(Spoilers ahead!)

I really needed this series in my life. I don't think I ever won't need it in my life.

The Imperial Radch series lets you look behind all the doors fans want, desperately, to look behind in their favorite media—that is to say, small, heartfelt moments between characters, hard-hitting conversations that dig deep, relationships being developed that only ever remain hints or scraps in most narratives. This kicks some serious character-driven butt, while at the same time constructing a world that you want to lose yourself in. And lose yourself you do—with strong characters to lead the way.

Ann Leckie pours so much empathy, wisdom, and general understanding of human nature into the pages of this series. This is a rarity that I have simply never come across at this level before in any media. In Sword, the conversation with Queter about making her oppressors see their actions for what they are—it was so real and raw and liable to seize anyone who has known that fire in themselves. Those moments with Seivarden and Ekalu in Mercy, where privilege and entitlement are made visible and brought to its knees. This series is packed full of palpable moments that get you thinking about what the subject-matter tackled means for the characters as well as in your own life.

The setting is vibrant and epic, while also focusing and scaling to small pieces of that setting, creating both a larger-than-life feel as well as something that you can settle in and familiarize yourself with. By the end of Mercy, I wanted to live alongside the characters, and the story had enough depth to allow that feeling to seem tangible.

I was so invested in these characters that the moment action starts, I am desperately wishing it away—I'm not distanced and unemphatic, unworried for the character's safety because I'm looking forward to cool explosions or gunshots, as I am in every other bit of media. I am terrified. I want it to end so they can all have tea and be happy.

(And speaking of terrifying—Zeiat genuinely terrified me a few times, which is amazing because I also love her adorable self to bits. She is the best use of “wacky and child-like character is secretly terrifying” I have ever seen.)

I suppose I wrote this review more for the author than for potential buyers, I'm not going to pretend this review isn't for a book written by an individual, I'm not going to pretend, as people like to, that media just exists on its own, rendering the creators invisible:

Ann Leckie, I loved this series to bits. Start to finish. Every bit of it. It had so much depth, so many meaningful interactions between characters. And god, I sobbed like an alarmed child when Breq got the brief surveillance clip of the protesters sitting peacefully in Station. I laughed more times than I can count. I laughed harder than I ever have—I threw my kindle across the room and shrieked, laughing until I cried, when Zeiat showed up at Mercy of Kalr's doorstep in the midst of crisis and asked for oysters. There were so many times I had to set the book down and catch my breath during the chapter where Breq and Mercy of Kalr and Seivarden sort out their feelings for each other.

You are an amazing writer, Ancillary Mercy exceeded my expectations, and honestly forever raised the bar that I judge all media by. I admire you, and always will.

Thank you, with all of my heart, for giving us such a wonderful story.

I loved the Imperial Radch series. The originality of Breq as a protagonist (and Anaander Mianaai as antagonist), the richness and originality of the universe Leckie created, the musings on identity and power (both individual and institutional) ... while there were clear influences from other classic SF writers, Leckie's voice and her creation were entirely her own. Although this was a space opera, it was an unconventional one ... it was ultimately more about brains than brawn. There is plenty of action, but if you're expecting light sabers and Death Stars, you're in the wrong universe. Imperial Radch is more of a chess match savored over tea rather than an MMA cage fight. At its core, it is about the conflict between Breq and Anaander Mianaai--the former is technically not human, the latter technically is, but both have such longevity and a multitude of bodies they have inhabited, that the line is quite blurred as a practical matter. Yet, Breq is an unconventional protagonist in more ways than one--as the series evolves, her mission is not to defeat Anaander (she frankly admits that she could care less about the "family feud" between the various factions of Anaander Mianaai) but rather the paradigm that Anaander has created. Breq's actions, even her very existence, challenge the status quo; the presence of the Presger translator as absurdist jester further highlights the arbitrariness and silliness of the established social and political order (with lessons for the politics, religions, social hierarchies, ethnic divisions, etc. of our own world too, of course). Overall, as a series, Leckie created works that stimulate the mind and tickle the imagination.

