/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.5133117]

Just finished reading Ancillary Justice. Really enjoyed a lot of it, but there were parts that seemed really incoherent and directionless, and Lackie's lack (get it?) of descriptions of any of her characters was a huge detriment, I thought. I was fine with the gender neutral pronouns and not purposely distinguishing male from female, but what I did not like at all was not being told what a character looked like in even the slightest detail until near the end of the book. I had a very definite picture in my head of Breq, and then a single word near the end fucked with my image of her in my head. I did picture her as female, by the way, but pale with white hair and blue eyes. And then bam, it turns out she has dark skin. It would have been nice to know that 250 pages earlier. And while the gender issue was written well, it didn't always work simply because while describing a scene or dialogue, sometimes you just need to know who is talking, and "he/she" does a great job of doing that without getting in the way with the character's name every time. When both characters are referred to as "she" it can really gum up the works.

Anyway, not a huge gripe, and overall I enjoyed it and will get around to reading the sequels when they come out, though I don't know if I'll run to my nearest book store to do so. But they'll be on my list.

Ancillary Justice thread?

[Anonymous No.5133383]

I found it dull. I didn't have a problem with the nongendered pronouns and didn't have any trouble following dialogue, though I heard that that was a common problem a lot of people had. I just didn't care about any of the characters. The flashback scenes on the planet-that-wasn't-Rome-but-basically-it's-Rome all felt flat, and the only interesting character interaction was Breq trying to save Severian for some reason. I kept hoping there would be a reason for her to give a shit about him, but there never was. He was just a whiny, thieving asshole for the whole novel and the entire reason for her risking her life to save him was just "cause, internet."

I was okay with accepting Breq's motivation even though her plan made no sense whatsoever. I just accepted that maybe she wanted the satisfaction of killing one of Anaander's bodies even though it wouldn't really kill him. But then she does, and she's just cool with going right back to following split-Anaander's orders. The whole novel was a setup for a suicide mission and she just gives up on it like "Meh, this Anaander seems good enough. All is forgiven."

The interesting parts were Breq having conversations with other AI. Towards the end where Breq is talking to another ship that's missing its ancillaries, there's this conversation where the ship legitimately feels loss over losing its ancillaries, and Breq almost wants to submit herself to the other AI just to become its pilot/extension. That was interesting. Robot emotions. I wish the whole novel could have explored things like that. Instead it read like a robot girlfriend begrudgingly supporting her deadbeat boyfriend for no reason. Also a revenge plot, but not really.

Also I know that dude's name wasn't Severian but I just read Book of the New Sun and that guy has a similar sounding name, so I'm just gonna call him Severian.

I didn't enjoy it. I have no idea why it got all the critical acclaim in the universe.