Book Review: Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie

[inverarity]

A revenge-epic space opera that's almost as clever as it's trying to be.

Comments

[l_o_lostshadows]

I'd peg the cover art at somewhere between what Atari games actually looked like and the art on the box.

Body language, tone of voice, and facial expression are all gender neutral, so I'm not sure how you'd expect an AI to translate the ability to read those into interpreting secondary sex characteristics.

[little_e_]

It is my understanding that women tend to vary their vocal tones more than men, and actually tend to have slightly different skin tones (men are ruddier, on average, though purposefully tanning might affect that.) Which I could see an AI picking up on if it thought the information important.

[l_o_lostshadows]

I doubt it would have needed the information in the past, so wouldn't have bothered picking it up. Starting from scratch would be harder.

[inverarity]

Body language, tone of voice, and facial expression are all gender neutral

In a culture where there is no such thing as gendered behavior, maybe. Like I said, it's not really clear whether the Radch is such a culture, but some of the non-Radch cultures Breq visits are strongly implied not to be.

[swissmarg]

I loved Space Invaders!

[kellicat]

This sounds really interesting. The fact that the Empire is based on the Roman Empire just makes it all the more attractive for me. Thanks for reviewing it.

[ext_2085984]

You're right that the plot is a little weak. Breq's plan might have made more sense if she'd known the result it would have, yet from the narrative it's not at all clear that that's the case. Which is why I'm a bit disappointed that the book was as short as it was; I expected a plot more along the lines of Breq finding a way of mass-producing the super-weapon and leading a revolution, but it didn't take the time to set that up and just went straight into the climax.