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Apr. 29th, 2015 11:29 amI finished Ancillary Sword last night. I don't think I enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed Ancillary Justice, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.
I've been thinking about![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skygiants observation that "[Breq] was right a little too often.". I don't think the problem is that Breq is right too often, exactly. I think the problem, and I'm not sure if it's a problem with me as a reader or with Leckie's writing, is that I found it a little too hard to detect when Breq is wrong, through the bias of the very, very unreliable narration. The giveaways that Breq's solutions were causing more problems than they were solving are sometimes very, very subtle, and sometimes I expected giveaways that didn't come, and I'm honestly not sure if I missed them. I haven't quite sorted out what happened with Captain Hetnys and Sirix in the conclusion... clearly Breq made a mistake or miscalculation there, but I don't know exactly what it was.
I loved the dynamics of Breq consciously and unconsciously shaping the crew of the Mercy of Kalr around her. I loved how the decades adopted songs! I thought the scene where Breq confronts Tisarwat was particularly dramatic and interesting, and Tisarwat turned into a really fascinating character afterward because of the shape of Breq's blind spot around Tisarwat and the questions that raises about Breq's free will. But again, maybe a little too subtle? We see that Breq is giving Tisarwat latitude to play politics, and we know how dangerous that is, even more than the people warning Breq do, but we don't know more than Breq tells us about what Breq's plan is. So it's a little hard to figure out how successful Tisarwat was at evading Breq. Maybe book three will tell us more about that.
I think the reason I didn't like it quite as much was that so much of the fun of the first book was slowly figuring out the world as clues were dropped. We have a much better understanding of the world when book two starts, from having read book one, but I don't think it feels like Leckie either adds enough new mysteries in the worldbuilding or takes enough advantage of the fact that we already have read Ancillary Justice.
That being said, I think the female pronoun stuff felt less obtrusive in this book even though sex and gender was a much more important part of the book. Purely a subjective observation, that.
I've been thinking about
skygiants observation that "[Breq] was right a little too often.". I don't think the problem is that Breq is right too often, exactly. I think the problem, and I'm not sure if it's a problem with me as a reader or with Leckie's writing, is that I found it a little too hard to detect when Breq is wrong, through the bias of the very, very unreliable narration. The giveaways that Breq's solutions were causing more problems than they were solving are sometimes very, very subtle, and sometimes I expected giveaways that didn't come, and I'm honestly not sure if I missed them. I haven't quite sorted out what happened with Captain Hetnys and Sirix in the conclusion... clearly Breq made a mistake or miscalculation there, but I don't know exactly what it was.I loved the dynamics of Breq consciously and unconsciously shaping the crew of the Mercy of Kalr around her. I loved how the decades adopted songs! I thought the scene where Breq confronts Tisarwat was particularly dramatic and interesting, and Tisarwat turned into a really fascinating character afterward because of the shape of Breq's blind spot around Tisarwat and the questions that raises about Breq's free will. But again, maybe a little too subtle? We see that Breq is giving Tisarwat latitude to play politics, and we know how dangerous that is, even more than the people warning Breq do, but we don't know more than Breq tells us about what Breq's plan is. So it's a little hard to figure out how successful Tisarwat was at evading Breq. Maybe book three will tell us more about that.
I think the reason I didn't like it quite as much was that so much of the fun of the first book was slowly figuring out the world as clues were dropped. We have a much better understanding of the world when book two starts, from having read book one, but I don't think it feels like Leckie either adds enough new mysteries in the worldbuilding or takes enough advantage of the fact that we already have read Ancillary Justice.
That being said, I think the female pronoun stuff felt less obtrusive in this book even though sex and gender was a much more important part of the book. Purely a subjective observation, that.