CANR
WORK TITLE: Lake of Souls
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PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.annleckie.com/
CITY: St. Louis
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NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CANR 314
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born March 2, 1966, in Toledo, OH; married David Hare; children: one son, one daughter.
EDUCATION:Graduated from Washington University, 1989.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Giganotosaurus magazine, editor, 2010-13; PodCastle (podcast), assistant editor. Has worked as a waitress, receptionist, land surveyor, and recording engineer.
MEMBER:Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (secretary; vice president, 2012-13).
AWARDS:Nebula Award for best novel, Hugo Award for best novel, Locus Award for best first novel, Arthur C. Clarke Award, and Sydney J. Bounds Award for best newcomer, all for Ancillary Justice; Best Novel, British Science Fiction Association Award for best novel, 2014, and Locus Award for best science fiction novel, 2015, both for Ancillary Sword; Locus Award for best science fiction novel, 2016, for Ancillary Mercy; Hugo Award for best series, 2024, for “Imperial Radch.”
WRITINGS
Contributor to anthologies, including Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2007. Contributor of short stories to periodicals, including Subterranean, Strange Horizons, and Realms of Fantasy.
SIDELIGHTS
Science fiction writer Ann Leckie has contributed short stories to the anthology Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2007 and to such periodicals as Subterranean magazine, Strange Horizons, and Realms of Fantasy. Her debut novel, Ancillary Justice, was published in 2013 and is the first installment in her “Imperial Radch” trilogy. Discussing her path to becoming an author in a Qwillery Web site interview, Leckie remarked: “I’ve actually been writing on and off since grade school. In high school I actually got up the courage to send something out—to Twilight Zone Magazine—and received my first ever rejection letter. For years I thought (sometimes fondly, sometimes despairingly) about the possibility of being a Real Published Writer, but didn’t write very much. College, in particular, seemed to drain a lot of the fiction-writing energy out of me. Though just after college I did send one story out to True Confessions—I just wanted to see if I could do it.” From there Leckie studied romance novels and tried to replicate them, but soon she switched to science fiction. “I decided it wasn’t worth spending what free time I had writing something I didn’t really enjoy reading,” she told the Qwillery interviewer.
Ancillary Justice features an artificial intelligence (AI) named Breq. She served as a commander for the Radch troop ship Justice of Toren, but she has since been forced into a human body. Breq wanders the galaxy in search of the weapon that will allow her to exact revenge on the Radch’s immortal leader, Anaander Mianaai. As Breq strives to reach her goal, the Radch spread out across the universe, forcing humanity into their genderless form of civilization; the Radch are ultimately a civilizing force, but those who resist are turned into corpse soldiers.
The tale, which has been widely reviewed, has been favorably compared to the work of famed science fiction authors Iain M. Banks and Ursula K. Le Guin. Commenting on the Radch’s gender-neutral society in an online Girls in Capes interview, Leckie stated: “I initially just wanted to play, in a very simple way, with a society that genuinely didn’t care about gender. Partly because I wanted to step away from real world cultural constraints, which can be tiring. And when I first started playing with the ideas that would become the Radch, I had just had my first child, and it was amazing the way so many people just seem to be completely unable to interact with a baby unless they know their gender.” Leckie added: “So I was thinking a lot about the way people are pigeonholed by the gender society assigns them. … And my first attempts to write about that were unsatisfying, because for one thing, I found that I myself had trouble not thinking in gendered terms.”
While most critics praised this approach, a contributor to the Little Red Reviewer Web site complained about Leckie’s use of strictly feminine pronouns (she, her, hers) to refer to gender-neutral characters: “It felt like a huge, massive, white elephant gimmick to me. … Using gender signifiers such as she and her as often as possible wasn’t the way to make me (that’s me, personally) forget or skip over gender signifiers.” The contributor went on to assert: “It was a neat language trick, so it’s really too bad that my gut response was negative. I get what Leckie was trying to do, really, I do. It was unique and innovative and I’m happy a lot of people liked this book, but it completely and utterly did not work for me.” On the other hand, an online Book Smugglers columnist declared: “I loved the focus on language and culture in this book. Breq is constantly questioning her use of pronouns and assigning gender to different non-Radch peoples.” The columnist pointed out: “At its heart, this is a revenge story. We learn what has happened to Breq, now just a single ancillary body, and damn it’s a good reveal. The way the story unfolds, alternating between the then and now, is wholly engaging. I know that the concepts in this book sound both abstract and complicated, but in truth Ancillary Justice (though dense) is an easy book to read because it is so immersive and never once stumbles in its telling. Above all else—or, to stick with the theme of collectiveness— Ancillary Justice is more than just the sum of its parts. Like Breq, Ancillary Justice is utterly memorable, utterly distinct, and utterly original.”
