 personalities... I really want to know how a PERSON has ancillaries, and how the different human bodies that Anaander is in affect them. (I can only think of Anaander as them for a number of reasons equal to the number of bodies and computer cores they reside in.)

I don't feel too bad that my brain assigned binary genders to many of the characters because many people do fall into the far ends of the gender spectrum, but I thought it was interesting who my brain picked for what. I was very surprised that Uran turned out to be a he in his native language because I'd always pictured him as a genderfluid person, for some reason always with short hair and in some kind of robes. The Anaanders were all kind of past gender in my brain although that's partially because I think you would be if you were living in that many bodies. For some reason despite her behaviour I was very sure Raughd was female. On the other hand she's a lot like one of the antagonists in my origfic who is also a lady.

(Also I must ask Byzantienne when she planned to tell me that she actually published the cyberpunk lesbians we were talking about last year and when she planned to tell me she was Arkady Martine. But jokingly--we've both been hard to get hold of for the past year, though we've known each other for over 10 years. You all are getting a skewed impression of the amount of time I spend online because I've been out on disability for two months post surgery to correct a severe and badly aggravated ankle injury that went undiagnosed for nearly a year because I have stupid pain tolerance and X-rays are bad at pinpointing fractures in bones that are small and don't move much.)

 

Also Zeiat is basically Amethyst y/y?

 

I am sorry to say that Raughd read as female to me because of Vriska. My brain didn't gender anyone else strongly at all -- even Seivarden, who's read as male in the first binary-gendered culture we come across in Justice. My mental picture of Anaander Mianaai is somewhere between Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan and Idris Elba as Stacker Pentecost -- black, androgynous, a little rounded but powerfully built, charisma like a gravity well.

Spoiler: mercy spoilers

Also I am SO CURIOUS about everything to do with Anaander Mianaai. The only way Breq could have pulled off that political judo move was going up against an isolated instance of Anaander without resources, of course, but I was disappointed by the lack of Mianaai in this book.

I continue to be puzzled by Tisarwat's identity, but I think I grasp it a little better now. I figure "Tisarwat" died the moment the implants went in, since the Anaander identity was dominant -- she was just a repository of memories and behavior patterns for the Lord of the Radch to exploit. With the implants gone, Tisarwat still has the Anaander-sense-of-self and maybe some scraps of inclination and goals (hence her sudden interest in politics), but no memories or acquired skills or connection to the hive mind; just the hormones, memories, and instincts of a terrified teenager. No wonder she's traumatized and immediately latches onto Breq! I know Ann Leckie is probably making a conscious decision to avoid the techy infodumps of old-school SF: still, sometimes I wish she'd indulge, just once or twice.

I liked the ending more than I expected from a quiet diplomatic solution, though. It was a total Miles Vorkosigan move -- turn a suicide mission into an unqualified victory through quick thinking and bullshit. If Breq hadn't taken everyone's conflicting loyalties and leverage into account, though, it would have turned out badly, and she did a ton of setup work. (I think the real emotional and thematic climax of the book was Seivarden facing down Anaander Mianaai.)

Oh and @cryptoThelematrix I've never even spoken to byzantienne/Arkady Martine except as a shy anon once or twice, but I'm glad I could help!

 

Thanks indeed! She's awesome. :)

That is interesting because I pictured the Mianaais as having different looking bodies. One of the ones we met in Justice was white; the primary Anaander in Mercy was, for me, a small, androgynous, Asian person. I believe I saw a black one in my head as well at some point but they all looked different until you looked into their eyes. Did I miss physical description of them?

 

I believe they're all genetically identical, barring

Spoiler

tisarwat

 

What bluefox said. I was certain they were all clones. That's how everyone recognized her on sight on Ors.

Spoiler: sword spoilers

And why the Tisarwat deception almost worked -- nobody knew that there might be different-looking Anaanders walking around claiming to be other people. Also why it failed -- it was difficult to adjust to controlling Tisarwat's body, since the implants were originally designed to work with a specific nervous system, and Breq picked up on the discrepancies.

 

@The Frood Abides i also read raughd as female, although tbh i processed almost everyone that way and was vaguely thrown off by uran. i don't so much visualize characters as have a feeling of them, though

'I Didn't Plan This All The Way Through' could be the house motto of all the characters on mercy of kalr.

 

I really found myself liking Sphene, which surprised me.