Summary
Summary
Breq and her crew must stand against an old and powerful enemy and fight for their own destinies in the stunning conclusion to the New York Times bestselling trilogy. A must read for fans of Ursula K. Le Guin and James S. A. Corey.
For a moment, things seemed to be under control for Breq, the soldier who used to be a warship. Then a search of Athoek Station's slums turns up someone who shouldn't exist, and a messenger from the mysterious Presger empire arrives, as does Breq's enemy, the divided and quite possibly insane Anaander Mianaai -- ruler of an empire at war with itself.
Breq refuses to flee with her ship and crew, because that would leave the people of Athoek in terrible danger. The odds aren't good, but that's never stopped her before.
"There are few who write science fiction like Ann Leckie can. There are few who ever could." -- John Scalzi
Author Notes
Ann Leckie was born in Toledo, Ohio on March 2, 1966. She attended Clarion West Writers Workshop and studied under Octavia Butler. Her debut novel Ancillary Justice won several awards, 2014 Hugo Award for Best Novel, Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the 2013 BSFA Award. Her next book was Ancillary Sword. It won the 2014 BSFA Award for Best Novel and the 2015 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Ancillary Mercy is the third book the Imperial Radch trilogy. Her short stories include Hesperia and Glory, Marsh Gods, The God of Au, The Endangered Camp, The Unknown God, Beloved of the Sun, and Maiden, Mother, Crone.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The breathtaking conclusion to Leckie's much-lauded Imperiald Radch trilogy (Ancillary Justice; Ancillary Sword) lives up to the promise and expectations of the earlier books. Breq, the last human body housing the consciousness of the destroyed troop carrier Justice of Toren, must prepare the Athoek space station to survive the civil war spreading through Radch space. The station is overcrowded and badly damaged, and the political situation deteriorates as it becomes clear that the station has already been corrupted by competing factions of Anaander Mianaai, the many-bodied supreme ruler of the Radchaai. Breq has no way to determine the loyalties of the other military ships in the system. Things become even more complicated when station security finds somebody who doesn't belong there and should have died 600 years before. New readers could begin the series here, but they will miss out on the deeply satisfying culmination of early plot points and running jokes. This glorious series summit is suffused with the wit and the skillful eye for character that fans have come to expect from Leckie. Breq and her lieutenants are destined to be beloved giants in the space opera canon. Agent: Seth Fishman, Gernert Company. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
Eric Brown on Adam Nevill's Lost Girl; Ann Leckie's Ancillary Mercy; Dave Hutchinson's Europe at Midnight; David Barnett's Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper; William Gay's Little Sister Death Adam Nevill excels at making nightmares real. His previous novels have been out-and-out horror, stories of hauntings and occult phenomena peopled by fully realised, three-dimensional characters. Lost Girl (Pan, [pound]7.99) explores new territory and combines two hellish scenarios: the effects of climate change on society, and every parent's nightmare of having their child abducted. The year is 2053 and the world's population is suffering the onslaught of global warming: drought and famine push millions towards Europe; nations teeter on the edge of nuclear conflict; and Britain is rapidly failing, with the haves barricaded in gated communities and the have-nots at the mercy of criminal gangs. Amid the chaos, a four-year-old girl is abducted while playing in her garden, and what follows is the harrowing, relentless quest of her father -- he is never named in the novel -- who stops at nothing to find her. It's a painful read: Nevill's portrayal of the breakdown of civilisation, mirrored by the father's own spiralling moral crisis, is unflinchingly realistic -- though not without hope. The author says he wanted the novel to amend "the status of climate change from the existential to the very real", and in this Lost Girl succeeds brilliantly. In the first two books of the multi-award winning Ancillary trilogy, Ann Leckie painstakingly built a galaxy-spanning, wide-screen baroque universe in which vast intelligent starships utilised resuscitated corpses as foot soldiers in interstellar conflict, complex political conflict raged between the stars, and hero Breq -- who was once part of a hive-mind starship -- pursued her quest to take revenge on the empress of the Radch empire. In Ancillary Mercy (Orbit, [pound]8.99), Breq, a fleet captain stationed at Athoek Station, finds herself confronted by an old enemy and faces the dilemma of whether to stay or escape and leave the station to its fate. It may sound like a thousand other routine shoot-'em-up space operas, but the author invests her future with fascinating inquiries into the nature of gender, individual identity and colonisation, all achieved with humour and an enviable ability to tell a cracking story. Europe at Midnight (Solaris, [pound]7.99) is the sequel to Dave Hutchinson's critically acclaimed, Arthur C Clarke award-shortlisted Europe in Autumn, a Kafka esque espionage story set in a fractured Europe made up of a hundred conflicted statelets. At the end of the first novel, it's revealed that there exists within Europe a secret, shadowy