Proffering like-minded applause, a Publishers Weekly columnist advised: “This impressive debut succeeds in making Breq a protagonist readers will invest in.” Genevieve Valentine, in an assessment for NPR Online, was also impressed, as she remarked: “A space opera that skillfully handles both choruses and arias, Ancillary Justice is an absorbing thousand-year history, a poignant personal journey, and a welcome addition to the genre.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor announced: “Leckie’s novel cast of characters serves her well-plotted story nicely. This is an altogether promising debut.”
Breq’s adventures continue in Ancillary Sword, and news of civil war reaches the Radchaai space network. Breq heads to Athoek, which is rumored to be a paragon of peace, justice, and plenty, but Breq discovers the exact opposite. Law enforcers rule with fear and intimidation, and Breq attempts to understand the corruption in order to fix it. From there, Breq and her crew will establish a new society in the old one’s place, and Athoek serves as a test case for the rest of the ailing empire. As the story progresses, Breq struggles to accept her fate as an AI limited to only one body.
“Those familiar with the first book will find that the faith it inspired has not been misplaced,” a Publishers Weekly critic advised. However, Sword & Laser Web site correspondent Daniel Eavenson remarked: “I had expected more intrigue and action. … I guess I had forgotten the first two thirds of quiet introspection and excellent world building that had proceeded all that fun. Instead, Ancillary Sword takes us to new places, but they are small intimate locations that hold none of the galactic level chess game that the end of the first novel had primed me for.” A Book Smugglers Web site contributor offered both praise and criticism, observing: “On the plotting and overall trilogy arc-moving front, Ancillary Sword is, admittedly, a bit weaker than its predecessor. There are plot threads aplenty in this second book, but there’s also a bit of heavy-handedness (particularly when it comes to the effects of colonialism in space), and a sense of in-between-ness as there are so many stories to be resolved in the next book.” Nevertheless, the contributor concluded: “These quibbles are but footnotes, though, to a truly spectacular sophomore novel. I loved Ancillary Sword, truly, madly, deeply. It is absolutely a top Ten pick for me this year, deserving of all the awards, and all of the praise.” Valentine, writing again for NPR Online, was even more positive, stating: “Sword is more directly political than Justice, which lends some wonderful breathing room to all the telling details that adorn this military-Rococo empire like a memorial badge, and means that the unsolvable conflicts within the empire get their messy due. … Breq remains an effortless narrator, both sharply present and emotionally oblique. And many of the best grace notes still lean subtly on the carefully cultivated inner life of the first book.”
Ancillary Mercy is the final installment in Leckie’s “Imperial Radch” series. In this volume, Breq must fight off forces connected to the Radch’s multibodied lord, Anaander Mianaai. A group of Anaander’s is set to invade the already-damaged Athoek Station, which Breq commands. Meanwhile, a mysterious figure that should have been dead for centuries appears on the station, adding more complications for Breq.
Ancillary Mercy received favorable reviews. Valentine, again writing for NPR Online, commented: “In trying to wrap a tale of revenge and revolution somewhere between twenty and a thousand years old, Ancillary Mercy does have its inevitable moments of glossing-over. … But it earns the credit it’s received: As a capstone to a series that shook genre expectations, as our closing installment of an immersively realized world, and as the poignant story of a ship that learned to sing.” Writing on Tor.com, Liz Bourke suggested: “This is generous book, and a hopeful one. It doesn’t handwave away the problems of imperialism and colonisation, but neither does it close down the possibility for the future to be better than the past. … And it’s a bloody fun ride. It has a sense of humour that made me laugh out loud more than once. It’s good. It’s more than good, it’s brilliant: a shining light in the space opera firmament.” “ Ancillary Mercy delivered a compelling story full of action and emotional complexity,” asserted Anthony Vicino on the SF Signal Web site. Vicino added: “Despite some hiccups along the way, Ancillary Mercy actually delivered quite well on the promises made in Ancillary Justice. Leckie returns her attention to the civil war between Anaander’s rivaling selves, the galactic consequences of that war, while also tying in all the little plot threads from Ancillary Sword to tell a very compelling story.” A critic on the Speculative Herald Web site remarked: “How does a series with galaxy spanning implications draw to a close without leaving a small, singular section of space? More importantly how does it do so in a satisfying manner when dealing with an opponent that has unlimited bodies spread all over space? Pay attention friends, this is how a series is done right. … Not every loose end is taken care of, to be honest any more would have probably killed the wonder, and so a satisfying conclusion to this tale has been given.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted: “This glorious series summit is suffused with the wit and the skillful eye for character that fans … expect from Leckie.” “Leckie’s delivery is deft and meaningful,” wrote a contributor to Kirkus Reviews. The same critic stated that the book “wraps up the story arc with plenty of room to tell many more tales in this universe. Let’s hope Leckie does.”
