For a book that features deep space travel and multiple distinct alien races, Ann Leckie’s Provenance is a surprisingly human and even cozy story. A companion work to her stunning Imperial Radch trilogy (more informally referred to as the Ancillary trilogy sometimes), Provenance focuses on smaller stakes — though of course there are intergalactic ramifications. It follows Ingray Aughskold, the adopted daughter of a planetary noble, as she takes a risk to impress her mother and stumbles into a tangle of converging political plots and […]
This book is Leckie-lite.
If you don’t go in to this expecting to be challenged with brilliance, you’ll probably enjoy it very much. Despite being set in the same story universe as her Imperial Radch trilogy, Provenance is of a much lighter tone, and is much more accessible. I struggled with massive confusion for about the first quarter of Ancillary Justice before I caught on, but not so here. I had fun with it, but it didn’t knock my socks off (and I don’t think it was supposed to). Our main character is […]