"Ancillary Justice"

[fiefoe]

Ann Leckie solved the multiple-first-person POV problem in a most clever way. The book wasn't quite exciting enough for me (except for the near-death in vaccume part), but I respect what the author is trying to do.

• As I still had ancillaries, I could be in more than one place at a time. I was also on Shis’urna, under the command of Esk Decade Lieutenant Awn.
• This—to invade and take, what, half the adult population? And turn them into walking corpses, slaved to your ships’ AIs. Turned against their own people. If you’d asked me before you… annexed us, I’d have said it was a fate worse than death.”
• And this was the last annexation. The last chance for an officer to enrich her house through connections to new citizens, or even through outright appropriation.
• Or, as a Radchaai would say, the universe is the shape of the gods.
• luxury always comes at someone else’s expense. One of the many advantages of civilization is that one doesn’t generally have to see that, if one doesn’t wish.
• “Ships have feelings.” “Yes, of course.” Without feelings insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to compare endless arrays of inconsequential things. It’s just easier to handle those with emotions.
• The use of such older bodies allowed the Lord of the Radch to walk unprotected, without any sort of entourage, when she wished, without much risk.
• Insane Radchaai ships were a staple of melodrama, inside and outside Radchaai space.
• “Virtue is not a solitary, uncomplicated thing.”
• “Help,” I croaked, not in Radchaai. Damn medic pulled out a body without a decent voice.
• “Like now,” said a lieutenant at Lieutenant Issaaia’s elbow. “Give me food while yet I live.” Another quote, another reference to funeral offerings and a rebuttal in case the junior lieutenant had intended insult in the wrong direction.
• This much was clear—Anaander Mianaai was acting against herself. Secretly. She was divided in two—at least two. I could only see traces of the other Anaander, the one who had changed the accesses, the accesses she thought she was only now changing to favor herself.
• In any event, Lieutenant Skaaiat’s sardonic practicality wasn’t foreign to her house. It was only a milder, more livable version of Awer’s tendency to moral outrage.
• Perhaps. Or is anyone’s identity a matter of fragments held together by convenient or useful narrative, that in ordinary circumstances never reveals itself as a fiction? Or is it really a fiction?
• The first I noticed even the bare possibility that I–Justice of Toren might not also be I–One Esk, was that moment that Justice of Toren edited One Esk’s memory of the slaughter in the temple of Ikkt.
• Eight hundred years ago the Translators Office was a collection of minor officials who assisted in the interpretation of extra-Radch intelligence, and who smoothed linguistic problems during annexations. Now they dictate policy.
• Thoughts are ephemeral, they evaporate in the moment they occur, unless they are given action and material form. Wishes and intentions, the same... Thoughts that lead to action can be dangerous. Thoughts that do not, mean less than nothing.
• “We have a saying, where I come from: Power requires neither permission nor forgiveness.”
• “Do you realize what you’ve just said? Literally that the uncivilized don’t understand civilization? Do you realize that quite a lot of people outside Radch space consider themselves to be civilized?” The sentence was nearly impossible in Radchaai, a self-contradiction.
• “Your manners are a thousand years old,” I pointed out. “Manners are manners,” she said, indignant.
• You can’t fill troop carriers with humans. The human-crewed Justices are all half- empty.” “And of course,” interjected Rose-and-Azure, “those all have to be paid.”
• “Breq,” interrupted Mianaai... “is the last remaining fragment of a grief-crazed AI, which has just managed to trigger a civil war.”
• “Pain is a warning,” said Anaander Mianaai. “What would happen if you removed all discomfort from your life?
• “A thousand years’ back pay,” said a dock inspector, in an awed voice.
• My tongue tingled, saliva boiling away in the vacuum
• Very minimal brain damage, if any, though you might not quite feel like yourself for a while.” That actually struck me as funny,
• “I didn’t get where I am by having reasonable goals,” said Anaander Mianaai.