[open new]
Leckie wrote her first epic fantasy novel, The Raven Tower, which explores politics, divine intervention, and revenge. The Raven god watches over the country of Iraden, speaking through a mortal bird to the Lease, the god’s representative on earth. When the bird dies, the Lease will sacrifice himself and be replaced. The Lease’s son and heir Mawat and his transgender warrior Eolo return from battle to find his father missing and Mawat’s uncle as the new Lease. As Eolo embarks on a quest to the Raven’s Tower to learn what has transpired, the millennia-long story of an alliance of gods, a usurped throne, and an invading neighboring country is told by a god older than humanity and embodied as a stone.
“This impressive piece of craftsmanship cements Leckie’s place as a powerful voice in both SF and fantasy,” declared a reviewer in Publishers Weekly. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews noted: “There is so much story and careful thought packed into this short volume,” adding that the book is “Sharp, many layered, and, as always for Leckie, deeply intelligent.” Nell Keep in Booklist praised Leckie’s well-realized fantasy world “full of not only magic and gods but also characters representing a broad spectrum of gender and sexuality.”
In an interview with Erik Pedersen at Orange County Registry, Leckie explained: “I don’t personally see a huge difference between science fiction and fantasy… They’re both based on the idea of counterfactuals, right? The world isn’t like this, but what if the world were like this?… I understand wanting to work with realistic science. …But in the end, it’s about the story. And if I have to violate that for the story, I’m going to violate that for the story.”
In the stand-alone novel, Provenance, set in the world of her “Imperial Radch” series, Ingray Aughskold is determined to impress her stepmother enough to become her heir, over her scheming foster brother. She decides to free a notorious thief, Pahlad, from a prison planet, expecting them to steal a priceless artifact, but she got the wrong person. Ingray and Pahlad become involved in an escalating interstellar conflict and have to dodge a strange alien ambassador. A Kirkus Reviews critic noted: “Leckie again uses large-scale worldbuilding to tell a deeply personal story—in this case, to explore what binds children to their families.” In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer remarked that Provenance doesn’t have the richness Leckie’s fans expect, but nevertheless is “full of the charm and wit characterizing Leckie’s other works.”
Translation State takes place in the Imperial Radch world, which is at war after the events of Ancillary Mercy. The fate of three seemingly disparate characters collide. Qven, a juvenile Presger genetically designed to translate the Presger language into human, rebels, refusing to merge physically and mentally with another person. Reluctant diplomate Enae is sent on the impossible task of finding a fugitive Translator who went missing 200 years ago. Orphan mechanic Reet searches for answers about his past and learns that his genetic status makes him less human. The three come together as political upheaval threatens interspecies relations and peaceful coexistence.
“Leckie’s humane, emotionally intelligent, and deeply perceptive writing makes this tautly plotted adventure feel fundamentally true,” according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Marlene Harris reported in Library Journal: “any SF reader who loves political skullduggery told through fascinating and empathetic characters will be captivated.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor said: “this is yet another opportunity for Leckie to explore her favorite themes: the meaning of family, humanity, and the right to one’s personhood.”
Leckie’s Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction gathers 18 short stories, including stories from the Imperial Radch and the Raven Tower universes, that “examine issues of autonomy and what a person owes to themself versus their obligations to family and society at large,” reported a Kirkus Reviews writer. The stories involve a god living as a human and making human mistakes, an outlaw sea captain making a deal with an ambitious deity, a ritual ballgame that decides who becomes ruler, a human anthropologist who meets an alien on a spiritual journey, and space traveling dinosaurs. The stories “pack surprisingly dense plots into small packages, and have plenty of juicy subtext to reward re-reading,” declared Regina Schroeder in Booklist. In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer noted: “the detailed worlds, intelligent plotting, and clear-eyed compassion make these stories standout.”
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 1, 2019, Nell Keep, review of The Raven Tower; March 15, 2024, Regina Schroeder, review of Lake of Souls, p. 51.
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2013, review of Ancillary Justice; September 15, 2014, review of Ancillary Sword; August 1, 2015, review of Ancillary Mercy; August 1, 2017, review of Provenance; December 1, 2018, review of The Raven Tower; April 1, 2023, review of Translation State January 15, 2024, review of Lake of Souls.
Library Journal, April 2023, Marlene Harris, review of Translation State, p. 89.
Publishers Weekly, August 5, 2013, review of Ancillary Justice, p. 52; August 11, 2014, review of Ancillary Sword, p. 47; September 7, 2015, review of Ancillary Mercy, p. 50; July 31, 2017, review of Provenance, p. 68; November 12, 2018, review of The Raven Tower, p. 43; March 27, 2023, review of Translation State, p. 66; February 5, 2024, review of Lake of Souls, p. 156.
