Ancillary Justice

This is my type of tale. A slowly revealing and satisfyingly complex plot. A remarkably unique protagonist with a startling past. Strictly multi-layered societal structures. Political intrigue. Interstellar empires. All laid out for the reader via the ground-floor viewpoint of Breq, the aforementioned protagonist.

There is just so much going on here that, in the hands of a lesser story-teller, this might have been a complete mess. Leckie, however, does a great job of holding it all together while peeling things back one layer at a time to reveal a larger and larger picture.

One of my favorite aspects is the concept of the ancillaries and how well that worked as a mechanism for shifting the viewpoint from first-person to omniscient and back again. There is one scene, during a riot, that is incredibly written, taking full advantage of the multiple viewpoints afforded by the ancillaries.

My couple of quibbles are; first with the gender thing... It's very interesting but not fully fleshed out. The concept remained somewhat confusing throughout the book. However, it was also confusing for the protagonist so perhaps that was the point? The other issue I had was with the lack of development of the aliens. I have high hopes that they will play a larger role in the sequel(s).

This was a great book for me and I'm looking forward to more from Leckie.