There are a couple of motifs that sound throughout the trilogy that warrant special mention. This is both a strength and weakness, for the Pressger and the other alien species were too unknowable for me to really understand how they fit into this universe. Although Zeiat appears human, her physiology and mental processing are completely incomprehensible to the book’s human characters-as well as its readers. Leckie does a great job of making her aliens really alien. One of those allies is Zeiat the translator, a hybrid being bred to facilitate communication between humans and the Presger. Breq’s moral perfection continues here, but she at least now requires help from allies to battle oppression.

And her opponents are constantly confounded by her efficient and effective machinations, which topple a plantation society in short order. She embodies 21st Century post-colonial liberal values and never faces a serious moral challenge. One of the weaknesses of Sword was that Breq was a little too perfect. (via io9.com, “Get to know the incredible starships of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Trilogy”) This is a major achievement on Leckie’s part. I also long since stopped thinking about it. The Radchaii consider gender irrelevant, and all humans are referred to as “she.” After three books, I still don’t know the gender of Breq or any of the other major characters. The AI lives on as Breq in the body of the last ancillary. The Justice of Toren and all but one of its ancillaries were destroyed by Anaander Mianaai, the emperor of the Radch Empire. That AI controlled both the ship and its crew of ancillaries, the bodies of captured soldiers whose minds have been erased. Breq was once the Justice of Toren, a 2,000-year-old spaceship governed by an artificial intelligence (AI) system.

(Note: There are no major spoilers in this review for Mercy, but it is impossible to discuss the sequel without revealing significant events from Sword and Justice.)Īll three books share the same narrator. On balance, the book succeeds in tying up all the lose ends in the surprising finale to this space opera epic. Mercy falls somewhere in between, remedying some of the faults of Sword, while repeating others. First Ancillary Justice (2014) blew my mind, while Ancillary Sword (2014) underwhelmed.

Ann Leckie brings her groundbreaking Imperial Radch Trilogy to an explosive conclusion in Ancillary Mercy.

The imperial radch