“SPACE OPERA has a long and rich history within science fiction, but it has only started to achieve a degree of recognition and respectability over the last few decades.”
“As David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer write in their introduction to The Space Opera Renaissance (2007), the star-spanning subgenre “reentered the serious discourse on contemporary SF in the 1980s” and has since permitted writers “to embark on a science fiction project that is ambitious in both commercial and literary terms.””
“This dual ambition is epitomized in Ann Leckie’s award-winning Imperial Radch trilogy: Ancillary Justice (2013), Ancillary Sword (2014), and Ancillary Mercy (2015).”
“Fans, writers, and critics applaud Leckie’s storytelling skills, and listing her impressive collection of awards and award nominations — including Hugos and Nebulas — would overwhelm this review.”
“Simply put, the Imperial Radch trilogy deserves its awards and acclaim. The series is a stunning achievement that belongs on anyone’s “must-read” list, even if they aren’t necessarily fans of science fiction.”
“Within the trilogy, far-flung star systems comprise the territory of the Imperial Radch, ruled for the past 3,000 years by the authoritarian Lord of the Radch, Anaander Mianaai, whose clone bodies and interstellar gates enable her to achieve a distributed consciousness stretching across light years.”
“This distributed consciousness is also the source of the empire’s central conflict: ruling a vast empire is difficult for the Lord of the Radch when “it could take weeks for a thought to reach all the way across herself,” an inconvenience that proves increasingly problematic when various parts of herself begin plotting against others. Lord Mianaai is quite literally at war with herself over the future of the Radch; this schism results partially from her own conflicted feelings about an insurrection by the Garsedd star system that ended in the utter destruction of Garsedd and its people, triggering Lord Anaander Mianaai’s internal division.”
“Ancillary Justice also introduces key narrative strategies that help explain why the Imperial Radch trilogy has achieved its stunning success.”
“First, Leckie refuses to allow biological sex to dictate characterization or unduly influence our reading practices. The Radchaai language doesn’t differentiate sex or gender, so Breq makes no distinctions; at the same time, the narrative refers to everyone largely as she and her regardless of biological sex.”
“In a blog entry reposted on the Virago website, Leckie admits she didn’t mean
to examine how the use of gendered pronouns shapes our thoughts about the people around us, really I didn’t. But then, isn’t that one of the things science fiction is for, what it excels at? Imagining strange and unfamiliar worlds, that maybe give us a new and interesting way to think about our own?”
“The use of a universalizing she as the default pronoun throughout the series, Leckie explains,
suddenly made the fact that there was a default visible. The thing about defaults is, they’re automatic. Most of the time you don’t even think about them. They just seem quite obvious and natural. Using an unusual default, particularly one that’s close to but not exactly like the usual one, really highlights the fact that there’s a default there to begin with.”
“Although there are subtle cues attached to some characters that readers can use to figure out biological sex, it is largely a wasted endeavor: the use of a universal feminine pronoun becomes entirely normalized in a trilogy that offers striking challenges to gender norms and assumptions, even if the novel isn’t directly about sex and gender.”
“The second narrative strategy depends on what a distributed consciousness allows Leckie to do vis-à-vis point of view and narrative voice.”
“The Imperial Radch trilogy is essentially a first-person narrative, but Leckie repeatedly employs the freedoms associated with third-person narration, particularly in Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy.”
“The civil war between different factions within Anaander Mianaai is therefore a complex ideological battle that includes interstellar economics, objections to annexations and ancillaries, imperial defense from opposing alien forces, and moral schisms that collectively provide Leckie the opportunity to theorize on the legacies of imperialism and strategies of postcolonial resistance.”
“The Imperial Radch trilogy is thoughtful, exciting, well paced, fascinating, and awe inspiring in its narrative intricacies. It exemplifies not only what the best space opera can achieve, but also the best of what science fiction can offer.”
“Graham J. Murphy is a professor with the School of English and Liberal Studies at Seneca College.”