ONLINE
Ann Leckie Home Page, http://www.annleckie.com (September 10, 2015).
Book Smugglers, http://thebooksmugglers.com/ (October 4, 2013), review of Ancillary Justice; (October 7, 2014), review of Ancillary Sword.
Girls in Capes, http://girlsincapes.com/ (October 9, 2013), author interview.
Little Red Reviewer, http://littleredreviewer.wordpress.com/ (December 4, 2013), review of Ancillary Justice.
NPR Online, http://www.npr.org/ (October 8, 2013), Genevieve Valentine, review of Ancillary Justice; (October 7, 2014), Genevieve Valentine, review of Ancillary Sword; (October 5, 2015), Genevieve Valentine, review of Ancillary Mercy.
Orange County Register, https://www.ocregister.com/ (June 16, 2023), Erik Pedersen, “The Book Pages: ‘Translation State’ Author Ann Leckie on Octavia Butler, AI & More.”
Orbit Books, http://www.orbitbooks.net/ (March 1, 2014), author interview.
Qwillery, http://qwillery.blogspot.com/ (October 1, 2013), author interview.
SF Signal, http://www.sfsignal.com/ (February 18, 2016), Anthony Vicino, review of Ancillary Mercy.
Slate, http://www.slate.com/ (November, 2015), Tammy Oler, review of Ancillary Mercy.
Space.com, http://www.space.com/ (October 29, 2013), Miriam Kramer, “Inside Ancillary Justice: Q&A with Sci-Fi Author Ann Leckie.”
Speculative Herald, http://www.speculativeherald.com/ (October 12, 2015), review of Ancillary Mercy.
Sword & Laser, http://swordandlaser.com/ (January 28, 2015), Daniel Eavenson, review of Ancillary Sword.
Tor.com, http://www.tor.com/ (October 15, 2015), Liz Bourke, review of Ancillary Mercy.
Ann Leckie is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Award winning novel Ancillary Justice. She has also published short stories inSubterranean Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Realms of Fantasy. Her story “Hesperia and Glory” was reprinted in Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2007 Edition edited by Rich Horton.
Ann has worked as a waitress, a receptionist, a rodman on a land-surveying crew, and a recording engineer. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
You can contact her at ann@annleckie.com
Frequently Asked Questions
There are some questions I seem to get over and over again, so I’m going to put them, and the answers, here.
Q: How do you pronounce [character name]?
So, with some exceptions, I actually tried very hard to keep the spelling of names consistent so that it would be fairly easy to figure out how to pronounce them. This turns out not to have been terribly effective. Sorry.
Basically, vowels are all more or less Latin-ish. Ah, eh, ih, oh, oo. C is, I’m pretty sure, always hard. G can go either way. (Geck is hard g, Giarod is soft) Ch is like “cheese” or “chess.”
Where two vowels occur together, just say one after the other. So ei would be like eh-ih, or basically like a long a in English. Ai is ah-ih, so like a long I. That double a is just a slightly longer ah.
Stress is nearly always on the second to last syllable–this was by accident and I didn’t notice it until I was pronouncing names for the folks who did the US audiobook of Justice. (That US audiobook of Ancillary Justice has the pronunciations straight from me, btw.) There are a few exceptions–Mianaai and Vendaai are among them. Stress is on that “aai” for those names, but “Radchaai” has its stress on the first syllable.
I pronounce a final “e” like “eh” so I say that e on the end of Dlique.
Raughd–I treat the gh like an f. Omaugh–I don’t say the gh at all. I have no idea why I did this. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Rrrrrr is hands-down my least pronounceable name (I try hard to make them all pronounceable, this was a deliberate exception). I just say “rrrrrrrr” like, the sound of the letter R.
All that said, Radch space is huge and contains any number of languages that have been assimilated to varying degrees. There are all sorts of regional accents and dialects. So however you’re pronouncing things is probably right somewhere.
Q: Why is Ancillary Sword not called Mercy? There wasn’t much sword in it!
When I originally conceived of the trilogy, the three titles were ship names. So when I finished Justice and started querying agents, the ms title was Justice of Toren. Book two was going to be Sword of Atagaris, and book three Mercy of Kalr. My agent felt that Justice of Toren wasn’t a particularly good title, and suggested Ancillary Justice instead. I agreed, pleased that my original justice/sword/mercy scheme could remain in place.
By the time I finished Sword, Sword of Atagaris wasn’t as prominent a character as I had intended it to be. But I felt–and still feel–that Sword was not an appropriate title for the third book, and so resisted suggestions to switch them around.
Q: I don’t get the thing about the gender. Why are the Radchaai all “she”? Is it because they’re all women? I don’t understand why some characters are called “she” in some places and “he” in others.
