Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

This series on the whole should be a slam-dunk for me, an automatic 5-star read every time, and I really don’t know why it isn’t. They’re consistently 4-star reads, sure, but they don’t hit it out of the park. All the elements I should adore are there – language and culture, discussions of gender and colonization, complicated relationships – but there’s always something missing.

I think part of the problem was that this book felt identical in narrative structure to the first book. In some ways, that’s inevitable – the majority of books occur in a three act structure because that’s how storytelling works – but it was the same, beat for beat, and it just didn’t work as well. Throughout the first book we have things happened that culminate in a ‘big reveal’ of a plan unfolding, introducing foreshadowed narrative elements to help further along the goals of the narrator. And the same thing happened through this book, but the elements that came back were either not foreshadowed well enough or felt too heavy-handed. 

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it, because I did still rate it 4-stars, but the fact that it felt like I’d already read this book took away something for me.

When they behave properly, you will say there is no problem. When they complain loudly, you will say they cause their own problems with their impropriety. And when they are driven to extremes, you say you will not reward such actions. What will it take for you to listen?