audio cd, 1 pages
Published Nov. 13, 2018 by Hachette B and Blackstone Audio.
the comparisons to the Culture novels are apt. establishes itself slowly but overall satisfying
writing a protagonist who is several different people wrapped into one consciousness, and is for some part of the story, not necessarily reliable as a storyteller, feels like it would've been a challenge, but ann leckie made it seem natural
the worldbuilding is, typically for good sci fi, brilliant. i felt absorbed into it. the constant surveillance within the radch is disturbing and feels connected to the real-life present. the colour and the characters are lovely.
i also noted that this is ann leckie's first full length novel and i'm super impressed.
i'm eager to read the next 2 in the series, though i'm going to read something else in between so i don't get series burnout!
J’ai eu du mal à me mettre dedans, les règles grammaticales sur le genre étant non seulement confusante mais désagréable (j’ai eu l’occasion de lire un livre où tout était genré au féminin « elle pleut », « la bébé », mais ce n’est pas pareil).
Après quelques chapitres (et ayant appris que la version originale était aussi « perturbante » et que ce n’était pas une aberration de traduction), j’ai enfin profité du livre.
Une histoire complexe et très bien ficelée, originale, que j’ai trouvé très rafraîchissante.
Really enjoyed this book. In some ways it's a classic space opera but there's enough twists on the formula that it feels super fresh. Fascinating explorations of identity, language, and class. The writing was fun and engaging, I ate this book up.
There's a lot of death and destruction happening throughout the book and the Radch is quite an evil Empire. Nevertheless, the two main characters grew on me quickly. Great world-building but done in a restrained manner. The story itself is quite the wild ride. It also stands on its own, despite being the first book in a trilogy.
Leckie's novel explores so many different worlds and how the worlds see each other that it provides interesting insights into what makes something alien. The transhumanist space ship AI as a first-person character also asks questions about what it means to be alive. One of the central themes of a society with a genderless pronoun also forces the reader to consider if gender matters in this future world, while also examining why certain characters are expected to have a specified gender.
A fascinating exploration of colonialism, gender, and the question of human agency told through a remarkably human, arguably nonhuman protagonist. A must-read for anyone who enjoys outside-the-box thinking and sci-fi worldbuilding.
What a slow burner this book is. By the time you realize how really really good it is, you're more than halfway done, so it definitely requires patience.
The first-person narrator is Breq, who felt a bit like a prototype for our beloved Murderbot from the Martha Wells series. Breq is an ancillary, a human body controlled by the AI of a ship, in this case the Justice of Toren. Only Breq's ship no longer exists, so instead of having hundreds of bodies and eyes and all that comes with being the body of a ship, there's just her, on her mission to kill the Lord of the Radch, the leader of the Empire of Radch.
Along the way she gets stuck with Seivarden, one of her former officers who's struggling with substance abuse after waking up a 1000 years after her ship was destroyed.
In order to understand this …
What a slow burner this book is. By the time you realize how really really good it is, you're more than halfway done, so it definitely requires patience.
The first-person narrator is Breq, who felt a bit like a prototype for our beloved Murderbot from the Martha Wells series. Breq is an ancillary, a human body controlled by the AI of a ship, in this case the Justice of Toren. Only Breq's ship no longer exists, so instead of having hundreds of bodies and eyes and all that comes with being the body of a ship, there's just her, on her mission to kill the Lord of the Radch, the leader of the Empire of Radch.
Along the way she gets stuck with Seivarden, one of her former officers who's struggling with substance abuse after waking up a 1000 years after her ship was destroyed.
In order to understand this much of the plot, you have to be like 40% into this book because you get tossed right in, with lots of flashbacks to Breq's previous life. Nothing makes sense! And what's with the gender stuff, generic feminine gender in an English language book, what gives? And it takes a while to settle in how brilliant that is. The Radch have no concept of gender and so always use the feminine, and after a while you really stop asking yourself what gender the characters in the book really have. Does it really matter if Seivarden or Anaander Mianaai are male or female? It totally doesn't.
When things get rolling, you're totally glued to this book, or rather, I was. I want to learn more about the Radch, all the backstory, and I definitely want to see how Breq or rather One Esk, will go on when she's back on a ship, but one that's not herself.
Space Opera in 3 parts — long, grand, sci-fi, easy & fun to read. Incidentally the main civilisation of the book does not distinguish gender, which is represented in the book by giving everybody female pronouns, which is kind of a cool reading experience. I like the depiction of fragile consciousness of the protagonist.
Inutilmente complicato e onestamente non mi ha entusiasmato. Forse non l'ho capito io o forse sono troppo legato all'hard scifi classica.