With respect to the individual books (some spoilers ahead), Ancillary Justice is easily the star of the series. Simply in terms of ideas, I think you could argue that most of what Leckie is most interested in (identity, power, empire) is all contained in this book. The plot is tight, original, and suspenseful. Ancillary Sword is probably the weakest of the three, but I did not mind it as much as others did (the top reviews on Amazon, at least, are pretty brutal). Interestingly, while I liked Ancillary Mercy, I did not love it quite as much as others seemed to. Leckie rediscovers the action and deliberate-but-suspenseful pacing of the first book, as we have the return of Anaander as an active menace rather than just an abstract threat. The decision to give AIs the right and ability to determine their own destiny is an interesting and natural development from previous books (if Justice of Toren / Breq can be autonomous, why not other ships, and stations?) ... and the reactions of others to this development (ranging from anger to fear to amusement) are telling and important in a world where AIs, ancillaries, "people" like Anaander with multiple bodies, etc. make the line between human and non-human unclear and subjective. For me, however, the last couple of chapters were a little underwhelming and felt a bit rushed. Specifically, "defeating" Anaander by invoking the treaty with the Presger seemed like a bit of a cop-out ... and, by the end, Anaander acts more like a scared, spoiled child than a powerful and formidable empire-builder (I'm reminded of the old adage about a story being only as good as its villain--although, of course, the "system" is the true villain here ... Anaander is simply its creator and curator). In general, the role of the Presger throughout the series was problematic for me, from the out-sized role played by the Presger gun, the absurdity of the translator (which serves an important role by pointing out the arbitrariness of many of the social and political institutions of the Radch empire, but at times devolves more into--dare I say it--Jar Jar Binks territory), and then finally the treaty which acts almost as a deus ex machina solution to the "Anaander problem". I feel like Leckie could've been just as effective by leaving the Presger out of it, and just focusing on the newfound agency of the AIs. The final chapter was a little anticlimactic as well, as we get into the "sausage making" of creating a new paradigm, without (apparently) any concern of further outside interference. It also felt like Leckie was trying to lay the foundation for future spinoffs from this trilogy ... is this really the end? We get to say good bye to a cast of memorable and likable characters ... but is this goodbye forever?

That said, the good guys won, unresolved plot lines were tied up, much tea was drunk, so it was still an enjoyable finale--I just didn't *love* the ending, and overall felt like this book didn't quite have the same power as the first. Overall, however, this was a great series, and I look forward to seeing what Leckie comes up with next!

I read a lot of SF, and I have a hard time coming up with a better, or more impactful, SF story in recent years than Leckie's Ancillary trilogy. I had never heard of Ms. Leckie before starting the first book (Ancillary Justice) but I'm going to keep an eye out for her work in the future, because she is clearly a master of the craft of writing SF.

Much has been made of Leckie's decision to use "she" and "her" as general pronouns. She's not the first to do so but perhaps she is the first to have such impact. Other reviewers describe the protagonist as being female because of Leckie's word choice, but there is no basis for that decision, because the pronoun use masks gender. Very few characters have a known gender, which is refreshing and (I think) tends to focus the reader on other aspects of the character.

This is the concluding book in the trilogy, and you really need to start at the beginning. Each book builds on actions and decisions in the prior books. Suffice to say, the protagonist, Breq, has a complicated (and long) background story that impacts and informs much of the plot. Breq has been on a 20 year-long mission of vengeance against the seemingly omnipotent and omnipresent ruler. Along the way, Breq has "adventures" and those "adventures" involve attempted murder, revolt and rebellion, diplomatic negotiations with aliens, and interactions with sentient warships and sentient space stations.

The characters, both large and small, are fully fleshed-out, many with flaws and emotional problems. Characters I thought would be heroes collapse under stress and anxiety, and nobody "wins" without paying a steep price for doing so. In that regard, this is amazing literature. Add to that the well-crafted world-building, with a deeply layered society, and you end up with a classic SF tale.

The way in which the story is told is different and, to my taste, wonderful. It is what I imagine would happen if Jack Vance wrote stories set in Iain M. Banks' Culture universe. My title is "A Space Opera of Manners" because the focus is on character and emotional growth, and because the society is oh-so-polite and mannered. Except when it's not.

Looking for a different take on space opera, one that replaces ray guns and space battles with politics and character and emotion ? Try this trilogy.

Toward the end of Ancillary Mercy, our heroine Breq, a.k.a. the former warship AI Justice of Toren and the former corpse-soldier AI Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen, remarks, in narration, that "It never hurt to be polite." If we take "polite" to mean "considerate" - not just aping the forms of courtesy but treating others with due regard - the sentence will serve as a keystone to the whole trilogy. There's a lot of the first sort of politeness in Mercy, the conclusion of what Ann Leckie has called her "[C.J.] Cherryh-flavored space opera." Leckie is terrific at writing about political infighting obscured by politesse, and one of the pleasures of the book is how everyone's masks finally slip as this skirmish in the interstellar civil war reaches a crisis point. But consideration is a rarer commodity, and what makes Breq not just a protagonist but a heroine is that she works to spread consideration around. The first book began with Breq interrupting her mission of vengeance to perform an act of decency she could easily have avoided. By this last book, the cumulative sum of all her small acts of decency is to find herself responsible for the inhabitants of two star systems and having to consider giving up the things she cares about most to protect them.