The use of “she” was intended as a translation convention–the Radchaai language not only doesn’t use gendered pronouns for people (quite a lot of existing languages don’t, as it happens), but gender is not relevant to them. So if, say, here on Earth we were translating something from Finnish, which doesn’t use gendered pronouns, we’d have to figure out what gender to use when transferring those pronouns to English, which do require gender. In the case of Finnish, which isn’t (so far as I know) spoken in a culture where gender is irrelevant, there are several other cues to give us that information: names, particular articles of clothing, etc.
If I’m translating something out of Radchaai, however, there are no such cues. So for convenience, I “translate” them all as “she.” This does not imply anything about the gender of any particular person. It’s just that whenever Breq (or another character) is speaking Radchaai, that’s the way the pronoun they’re using is translated.
When Breq–or another character–is speaking another language, however, some people might be referred to with masculine pronouns.
Q: Okay, but then why did you use words like “Lord” and “Sir” which are masculine?
For a general explanation of why I choose any particular word, please see this blog post.
Q: So, then, what gender is [Character]?
I probably don’t know. Because it didn’t matter to the story and because of the pronoun choice I’d made, I didn’t have to figure it out.
Q: Why did you block me on Twitter?
I’ve written about this here and followed it up here.
Q: Are you related to the author Robert Leckie?
Yes. Though it would take some work on my part to figure out how. Which I’m not particularly interested in doing. But anyone with the surname “Leckie” is related to me in some way. As always in such cases, this has its positive features and its less-positive ones.
Ann Leckie
Ann has worked as a waitress, a receptionist, a rodman on a land-surveying crew, and a recording engineer. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband, children, and cats. She's currently the Secretary for the SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America).
Awards: Hugo (2014), BSFA (2014), Clarke (2014), Nebula (2013) see all
Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy
Series
Imperial Radch
1. Ancillary Justice (2013)
2. Ancillary Sword (2014)
3. Ancillary Mercy (2015)
Provenance (2017)
Translation State (2023)
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Novels
The Raven Tower (2019)
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Collections
Lake of Souls (2024)
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Series contributed to
Far Reaches
4. The Long Game (2023)
The Book Pages: ‘Translation State’ author Ann Leckie on Octavia Butler, AI & more
Plus, how California lawyer Katherine Lin used her grueling commute to dream up her debut novel.
Novelist Ann Leckie is the author of “Translation State.” (Photo credit MissionPhoto.org / Courtesy of Orbit Books)
Novelist Ann Leckie is the author of “Translation State.” (Photo credit MissionPhoto.org / Courtesy of Orbit Books)
By Erik Pedersen | epedersen@scng.com
UPDATED: June 16, 2023 at 6:22 p.m.
There’s something almost otherworldly about Ann Leckie’s success.
After the publication of her first book, 2013’s “Ancillary Justice,” she won the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke awards – something no other novel had ever achieved – as well as other top honors. That Leckie’s wins came as the sci-fi community was experiencing its own version of the culture wars – some of it quite unpleasant – made her sweep that much more impressive.
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Since then, she’s completed the Imperial Radch trilogy; the stand-alone, “Provenance”; and 2019’s fantasy “The Raven Tower.” And now she returns to the Radch universe with “Translation State,” out this month from Orbit Books
This new novel blends mystery, science fiction, family drama and a bit of horror in which a low-level maintenance worker, a translator for a dangerous alien race and a diplomat become enmeshed in an interspecies incident that could threaten the peace treaty currently keeping the universe safe.
While her rescue dog Van Buren was downstairs with her husband, the St. Louis-based Leckie generously made time to discuss creating a fictional universe, experimenting with pronouns in fiction, writing fantasy vs. sci-fi and more.
Our Zoom conversation, which was wide-ranging and full of laughter, has been edited for space and clarity.
Q. In the new book, “Translation State,” you have action, suspense and even horror, but you also create relationships between characters who are adopted – or are attempting to make a new family – that are gentle and very moving.
Thank you. My mom was adopted. One of the things that I experienced, and I’m sure my mom did when she was younger and it would infuriate her, people would say to me, “But do you know who your real grandparents are?” I’d be like, “I don’t know who my biological grandparents are, but my real grandparents are those folks in Toledo, Ohio, who are my mom’s parents.” I got kind of sensitive to that. That’s part of why I’m like, Adoption is a thing and those are real families. I wanted a positive portrayal of that.
Q. You said you wrote this novel during the pandemic when it was a struggle for many to focus on reading and writing. What did you read during that time?
I must have read Martha Wells’ Murderbot books, like, five times over the past couple of years. First of all, they’re awesome. Secondly, there’s also something very comforting about Murderbot.
