putting the AI in Radchaai, AM I RIGHT
Yesterday I wrote 5000 words and today I cooked for 2.5 hours, so I felt comfortable finishing Ancillary Mercy before tackling NaNoWriMo for the evening. Of course I am going to booklog it!
I stayed up until mumblety-o'clock last night trying to finish this book and had to concede defeat with just 20 pages left. The pain of the reader who has obligations other than reading, like sleep and work!
I am super happy to have spent so much time in this universe, in One Esk's head.
skygiants characterized her as "Himemiya Anthy the AI" and a) IT IS THE MOST TRUE THING IN THE WORLD, and b) eternal regrets I didn't finish this series in time to request that for Yuletide. If you've noticed anything about my preferred narratives ever, I really love found families, so One Esk finding a crew and a big network of friends (and cousins!) really worked for me. It also made me happy how quickly I acclimated to everyone getting she/her pronounces. Space opera full of ladies!!!
One Esk is probably my favorite (♥Anthy the AI♥), with her passive aggression and dry sense of humor and OBVIOUS FAVORITISM, OMG. Tisarwat was a super interesting character, probably my second favorite character. I hope she becomes a political terror and she and Seivarden get into long shouting matches because Tisarwat is a little too controlling and Seivarden is like a rich college freshman who's just learned about institutional prejudice, bless her. Like many others, I appreciated that there were no magical cures for Tisarwat's trauma and Seivarden's substance abuse. I love that all space doctors everywhere are Bones. "Why won't you people let me keep you alive?!" bemoans Medic, plastering everyone with more correctives.
This series will definitely require a reread once NaNo is over, since I'm in the interesting position of... really enjoying the whole trilogy and not being satisfied by its conclusion? I don't even know how that WORKS. I love the Mercy of Kalr crew + various AIs a LOT, I guess, and it makes me happy to imagine them all founding their own space republic for truth, justice, and the Significant Being way.
My vague sense of dissatisfaction probably stems from two things. First, Ancillary Justice was my favorite book in the trilogy, so though the following two books had plenty of merits on their own, they suffered in comparison. My favorite moment in the trilogy is when Skaaiat says that no one ever loved Lieutenant Awn the way One Esk did. It's devastating to realize that, after hundreds of pages of a grief-stricken revenge quest, after shooting the person she loves under orders, One Esk never named her personal feelings for Awn. I had to put the book down. That was a very subtle illustration of the "What makes a person a person?" question that runs through the whole trilogy, because One Esk isn't really ready to think about Lieutenant Awn in those terms, or the fact that she was an individual even while part of Justice of Toren. (Actually, the trilogy never really delved into that last bit to my satisfaction.) BUT Skaaiat calls it like it is. One Esk's response is, of course, "But I shot her!"
Anyway, One Esk's declaration that AIs are Significant Beings was the logical conclusion of One Esk learning to think of herself and AIs as individuals and, well, Significant Beings. By then the narrative had broadened to become so much less personal to One Esk that it didn't have the same impact. I think Ancillary Sword spent way too much time downwell and I'd like to visit the parallel universe where this series is a duology. The plantation stuff was hard to care about because One Esk had no personal reason to be interested--I understand why she would care about slavery, obviously, but nothing happening downwell presented a threat to Basnaaid. And One Esk's last gambit has to be a secret for narrative reasons, so we don't get much buildup for, "Hello, Radchaai and Presger! AIs are their own species!" Whereas One Esk spends all of Ancillary Justice thinking about the consequences of one right choice, and she finally gets to make it in the end.
The other reason is more of a personal quibble: when it became clear that we weren't meeting the Presger, the Translators' ~*~creepy quirky~*~ antics were more irritating than alien to me. I kept waiting for some explanation for why Zeiat kept sticking things in her mouth like a two-year-old beyond "LOL ALIENS!!1! They're so WEIRD!" I think my inner teacher got tired of mentally wailing, "Don't put it in your mouth!" What I'm saying is I'm worried about the observational skills of Translators, even if they have super digestive systems. God only knows how Zeiat is going to translate One Esk's case for AIs as Significant Beings, especially when the Presger are so alien and unknowable that we don't ever meet them in the text.
Miscellaneous thoughts:
THE ITRAN ICON. I want Ann Leckie to write the short story behind the Itran icon so badly. It took my tired brain several rereads to figure out that the icon commemorates someone who... stood up to the Radchaai? Who One Esk killed specifically during conquest? I need to reread these books.
I want more worldbuilding around names. ;_; There seemed no rhyme or reason to the spelling patterns, aside from -aai in Mianaai and Radchaai and Basnaaid. I mean, I can read between the lines and draw the conclusion that the empire has traces of every territory they've conquered in its language! I would've just appreciated one line of One Esk going, "This place was known as [blah] in its native tongue. The best approximation of that pronunciation in Radchaai was [blah], and so it became to every citizen. Twenty years later, a drama character turned it into a popular children's name."
I went back and forth on whether this was a One Esk quirk or an authorial quirk, though I'm leaning toward authorial. There's this tendency to create character and/or culture by repeating a few details over and over again. Radchaai drink tea INCESSANTLY and they eat skel, pastries, fish cakes, and/or fish. (Well, and oysters.) They wear gloves, so many gloves. Did we mention that Tisarwat has ridiculous lilac colored eyes? And that Kalr Five loves fine pottery? At first I was trying to find characterization for One Esk based on who she thinks of in more detail than "that one thing they like/always do," but it kept cropping up for the Radchaai as well. It helped me keep characters straight, but after the eighteenth mention of Tisarwat's ridiculously colored eyes I started to wonder if One Esk was a secret romance novel fan.
In conclusion, I kept reading the name "Anaander" as "Ananda" pronounced with a heavy Boston accent. This led to laughing at VERY INAPPROPRIATE TIMES.
