Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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You don’t have to be what they want you to be.

Translation State by Ann Leckie

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I always make the same mistake with Ann Leckie. I think it’s going to be serious, intellectual science fiction, and it always ends up being a story I can’t put down. When I get to the review writing part, all I seem to be able to write about are the serious intellectual themes, so let me take this time to say that I had a hard time putting this down to do things like earn money and sleep. Early in the book, Reet Hluid’s mother […]

An intensely human space story

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

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[Read as an audiobook from the public library] Well, we’re straight out of Murderbot and right into some of the most serious big person pants sci-fi I’ve read since I started reading Leviathan Wakes about a hundred years ago. Bite-sized fun time space western this is not. It was some work, and it took some time, but the rewards are definitely ample. Ancillary Justice is on its face a sprawling space opera spanning a thousand years, with weird names and strange planets and ridiculously nuanced cultural […]

The Ancillary trilogy ends with the tremendously satisfying Ancillary Mercy

Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

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Note: Ancillary Mercy is the third book in the Imperial Radch series, following Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword. The trilogy is one long story and should be read from the beginning.   I spent a lot of my review for Ancillary Sword snarking about the unpronounceable names of characters and places. I did this because the plot itself was kind of a mess and not super engaging. Apparently, Ann Leckie took my feedback to heart, went back in time, and wrote Ancillary Mercy. It is the only way I can explain the leap […]

A Tale of Ralph and Carls in the Imperial Radish

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

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Note: Ancillary Sword is the second book in the Imperial Radch series, following Ancillary Justice. Because I had once been a ship. An AI controlling an enormous troop carrier and thousands of ancillaries, human bodies, part of myself. At the time I had not thought of myself as a slave, but I had been a weapon of conquest… – Ancillary Sword Like most of us on CBR, I read a lot and I read many series at once. Usually, when returning to a series it […]

“We are all of us only human.”

Ancillary Sword (Imperial Radch, #2) by Ann Leckie

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The first time I read this book, my main complaint was that it didn’t have as obvious of a structure as Ancillary Justice, but on this second time through, I think I’m going to change my mind about it being less structured, and instead say that it’s differently structured. This book is structured around Breq’s journey from vengeful former A.I. enslaved to a tyrant, to having nearly as much power as that tyrant herself. What she does with that power is entirely shaped by her […]

“If you’re going to make a desperate, hopeless act of defiance you should make it a good one.”

Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, #1) by Ann Leckie

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Upping this to five stars upon re-read. Breq makes me feel feelings. I remember where I was when I read this first time, and I distinctly remember reading the first third or so of this book and just being profoundly confused about what was going on, but also thinking to myself, when I re-read this, it’s going to make so much more sense, and that turned out to be true. But what did surprise me on re-read is that not everything is completely clear, and […]



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