A lot of times we talk about the best and most important art as being rough, with edges, and disturbing, and that’s a thing that art can and should do. But I think sometimes we look down a bit on art that’s comforting. And there’s something about Murderbot that’s just very comforting. I found myself reading Murderbot over and over again – that and Katherine Addison’s ‘The Goblin Emperor.’
You probably noticed that [the soap opera a character watches in “Translation State”] ‘Pirate Exiles of the Death Moons’ is a hat tip to Murderbot [who watches soaps] because I love Murderbot so much.
[Ed. note: The admiration is mutual. In 2021, Wells talked to me about Leckie’s novels: “Her books are a big influence on me. And have you read her fantasy novel, “The Raven Tower”? That’s really good.”]
Q. You created an entire universe for your Imperial Radch books. What’s it like to construct a universe?
I ran across a quote by somebody several years ago and I thought it was hilarious because it was right: They said being a professional writer is like having homework for the rest of your life. Which is true, but you only have to do the fun parts of the homework.
When I get stuck, I love to go to the library and walk up and down the history and anthropology shelves and just pull off any titles that call to me. There’s usually something in there that will help me. So that’s part of why the universe is so big, because I just love to look for all that stuff. To me, that’s the fun part.
Actually, it’s an illusion of the universe being really big. A trick to make the universe seem big is to have lots of sort of ragged edges trailing off in different directions that I never tie up. And so it looks like if you’d peer around the frame, there would be more picture – but there isn’t.
Q. In your original Imperial Radch trilogy, the main character Breq, who speaks a language without gendered pronouns (like Finnish), refers to most characters as ‘she.’ In “Translation State,” there are more pronoun variations.
As I wrote the trilogy, I was using “she” as the default term, which made sense in that [book’s] cultural context. But doing that made me really interested in the kinds of things people said about pronouns and gender out in the real world and how people experience their gender and how they do or don’t have pronouns used and what pronouns they like to use. And I said, Well, this is science fiction, right? We can imagine a world that maybe isn’t exactly like our world where this is a thing.
What other neopronouns are there? What other setups of gender can we have? What would happen if you’ve got different cultures outside the Radch who think about gender in a slightly different way? I decided, Why not lean into that because that’s kind of interesting, that’s a thing that people I know are talking about and are experiencing in their lives. And so, I decided to just go ahead and continue to do that in this book.
Q. Let’s talk about your fantasy novel, “The Raven Tower”? Did you always see yourself writing both fantasy and science fiction?
The majority of my short fiction pieces are set in that same universe as “The Raven Tower.” And there are folks who read my short fiction who were surprised that I wrote science fiction – they were waiting for me to write a fantasy novel.
I don’t personally see a huge difference between science fiction and fantasy, and I know there are people who would take very large issue with my saying that, but my opinion is they’re so closely related that they’re impossible to separate.
Q. That’s interesting. How so?
They’re both based on the idea of counterfactuals, right? The world isn’t like this, but what if the world were like this? I know folks who feel very strongly that science fiction is not only different, but better, because it’s based on science.
I was raised by scientists and they never understood my love of science fiction. Part of it was because they just thought it was just kid stuff, but part of it was because some of the science would be ridiculous. Biology, in particular, gets very short shrift.
For the most part, science fiction is science-y rather than scientific. I understand wanting to work with realistic science. I do try to when I can. I try and make most of the physics real-ish. But in the end, it’s about the story. And if I have to violate that for the story, I’m going to violate that for the story.
I feel like science fiction and fantasy are using different sets of toys to examine some of the same things. Not always, frequently. The most popular kinds of fantasy are looking to the past, like Tolkien, in particular, was explicitly writing mythology that was meant to take place in the distant past. He was thinking in terms of the origins of things, and science fiction often is thinking in terms of the consequences of things, but that’s not always the case.
Q. Can you talk about your influences?
Probably the biggest influences on me as a writer have been Andre Norton, Jack Vance and CJ Cherryh, and Cherryh in particular. There are a couple of explicit nods to Cherryh in the text of the trilogy. Die-hard fans notice them right away.
Q. When you were starting out at the Clarion West writer’s workshop, you spent time with the legendary Octavia Butler. Can you talk about that?
The workshop administrators told us in advance, She’s very shy, and sure enough, that was absolutely the case. But she was also awesome.
She pulled [my story] out and said, ‘This is exactly like old-school space opera stuff; I really like it.’ When we had our one-on-one conference, she said, Now you are not under the misapprehension that this is a short story, are you? And I said, No. She’s like, I thought so: You’re a novelist.
She was very kind, she understood where we were at, she was tremendous. And oh, what a loss.
Q. You’ve written about AI, and now it’s become a larger part of the cultural conversation. Has that affected your writing about AI at all?