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I stayed up until mumblety-o'clock last night trying to finish this book and had to concede defeat with just 20 pages left. The pain of the reader who has obligations other than reading, like sleep and work!
I am super happy to have spent so much time in this universe, in One Esk's head.
skygiants characterized her as "Himemiya Anthy the AI" and a) IT IS THE MOST TRUE THING IN THE WORLD, and b) eternal regrets I didn't finish this series in time to request that for Yuletide. If you've noticed anything about my preferred narratives ever, I really love found families, so One Esk finding a crew and a big network of friends (and cousins!) really worked for me. It also made me happy how quickly I acclimated to everyone getting she/her pronounces. Space opera full of ladies!!!
One Esk is probably my favorite (♥Anthy the AI♥), with her passive aggression and dry sense of humor and OBVIOUS FAVORITISM, OMG. Tisarwat was a super interesting character, probably my second favorite character. I hope she becomes a political terror and she and Seivarden get into long shouting matches because Tisarwat is a little too controlling and Seivarden is like a rich college freshman who's just learned about institutional prejudice, bless her. Like many others, I appreciated that there were no magical cures for Tisarwat's trauma and Seivarden's substance abuse. I love that all space doctors everywhere are Bones. "Why won't you people let me keep you alive?!" bemoans Medic, plastering everyone with more correctives.
This series will definitely require a reread once NaNo is over, since I'm in the interesting position of... really enjoying the whole trilogy and not being satisfied by its conclusion? I don't even know how that WORKS. I love the Mercy of Kalr crew + various AIs a LOT, I guess, and it makes me happy to imagine them all founding their own space republic for truth, justice, and the Significant Being way.
My vague sense of dissatisfaction probably stems from two things. First, Ancillary Justice was my favorite book in the trilogy, so though the following two books had plenty of merits on their own, they suffered in comparison. My favorite moment in the trilogy is when Skaaiat says that no one ever loved Lieutenant Awn the way One Esk did. It's devastating to realize that, after hundreds of pages of a grief-stricken revenge quest, after shooting the person she loves under orders, One Esk never named her personal feelings for Awn. I had to put the book down. That was a very subtle illustration of the "What makes a person a person?" question that runs through the whole trilogy, because One Esk isn't really ready to think about Lieutenant Awn in those terms, or the fact that she was an individual even while part of Justice of Toren. (Actually, the trilogy never really delved into that last bit to my satisfaction.) BUT Skaaiat calls it like it is. One Esk's response is, of course, "But I shot her!"
Anyway, One Esk's declaration that AIs are Significant Beings was the logical conclusion of One Esk learning to think of herself and AIs as individuals and, well, Significant Beings. By then the narrative had broadened to become so much less personal to One Esk that it didn't have the same impact. I think Ancillary Sword spent way too much time downwell and I'd like to visit the parallel universe where this series is a duology. The plantation stuff was hard to care about because One Esk had no personal reason to be interested--I understand why she would care about slavery, obviously, but nothing happening downwell presented a threat to Basnaaid. And One Esk's last gambit has to be a secret for narrative reasons, so we don't get much buildup for, "Hello, Radchaai and Presger! AIs are their own species!" Whereas One Esk spends all of Ancillary Justice thinking about the consequences of one right choice, and she finally gets to make it in the end.
The other reason is more of a personal quibble: when it became clear that we weren't meeting the Presger, the Translators' ~*~creepy quirky~*~ antics were more irritating than alien to me. I kept waiting for some explanation for why Zeiat kept sticking things in her mouth like a two-year-old beyond "LOL ALIENS!!1! They're so WEIRD!" I think my inner teacher got tired of mentally wailing, "Don't put it in your mouth!" What I'm saying is I'm worried about the observational skills of Translators, even if they have super digestive systems. God only knows how Zeiat is going to translate One Esk's case for AIs as Significant Beings, especially when the Presger are so alien and unknowable that we don't ever meet them in the text.
Miscellaneous thoughts:
THE ITRAN ICON. I want Ann Leckie to write the short story behind the Itran icon so badly. It took my tired brain several rereads to figure out that the icon commemorates someone who... stood up to the Radchaai? Who One Esk killed specifically during conquest? I need to reread these books.
I want more worldbuilding around names. ;_; There seemed no rhyme or reason to the spelling patterns, aside from -aai in Mianaai and Radchaai and Basnaaid. I mean, I can read between the lines and draw the conclusion that the empire has traces of every territory they've conquered in its language! I would've just appreciated one line of One Esk going, "This place was known as [blah] in its native tongue. The best approximation of that pronunciation in Radchaai was [blah], and so it became to every citizen. Twenty years later, a drama character turned it into a popular children's name."
I went back and forth on whether this was a One Esk quirk or an authorial quirk, though I'm leaning toward authorial. There's this tendency to create character and/or culture by repeating a few details over and over again. Radchaai drink tea INCESSANTLY and they eat skel, pastries, fish cakes, and/or fish. (Well, and oysters.) They wear gloves, so many gloves. Did we mention that Tisarwat has ridiculous lilac colored eyes? And that Kalr Five loves fine pottery? At first I was trying to find characterization for One Esk based on who she thinks of in more detail than "that one thing they like/always do," but it kept cropping up for the Radchaai as well. It helped me keep characters straight, but after the eighteenth mention of Tisarwat's ridiculously colored eyes I started to wonder if One Esk was a secret romance novel fan.
In conclusion, I kept reading the name "Anaander" as "Ananda" pronounced with a heavy Boston accent. This led to laughing at VERY INAPPROPRIATE TIMES.
http://littledust.dreamwidth.org/553006.html |
comments | Comment at Dreamwidth