Ann Leckie, Ancillary Sword (2014)

This week is 'Vol 2 week' at Sib Fric, as we move (is that a sigh of relief I can hear, or a puncture deflating?) towards the end of this ridiculous reviewing-2014-titles-splurge. And today's vol 2 is Ann Leckie's second Ancillary instalment: after Justice, Sword. Perhaps because our hero Breq now has to shore up a corner of Radchaii space using just his sword. Or else. You know. Not. Quite apart from anything else, Breq's possessive is a 'her' not a 'his', just like everyone else in the novel. The sword in this case is a huge Fuck-Off class spaceship, the Mercy of Kalr, with a crew of bristling, honour-obsessed Radschaii officers for Breq (who has been given command of the craft by the Emperor herself) to whip into shape. Or line, is it? Does one 'whip into line'? Or is that lick into shape and ... what into line? Straighten?

Sorry, my attention keeps wandering. The story picks up soon after the end of Ancillary Justice; thousand-bodied emperor Anaander Mianaai gives Breq command of the ship and sends her to Athoek to guarantee the system's safety after two 'hyperspace' gates were attacked and destroyed. She is given three officers: two experienced lieutenants called Seivarden and Ekalu and a 'baby', the inexperienced but well-connected 17-year-old Tisarwat. When they get to their destination they tangle with local politics, including the ethical problematics of a programme of in-all-but-name enslavement of the locals.

I daresay Leckie was writing this follow-up before Ancillary Justice created such an impressive splash in the rock-pool of contemporary science fiction: Hugo, Nebula, Clarke, BSFA, Nobel, Olympic Gold and Jules Rémy, all in one year and all for a debut. Genuinely impressive stuff. At any rate, A. Sword has all the marks of an ambitious writer determined not simply to repeat herself. So, where A. Just. was a multi-P.O.V. action-packed adventure, A. Swo. is all Breq, and very low-key on the Things Happening front. The emphasis is on character interactions, and interiority; the beauty of inflections rather than the beauty of Big Explosions (though there is a bomb and some fighting near the end). It's a cooler, more considered book, interested in the protocols of interpersonal interaction, and also with protocols as such. There's a great deal of pother about using the right crockery, about the dos-and-don'ts of courtesy, hierarchy and propriety. More Silver Fork than slash-and-burn. There's also an attempt to engage with questions of colonialism, slavery and class prejudice, although here the evident wrongness of all three quantities (speaking absolutely, but also in terms of Leckie's moral universe) rather undercuts the novel's drama. It's not that the book's various moments of righteous outrage aren't right-on; its more that they feel as though they could be cut-and-pasted into any number of contemporary online situations. One major theme is that the requirement that women and other oppressed minorities register their disaffection 'politely' is itself oppressive:

“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?” ....

“For my part,” I replied, “I find forgiveness overrated. There are times and places when it’s appropriate. But not when the demand that you forgive is used to keep you in your place.” ....

“You are so civilized. So polite. So brave coming here alone when you know no one here would dare to touch you. So easy to be all those things, when all the power is on your side.”

One problem I had with the first novel was the way the experience of belonging to a vast hive-mind, of splitting oneself into myriad individuals and then recombining them, was rendered in traditional, monadic-human terms. Leckie's imagination does not, in this case, run to a deleuzeguattarian body-without-organs, or even to a Hardt-and-Negri multitude. And in paler form the same limitation haunts A. Sw. too. Breq is on her own now, although able to augment her mentation by connecting with the systems of her ship. A couple of the perkier, livelier elements read like they come from another novel altogether. For instance, 'Translator Dlique, a diplomat for the scary warrior alien race 'the Presger', with her pleasantly scatty inability to remember such human social conventions as sitting up straight and not dismembering people, has a very Iain M. Banks vibe about her. Also Banks-y is the tendency to name alien races after the sort of noises associated with coughing and wheezing ('Geck! 'Rrrrrrr!'). But reminding her readers of Banks runs the risks of reminding her readers of those Banks qualities (verve, humour, energy, spuming inventiveness) that don't particularly characterise this novel.

Leckie's decision to downplay the bang-bang-bang, and aim for a different set of novelistic qualia, a more thoughtful low-key narrative, is commendable. But commendable isn't necessarily the same thing as likeable, and I didn't rattle through A.S. the way I did A.J. Too much gubbins about bowls and plates; the ‘justice, propriety and benefit’ trilectic had its handle cranked a little too often. The whole thing just cooled an already cool set-up. But that's OK. Maybe you like your set-ups on the gazpacho side.