Ancillary Justice series

Space empire, anyone?

Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, Ancillary Mercy, by Anne Leckie. Imperial Radch series.

I picked the first one up for a book club I couldn't attend, and highly recommend it. It explores a number of deep themes, and I can see why it won all three major sci-fi awards.

*** Spoilers ***

Multiple minds, multiple viewpoints, single consciousness. The main character is a ship and most of it's crew, made up of "ancillaries". These humans are integrated into the ship's consciousness as additional brains/bodies. The author noted the difficulty of portraying a being with many viewpoints available to it, but I think they did an admirable job.

Surveillance - what is a relationship like when the ship can sense everything about her crew except their thoughts?

Gender - the main language does not have gendered pronouns, so all characters use she/her until specifically proven otherwise, and often the main character forgets.

Imperialism - beings are not civilized until they are part of the empire - the words are the same in the native language. Slavery. Meeting a superior force that limits the empire - what are the consequences?

Pluralism - a fractured consciousness.

Autocracy - when a single ruler has absolute power, what happens when you obey and regret it? The need to protect that absolute power is portrayed as protecting the society as a whole, because what would happen without the ruler?

The second and third books are not as ambitious as the first, taking place in a single star system and being more like a political thriller.

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