I don’t think it affects it much, because I don’t think what we’ve really got here is actual AI. What we have is a large language-learning model. And people are making a lot of noise about how it’s AI and oh, it’s gonna take over writers’ jobs. We’ve trained it to spit out phrases in statistically likely orders, but it’s not thinking. It’s not even close to thinking. It’s producing random output, or output from a seed, which a random number generator does the same thing only slightly less complicated. That’s kind of my take on it.
I don’t think what everybody’s talking about is really AI, certainly not in the science-fictional sense. I don’t think we’re even close to science-fictional AI at this point.
We’re in far more danger from large corporations who are making profit at any cost than we are from actual artificial intelligence at this point. And we are in a great deal of danger from corporations who are doing profit at any cost.
Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy. (Courtesy of Orbit)
Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy. (Courtesy of Orbit)
• • •
This week, we lost three legends: novelist Cormac McCarthy, comic book artist John Romita, Sr. and editor Robert Gottlieb. While I shared an anecdote about reading McCarthy’s “The Road” last year, there are some wonderful pieces to read about each of these creators, which I plan to do this weekend. As well, I’ve had the film “Turn Every Page,” a documentary about Gottlieb and Robert Caro, queued up for months, and will aim to watch that this weekend.
It’s also, of course, Bloomsday today, and while I probably will celebrate it as I always do – by meaning to tackle James Joyce’s novel – I did write about the Huntington’s exhibit featuring Joyce last year.
What else are you looking forward to reading this summer? Please feel free to email me at epedersen@scng.com with “ERIK’S BOOK PAGES” in the subject line and I may include your comments in an upcoming newsletter.
And if you enjoy this free newsletter, please consider sharing it with someone who likes books or getting a digital subscription to support local coverage.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
Issue 211 – April 2024
Interview
Science Fiction Is Spice: A
Conversation with Ann Leckie
by Arley Sorg
Ann Leckie was born in Toledo, OH and grew up in St. Louis, MO. Her parents gave her books to read but initially thought she’d “grow out of” science fiction. “I did benefit from living in easy walking distance from the local library, and I spent nearly every Saturday morning there through a lot of my childhood. It was wonderful to have that easy access to so many books. Libraries are the best.”
Leckie earned a BA in music at Washington University. She also joined internet critique groups Critters and the Online Writing Workshop and participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). In 2005 Leckie attended the Clarion West six-week writing workshop, where she wrote her first published SF story, “Hesperia and Glory” (Subterranean Magazine #4, 2006). The story was reprinted in Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2007 (edited by Rich Horton for Prime Books). Leckie would sell numerous short stories—some of which were selected for various year’s bests—before the 2013 publication of landmark title Ancillary Justice.
“I was working as a lunch lady when I sold Ancillary Justice. It wasn’t a full-time job—at the time, in fact, I was only an Emergency Backup Lunch Lady, because I’d decided I really needed to focus on getting AJ finished and out the door. I wasn’t supporting the family with my income, so that made it easier for me.” Debut novel Ancillary Justice, published by Orbit, swept major genre awards: British Science Fiction Association, British Fantasy Association, Kitschies, Locus, Nebula, Clarke, and Hugo—it even won a Seiun Award; not to mention placing for a few other awards as well. AJ began the Imperial Radch series, which includes 2014 title Ancillary Sword (Hugo and Nebula Award finalist and BSFA and Locus Award winner) and 2015 title Ancillary Mercy (Hugo Award, Nebula, and Dragon Award finalist with a Locus Award win). She added novel Provenance to the universe in 2017, which garnered BSFA, Locus, Hugo, and Seiun nominations. She also added Translation State in 2023, to multiple starred reviews and a Dragon Award nomination.
In 2019 Orbit published Ann Leckie’s The Raven Tower, a novel in a world for which she had already written and published several short stories. Raven earned her Dragon, Locus, and World Fantasy nominations, as well as a Hugo nomination which she declined.
Ann Leckie has worked as a waitress, a receptionist, a rodman on a land-surveying crew, and a recording engineer. “It’s difficult to resist picking up a new hobby, or cycling through them, so I’ll be in a knitting phase, or a beading phase, or a metalwork phase, or whatever. Currently I’m on a sewing jag, and it’s pretty amazing to be able to make clothes that actually fit!”
Leckie lives in St. Louis with her family. Her latest is collection Lake of Souls—with stories “From the Imperial Radch Universe,” “From the Universe of The Raven Tower,” and an untitled section—due from Orbit this month.
author photo
What, for you, does science fiction and fantasy do which is perhaps different from other forms of fiction?
I’m not honestly sure. Sometimes I think it’s just a question of, like, spice in food—a story strikes me as bland if it doesn’t have some kind of odd worldbuilding or strange tech. Like, when I’m very tired or need some kind of light reading, I will happily pick up one of the fluffier sort of romances (not all romances, obviously, are fluffy or light reading) but it really has to be either historical or have some fantastic element.
