They emerge from space at their destination, a station orbiting the rich and verdant tea-growing planet Athoek, and are immediately challenged by the nervous Sword-class ship on guard, which thinks they are raiders. Breq, the protagonist of Ancillary Justice, is no longer on her own on a private mission in Ancillary Sword, but commanding a ship, the Mercy of Kalr, with three officers, a doctor and thirty crew.
This is deep space opera, from the school of writing that Elizabeth Moon made successful, in which soldiers are space crew (women and men both, indistinguishable in every thing that matters), concerned about ship systems and keeping control of the databursts while they wrestle with the FTL drive (I paraphrase, obviously, but I love this sf technobabble). In the sequel to Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, the strangeness of this concept has not worn off. This messes with the reader’s mind, beautifully, since it shuts off our conditioning about male and female, and frees up that cultural space to consider relationships without gender, and power balances without sex-based claims. Leckie has invented a culture in whose language all pronouns are female (no he, no him), and whose honorifics are either male or neutral (Sir, Citizen).
I loved it, and was highly impressed by what I still think is an immense technical achievement: writing fiction in which gender is simply of no importance at all. Some time ago I reviewed Ann Leckie’s debut and multiple-prize-winning sf novel Ancillary Justice.
0 kommentar(er)
