Ancillary Mercy is the last book in Leckie’s Imperial Raadch trilogy (there is a fourth book set in the same world but with a different setting), which continues and wraps up the story of the reduced Ship Breq’s private crusade against the leader of the Radch. To be honest I did not quite feel it was fully wrapped up so maybe Leckie will be returning to this story in the future.
Once again the writing is solid, keeping things moving along briskly with a good story, interesting characters and equally (or more) interesting world building. One aspect of that world building however that really grated with me in this volume has to do with the gender issues. Leckie’s really quite neat creation of a virtually genderless society is intriguing and well-constructed and, on a personal note, thank goodness for her decision to simply address everyone as feminine rather than inventing horrible ‘gender neutral’ pronouns. Something I personally hate with a vengeance and that pulls me out of the story every time I read one. So great on that. Also great that she really does manage, for me, to make the gender of the various Radch characters irrelevant. But in this book it seems that all the crack soldiers on our hero’s ship are ready to burst into tears at the slightest bit of emotional stress. Most seemed to spend inordinate amounts of time either about to break into tears or already merrily sobbing away. Now I’m sorry but it’s always been my experience that soldiers, male or female, are not generally given to bursting into emotional tears all the time like this. And, sadly, that tended to undermine the genderless approach somewhat and irritated me no end. I mean, really, can you imagine a bunch of sailors on a modern warship openly weeping when their captain departs on a dangerous mission? I don’t remember the previous books being quite as full of blubbering characters but maybe I’ve blocked that out.
It's a shame that I found this so annoying as pretty much every other aspect of the books I found excellent. In particular as, presumably, Leckie’s writing confidence has grown so has she included considerably more humour in this book and it works well. In particular she clearly had tremendous fun with one semi-alien character, Translator Zeiat, causing me to laugh out loud on several occasions.
The only other complaint I have is that I felt there were too many loose ends and I am not aware of any continuation planned for this particular story. That aside it was a very good book and trilogy and I shall certainly be reading Provenance, her next novel in this universe.
4/5 stars
Once again the writing is solid, keeping things moving along briskly with a good story, interesting characters and equally (or more) interesting world building. One aspect of that world building however that really grated with me in this volume has to do with the gender issues. Leckie’s really quite neat creation of a virtually genderless society is intriguing and well-constructed and, on a personal note, thank goodness for her decision to simply address everyone as feminine rather than inventing horrible ‘gender neutral’ pronouns. Something I personally hate with a vengeance and that pulls me out of the story every time I read one. So great on that. Also great that she really does manage, for me, to make the gender of the various Radch characters irrelevant. But in this book it seems that all the crack soldiers on our hero’s ship are ready to burst into tears at the slightest bit of emotional stress. Most seemed to spend inordinate amounts of time either about to break into tears or already merrily sobbing away. Now I’m sorry but it’s always been my experience that soldiers, male or female, are not generally given to bursting into emotional tears all the time like this. And, sadly, that tended to undermine the genderless approach somewhat and irritated me no end. I mean, really, can you imagine a bunch of sailors on a modern warship openly weeping when their captain departs on a dangerous mission? I don’t remember the previous books being quite as full of blubbering characters but maybe I’ve blocked that out.
It's a shame that I found this so annoying as pretty much every other aspect of the books I found excellent. In particular as, presumably, Leckie’s writing confidence has grown so has she included considerably more humour in this book and it works well. In particular she clearly had tremendous fun with one semi-alien character, Translator Zeiat, causing me to laugh out loud on several occasions.
The only other complaint I have is that I felt there were too many loose ends and I am not aware of any continuation planned for this particular story. That aside it was a very good book and trilogy and I shall certainly be reading Provenance, her next novel in this universe.
4/5 stars