I loved this book. I read it in two nights, and wished I could skip work to finish it faster. It's funny and touching and suspenseful by turns. It's less action-packed than Justice or Sword, even though there is a very original sort of starship battle at one point and a covert assault at another. There's quite a bit of Breq dealing with the officers and crew of her starship. That can get talky, but way less so than in, say, Starship Troopers. There are hilarious set-pieces with the sort-of human translator for the mysterious and terrifying aliens, the Presger, of whom the entire galaxy goes in fear. More than in the previous volumes, Leckie foregrounds the characters of the various AIs. And yes, there is quite a lot of tea. Part of me thought there was actually a bit more tea in the middle of the book than I strictly needed. Another part of me accepts that, like the much-discussed pronoun choices, the weird centrality of tea to the narrative is a crucial part of the worldbuilding. (And there are hints this time that what Breq calls tea and what we call tea may not be quite the same thing. I notice that people perk up awfully fast after drinking it; Earth teas don't have super-high levels of caffeine.)

This is also, for my money, the book where Leckie masters endings. I loved both of Ancillary Mercy's predecessors, but I thought each of them ended a bit clumsily. Mercy's ending isn't by any means what I expected, but it works well as a conclusion to both novel and trilogy, and I didn't find myself wondering "Why did so-and-so even think that plan would work?" like I did with the previous two books. And that earns Mercy its fifth star. This book was everything I hoped for. I recommend it to fans of the previous two books in the series without reservation.

A rather satisfying ending to Leckie's Radch Trilogy.

I did run into what felt like a rather odd section of the book, about midway thru, which ended up feeling so different, so off, that it felt like it shifted the story's entire universe into some kind of alternative space, or maybe an abstraction of the original one...

This effect struck me so much, I ended up abandoning my primary theory (which I had developed throughout books one and two) as to the story arc (and its likely direction), and felt compelled to work up a new one which explained this...let's call it, incongruity. But then, at around the 60 or 70 percent mark, that odd incongruity suddenly seemed to stop, and I found myself reverting back to my original theory... I really dunno what happened there.

Honestly, at this point, I'm not sure if the mysterious incongruous section was entirely in my own head, resultant of delirium induced by sleep-deprivation, or if there really was some kind of change in the writing or storytelling that caused me to perceive an aforementioned incongruity... I suppose it could have been a result of the style used for the narrator's voice...but I'm really not sure at all. Even so, the ending was so satisfying, I'm perfectly happy to assume the oddness was entirely my own fault 🤷🏽

(( And sorry about the earlier vagueness with respect to my lack of real explanation for what I meant by "narrator's voice style".

I was deliberately trying to keep things as vague as possible, and was worried an explanation would reveal the narrator's identity, and thereby, part of the reasoning behind use of that specific voice style.

I believe the reader figuring out on their own why Leckie chose to write it in such a way was quite possibly intentional on her part, since the underlying metaphysical concept(s) involved are better conveyed/taught via the three books' collective exemplification thereof. I'll just say, it relates to concepts touching on social/cultural identity. ))

At any rate, I still very much enjoyed all three reads, and was left feeling quite bubbly and fulfilled by the end of book three.

It's hard to measure up to the amazing first book of this series, mainly because, in the sequels, the things that made the first one astonishing are no longer completely new. Still, it continues to be wonderful, doing extremely clever things with point of view that are only possible because of the speculative setting.

Something I didn't feel as much in this third book is the deliberately induced cognitive dissonance of the Raadchai language only using female pronouns, and not considering gender as a significant category in social interaction. I'm not sure whether this was a function of familiarity and adaptation on my part, or a difference in the writing, or a combination, but I found that I'd defaulted to assuming everyone was male, despite the pronouns - not ideal, but that's how my brain seems to have worked. YMMV.

The story itself is one of those beautifully layered, in some ways slow-moving stories that doesn't feel the need to insert conflict into every scene. There is certainly conflict, but this is far from being a thriller. I'm personally comfortable with that, but it won't be to everyone's taste; if it's not to your taste, though, you will have given up on the first book without ever getting near this one.

The book is structured more by an unfolding of meaning than by a traditional plot, too. Events occur and are linked together; you could write down a plot summary; but the real structure (IMO) is the emergence of theme, and the theme centres around independence, interdependence, love, trust, and power. Power has been a theme throughout the trilogy, and here the questions are made explicit: Do you hand power to the person who has demonstrated that they are only interested in how you can be useful to them, or to the person who has demonstrated that they are always interested in your wellbeing? (And what is a person, exactly?) This is shown not only through the main plot, but also a couple of subplots.

