I really enjoyed all three books. They managed to do the galactic empire thing without getting overly bogged down in politics, and character development was interesting. I thought Leckie did a good job of conveying an extended AI in multiple bodies, and a solitary form (avoiding spoilers).
I read these not long after reading the first five Murderbot Diaries books, and I wonder if the Radch books might have been an influence on Wells. Some of the themes felt a little similar, while the stories were quite different.
Anyone read them? Liked it disliked, and why?
I’ve read them too. I thoroughly enjoyed Justice, but had trouble finishing Mercy because it just failed to engage me.
Same here. The first book was great, the second and third didn’t grab me as much.
I liked the concepts in Sword and Mercy though. The various species and their oddities and taboos, the technology, the characters. It’s just that somehow you can feel that Leckie didn’t have as much of a clear goal in mind where the story was going.
I actually wish they could have dwelled more on the final act of Mercy, with how the treaty played into it (avoiding spoilers). That concept itself was interesting, and all of the three books really played into it.
The conflict in Mercy wasn’t as anxious for me, but I did like it. And, unsurprisingly, it felt like more of an ending than the others (the three books really are like one continuous story in a lot of ways - more so than other series I’ve read).
I thoroughly enjoyed all three, although I agree with others that the second two were a little harder to get into.
She did a good job of making the AI and science feel real. The character development and depth was also very good. It was easy to care about the characters, and many were likeable in their own way with real flaws, interests, and motives.
The action may not have been the focus, but that was also a strong point where a character driven novel or series often struggles with that delivery.
Overall, some of my favorite sci Fi.
I read these not long after reading the first five Murderbot Diaries books, and I wonder if the Radch books might have been an influence on Wells.
I can’t speak FOR Wells, but in my personal experience, if you want to know an author’s influences, you usually need to look back 20-30+ years ago, or at current science developments and news, not at their contemporaries writing books in the same genre.
Martha Wells is only 2 years older than Ann Leckie, so they likely grew up reading similar SFF books in the 70s/80s/90s, and are now roughly the same age while current events swirl. I know they’ve reviewed each other’s books, but I’d be surprised if they influenced each other that much.
It’s more likely they were both influenced by mutually-read/experienced/loved books and shows from decades past.
It’s a fair point. All Systems Red came out like four or five years after Ancillary Justice, so seemed like a time frame where it could have gotten Wells thinking on the subject.
Ann Leckie, unfortunately, is one of those “separate art from the artist” people for me.
I’ve liked her work a lot, but not her Twitter behavior.
I don’t feel like grabbing the exact details (they might still exist in her Twitter, she left it up for over a year, unless she got rid of it during this more recent Twitter enshittification period), but a few years back she went off on the trans community when Mercedes Lackey won an award.
Basically, the trans community (and their allies) were venting/crying out in pain on Twitter when it broke Mercedes Lackey got an award, as Lackey had said some hurtful stuff in the past and Lackey getting an award prompted renewed talk about Lackey’s works and her past words, and then on the tails of that, in the PRESENT, Lackey’s husband Larry Dixon showed up and freshly doubled down on some of it. (Somewhere along the line, it was said, paraphrased, that nobody was bigger “drama queens” than the trans community. So you can imagine why that’d provoke outrage suddenly streaming across Ann Leckie’s Twitter feed.)
And Ann Leckie seemed to miss some of the context (she responded slow, like a day or so behind) and went off on people who I guess she felt were being mean to Mercedes Lackey in her feed. She basically jumped in and said in this moralizing, fatuous way that it was never okay to say certain things about people. Basically, a big moral finger-wagging, right at trans folks and allies. Complete with some “don’t twist my words” when people who were largely level-headed tried to talk to her.
My belief is that she saw herself in Mercedes Lackey (someone who’d seemingly supported the queer community in her past work, who was now getting criticism from readers in that same community) and that’s why she went charging to her defense like a knight and didn’t stop to consider WHY the trans community was voicing “mean” stuff in Lackey’s direction. And why things maybe weren’t as black-and-white as she was making it.
It left a bad taste in my mouth, because Ann Leckie went to all this trouble enshrining the plight of (for example) tea-picking debt slave workers in poor countries in her books, has a drug addict as a supporting character, and has tons of genderqueer and neurodivergent stuff in her books, but she couldn’t stop for two seconds to think about why someone who is trans, and who might be living in a dangerous situation with their only outlet is books (or might have trans friends who are), might object to an author known for writing about queer issues saying hurtful stuff about people like them and their community. And how it might be more merciful or useful to stop and listen to the pain, even if it’s using harsh words, than to chide them for saying mean things.
I think Ann Leckie felt empathy for Mercedes Lackey as a fellow author, and feared that people online would criticize HER for similar things, and that fear of HER possibly being criticized basically meant she centered herself and her pain when she saw people being upset with Mercedes Lackey, while shrouding it in a moral finger-wagging lesson, instead of stopping to step back and figure out WHY trans people were so upset.
And so, after having seen that play out before my eyes, it just made me question some of the themes in Ann Leckie’s books.
It happened another time too, a few years prior to the Lackey thing, but I remember even less of that one so I’m unwilling to get too much into it. I just remember noting it seemed more a reaction due to an author being piled on/criticized, combined with some big holes in her understanding of the situation.
It’s just really weird to know her books seem to address a lot of important issues about power between different types of people, and culture, and gender–but in the real world with real people, she’ll side with the author if there’s the slightest hint of a “pile on”, even if that’s not actually what’s necessarily what’s going on.
Hmmm, that is weird. Like you say, she has quite a lot of progressive themes in her books, to the point it’s hard to imagine that she doesn’t support them.
I honestly try to avoid reading too much about artists that I like. I’m an old guy, and I’ve learned that the people I like the most are often the ones I know the least. We all have flaws to one degree or another, but they aren’t always obvious at first glance. Add to that that so many good artists, whether it’s music, writing, painting, or whatever, seem to have issues that drive them to great self expression, but don’t necessarily make for being great people.
I hope Leckie’s support of a fellow writer came from a good place executed badly, but I know nothing about her or the others you mentioned.
I’ve heard someone describe the background as “the most boring universe ever written”. I kind of agree when you get into the later two books. No clue why the second and third books got awards, they were painfully slow reading.
Hmmm, I don’t think I agree with the criticism. The have been a lot of galactic empires written about, but I thought the notion of one emperor who is in a giant number of bodies, all in contact with each other, was pretty interesting.
I don’t mind slower paced books. These weren’t super slow, kind of medium.