state. Hutchinson's sequel shuttles between this veiled world and a near-future sovereign England conducting a perpetual war on terror. In London, intelligence officer Jim is investigating a mysterious stabbing at a bus stop, which leads him into a labyrinth of intrigue and deception, while in the pocket universe of "The Campus", security officer Rupert works on a case involving bodies discovered in a river. With seemingly effortless literary flair, Hutchinson reveals how the stories intersect in a complex, unsettling allegory of political manoeuvring, subterfuge and statecraft. In the Gideon Smith trilogy, David Barnett has crafted not only a thoroughly likable hero in the eponymous Smith -- hero of the Empire -- but an engaging entourage of co-conspirators in Maria the mechanical girl, airship pilot Rowena Fanshawe, and alcoholic journalist Aloysius Bent. Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper (Snow, [pound]8.99) sees our heroes tearing around a Victorian London replete with pea soupers, voracious tyrannosaurs and artificial brains. Smith finds himself bereft of his memory after it is removed by an old adversary, and faces death at every turn while on the trail of Jack the Ripper. It's glorious, tongue-in-cheek fun, with cliffhangers aplenty, derring-do, dastardly villains and every trope of the steampunk subgenre used to glorious effect. William Gay published three southern gothic horror novels and a collection of stories in his lifetime. Little Sister Death (Faber, [pound]12.99) was discovered among his papers after his death in 2012. The short, lyrical novel is a reworking of the 1804 Bell Witch haunting in Tennessee, when farmer John Bell and his family moved to a house built on an ancient Indian burial ground and found themselves persecuted by evil spirits. Gay updates the story, with blocked writer David Binder moving to Tennessee and leasing Beale House in order to work on a horror novel. Binder soon becomes fascinated with the curse of the Bell Witch, and suffers the consequences as he and his family fall victim to Beale House's creeping malignancy. Despite its abrupt finale, Little Sister Death is a chilling meditation on the craft of writing and writerly obsession. * Eric Brown's latest novel is Jani and the Greater Game (Solaris). - Eric Brown.
Kirkus Review
In the conclusion to Leckie's multiaward-winning trilogy (Ancillary Justice, 2013; Ancillary Sword, 2014), Fleet Captain Breq Mianaai directly confronts Anaander Mianaai, the interstellar ruler who blew up Justice of Toren, the ship that housed Breq's consciousness.The Lord of the Radch, divided as she is across thousands of bodies, is at war with herself. The more reactionary faction is preparing to invade Athoek Station, even while the Station is experiencing civil unrest; can Breq, her crew, and whatever allies she can gather overcome overwhelming odds and establish peace and a new social order? Leckie deliberately and deliciously flouts classic space-opera tropes. Rather than epic clashes between starships, there's just one determined, embodied Artificial Intelligence with a very powerful gun, a stubborn space station, espionage, and some very persuasive talking. Leckie creates a grand backdrop to tell an intimate, cerebral story about identity and empowerment. She devotes as much attention to the characters' personal relationships and their mental and emotional difficulties as she does to the wider conflict. What Leckie is saying is that individual people matter. Personhood matters, whether that personhood is expressed by an ordinary human, a sentient space station, a human raised by aliens, the remains of a spaceship AI inhabiting a human body that once belonged to someone else, or a 17-year-old whose previous personality was evicted by a ruling hive mind. Regardless of the situation in which one finds oneself, a person's right to be herself without interference is all that matters. And a small group of people can have a gigantic impact, with the right leverage. That message could so easily be hackneyed or too painfully obvious, but Leckie's delivery is deft and meaningful. Wraps up the story arc with plenty of room to tell many more tales in this universe. Let's hope Leckie does. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Fleet Captain Breq, once ancillary to the Justice of Toren and last seen in Ancillary Sword, is still on Atheok station. She's trying to improve life for the residents of the Undergarden, but the brewing conflict between rival aspects of Anaander Mianaai finally arrives on her doorstep. Breq's desire for revenge against Mianaai burns as bright as ever, but her plan to oppose the Lord of the Radch will change not only the political landscape but all human and AI relations. While not quite as compelling as the two books in Leckie's award-winning "Imperial Radach" series, this is still highly impressive sf. We not only get more time with the fascinating characters of Breq and her troubled lieutenant Seivarden, who started this journey together, but Leckie introduces a representative from the Presger empire to knock everything a little off balance. Breq is the ultimate agent of change, upsetting a status quo that stood for millennia and advocating for a revolution in determining who is considered a person in a post-AI world. VERDICT This trilogy will stand as a classic of sf for the ages, although it's difficult not to want more stories set in this captivating universe. [See Eric Norton's sf/fantasy spotlight feature, "A Genre Takes Flight," LJ 8/15.]-MM © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