It's a good theme, and well handled, and beautifully told, with depth and richness and a lot of intelligence. I'm going to give it the full five stars, even though it's not as amazing as the first book, because if I had encountered a book this good as a standalone I would have five-starred it.

The final book in a spectacular trilogy by Ann Leckie. Wait, what, final? There's nothing final about this. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Oh, wait, lets have a cup of tea.

Some spoiler tea ahead.

Good, now back to the novel. Dear god, why are we still on this damn space station? I thought this was a space opera? Oh well, lets have another cup of tea and watch the Presger translator do something weird, hah it ate an oyster with the shell on. Oh Jar Jar, I mean, translator.

Oooh, Anaander is coming with her warships, here comes a battle. Ah...nope. Thank god we have a popgun-ex-machina to save us from those nasty action scenes. Lets have a cup of tea.

"The bullets I had fired at them were so small that even if any of the ships’ sensors could have seen them—and they could not—they would not register as a danger."

Wait, here comes the climax, here it comes! Breq falls over, Jar Jar throws up, and the most powerful person in the galaxy was defeated. Presger-treaty-ex-machina for the win. Nothing to see here. Have some tea, sorry about the chipped enamel.

And don't complain about the ending, I see you already complaining about it, stop it. I'm going to preempt you all, so there:

"Every ending is an arbitrary one. Every ending is, from another angle, not really an ending."

That may have been overly mean, but I was incredibly disappointed by this book. Leckie is a fantastic writer so she carries the story anyway, and I did enjoy reading it, but sadly the trilogy didn't come close to living up to the promise of the first novel.

Given how open the entire ending was, I assume, and hope, there will be more on what happens when AIs are recognized by the Presger and are no longer controlled by humans. And whether cloning will really work out for ancillaries, or if they will go back to kidnapping humans.

And I hope there will be less tea drinking.

The Ancillary series from Ann Leckie is superb. I experienced the first two, "Ancillary Justice" and "Ancillary Sword", as audiobooks. As much as I enjoyed these, I was at a constant disadvantage because I could only hear, and not see, the bizarre names used for each character and place. This is too good a series to be distracted and confused about faults that disappear when reading the printed word.

From the first chapter of "...Justice", I was hooked on this excellent narrative. The foundational concept, that the protagonist, in a future universe, is an AI that occupies, lives through, multiple physical entities simultaneously (including a naval vessel, her primary identification), is brilliantly explored and exploited. The books move with a speed that neither loses the reader by jumping too quickly, nor boring the reader with needless details that don't advance the story. Leckie's writing is so good, there is a sensation of truly perceiving plot elements: events and places and feelings involved in the story, that seems to approach the grasping and digesting of the numerous inputs which the AI characters experience at all times. A problem with many SciFi stories about the distant future is populating the stage with too many new and unexplained pieces, which don't get sorted quickly enough to serve the story. Leckie is a master at seamlessly introducing foreign elements, and doesn't leave the reader without a clue to their nature. All will be understood in good time, with storytelling that kept me eager for each new sentence. My only gripe is with the obviously intended confusion about the use of gender identification, which should probably be explored in a separate blog. This conceit served to cause a nagging itch on the back of my consciousness and upon my appreciation of the story. Still, now that I'm hooked on this universe, I look forward to more from Leckie.

Best sci-fi ever read since ... A long time ago. I am looking for a sixth star to rate this trilogy. Because of the writing in feminine which is much better and accomplished than any kind of feminist superhero. Because I like to drink tea. Because I dream to be seen as a Significant by a Presger.

Aunque creo que el primer libro es el mejor, esta trilogía no decepciona. Es una novela que trata sobre inteligencia artificial y su desarrollo como un ente independiente. Es interesante como utiliza seres humanos como apéndices que le permiten estar en diferentes lugares y situaciones al mismo tiempo, además de compartir sensaciones y experiencias. Está escrita en una forma que al principio cuesta trabajo de leer y lleva tiempo acostumbrarse pues no diferencia entre el género de los personajes y uno tiene que inferir el mismo de acuerdo a descripciones del lenguaje corporal y de su forma de pensar.

A very intellectual story of compassion and caring from artificial intelligence. the level of detail makes the story incredibly realistic

Mi piace molto quando l autore di sifi si inventa un'intera civiltà completa di credenze, moda,usanze. Addirittura si è inventata un altro modo di parlare. Vorrei che non terminasse con questi tre romanzi, c'è spazio per proseguire.

As with the previous volumes, I found this a delight. Furthermore, at times it was hilarious!

I do have one small criticism. The books are written in the first person. However, about halfway through this volume the author found herself having to relate very significant events at which the narrator was not present. To achieve this she resorted to a plot device that I found less than entirely satisfactory.

Regardless, it was a very enjoyable read.