Ancillary Justice

Once, Breq was the AI that linked a warship and hundreds of human bodies. Now she is a lone soldier who has spent nineteen years tracking down the tools she needs to get her revenge and enact justice. But even she is not sure what she hopes to accomplish by killing her enemy.

Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice is a gem, a truly modern sci-fi novel with a well-crafted, highly engaging plot that draws the reader in and never lets go. But never mind the story itself; Leckie plays with concepts of identity that the English language can barely contain, crafting a culture that does not, even linguistically, acknowledge differences in gender, where individuals have multiple bodies that are linked into a single identity and awareness while simultaneously maintaining identities and awarenesses of their own.

While Breq’s tendency to refer to everyone as “she” and the need to distinguish between different sections of her identity even when referring to herself are disorienting at first, they coalesce into a truly unique narrative viewpoint, which not only tells an excellent story, but also challenges contemporary concepts of identity and the language we use to express it. If you want Sci-Fi that is both thoughtful and exciting, pick this up now.