I love a book that hits the ground running. In Ancillary Justice, protagonist Breq is on an ice planet when she finds a body in the snow — not dead, but nearly. Oddly, here at the edge of civilization where she knows nobody, this person looks familiar to her. Despite having no reason to get involved, she takes a closer look, and it turns out she remembers this person — from a thousand years ago. Back then, Breq remembers, “I wasn’t a person, I was a piece of equipment, a part of the ship.”
Talk about a hook. We learn all the above on the first page or two. What is going on here? What is the significance of these two finding one another in such an unlikely spot, after such a huge span of time? And how is it possible that either of them is still alive? And what does Breq mean that she was “a part of the ship”?
That last question I will answer here, as it is more-or-less revealed in the book’s description and so hardly a spoiler. Breq is an “ancillary,” a resurrected human body that serves as a segment of an A.I. that controls a massive ship. The A.I. can sense the world through its ancillaries, and the ancillaries are fully connected to the A.I. and one another. In a sense, the ancillaries are appendages of the A.I. rather than individuals. But where is Breq’s ship, and why is she alone?
So the stage is set for a story that is a bit space opera and a bit noir mystery, spanning the galaxy and a thousand years of the Radchaai civilization. Chapters jump back and forth through time, as details are slowly revealed from Breq’s long memory. Her motivations become clearer as the action heats up and the plot comes to a head.
I really enjoyed the vast majority of this book, but found that some of the events in the conclusion didn’t completely track with what I had learned about Breq and some of the other characters. That said, it did set up the sequel well, and I am looking forward to continuing the adventure in book two of this trilogy, Ancillary Sword.