Which isn’t to say I don’t absolutely love a lot of amazing realist works. Just, if given a choice, I’d rather have spec in there somewhere.
To a certain extent, having a long history of reading SFF has made me familiar with the ways SFF constructs worlds and interrogates things and so it just feels comfortable. But I do think SFF does different things or can do certain things more easily—it’s great for being able to look at contemporary things from very different angles, and getting perspectives that you wouldn’t ordinarily get. Of course, it doesn’t always do that, sometimes it’s just about blowing up spaceships or whatever, which is absolutely fine in my opinion.
I really do feel that a great popcorn book that’s just sheer fluffy fun is deserving of tremendous respect –sometimes I think people kind of sniff at the idea of a book that’s “just” escapist entertainment or consider it an insulting thing to say about a book or an author, but that’s such an important thing to be able to have, and it’s by no means easy to write. (I want to add, too, that it’s important to have different kinds of escapist entertainment, because different people are escaping different things about the real world and entertained by different things. We should have all the flavors of popcorn and cotton candy!)
You founded and edited magazine GigaNotoSaurus for several years. “A little bigger than Tyrannosaurus, a little smaller than Spinosaurus,” the magazine is a venue for stories of novelette and novella length. How did editing the webzine come about, and what impact, if any, did it have on your own fiction?
Before I wrote Ancillary Justice, I was trying to write short fiction. And finding that I naturally was writing fairly long works—things over ten thousand words. And most of the publications I ran across weren’t buying anything longer than about five thousand, and often even shorter—this was the heyday of online flash fiction, actually. So I set out to learn to write shorter and shorter.
But I often wished that there were more places that would take longer work. And when I inherited a small chunk of money I decided that I could do a very simple online magazine, so I did.
If nothing else, editing GNS gave me a feel for what was working in a given story and what wasn’t working, and why. After you read that much slush, with an eye to whether you can make it work or fix the things that aren’t working for you, and how that might be done—I feel like I got much better at doing that with my own work.
Long before the publication of Ancillary Justice, you attended Clarion West in 2005, and quickly sold your first short story (written at Clarion West) to Subterranean Magazine. What is your relationship to short fiction, how does it compare to your relationship with novels?
I have a somewhat fraught relationship with short fiction! Left to my own devices I’m going to write a novel, or at least a novelette. (Oddly I don’t think I’ve ever produced a novella!)
I had a weird experience when I tried writing shorter and shorter, I finally got down to a three-hundred-word piece (which is in the collection actually) and I figured that was as low as I was going to get and focused on turning out stuff at about five thousand. And then I sat down to do AJ and I felt this sense of panic—I chose a starting place as far in as I possibly could, and I still had so much exposition to fit in and I couldn’t possibly do it. And then I realized that this was not, in fact, a short story and I had as much room as I wanted, and I realized how different the habit of writing short fiction was from novels.
Lake of Souls brings together eighteen of your stories, divided into three sections. Do you see this as a “best-of” or is there another organizational drive at work? And were there pieces that were considered which didn’t make the final cut?
There are a few pieces that didn’t make the final cut. One, “The Long Game,” because it only came out in 2023. A few because they’re very early works that I don’t think stand up. But there aren’t many of those, and this collection is more or less complete.
What can you tell us about original “Lake of Souls” without spoiling the read too much?
“Lake of Souls” started as a speculative biology idea my daughter suggested to me, a particular kind of genetic parasitism that, while we walked the dog, we worked up into something we thought was cool and interesting. It was such an interesting idea that with her permission I made a story around it.
The oldest publication date in Lake of Souls is that first short story, “Hesperia and Glory,” while the latest (besides the original piece) is “The Justified,” originally published in 2019 anthology The Mythic Dream. Looking at this body of work as a writing journey, what has changed about your craft, your approach, or your interests, and the way they come through in your fiction?
I’ve definitely become more confident. Looking back, there are a lot of deliberate structural choices that I made so that I would know where to even begin, which is a thing that causes anxiety in a lot of aspiring writers. These days it’s not as though I don’t plan a structure in advance but it’s generally not so strict or so, I don’t know, overt? I guess it’s like riding a bike—at first it’s awkward and you’re thinking about every move very consciously, and then after a while you just do it.
When you think on these stories, are there underlying themes or motifs that run through many of them, concerns you often come back to and speak to in your fiction?
I honestly don’t know. I suspect it’s much easier for other people to see than me.
Publishers Weekly praises your “detailed worlds, intelligent plotting, and clear-eyed compassion . . . ” What is the key to great plotting, especially in the confines of shorter fiction?
It seems to me that it’s the confines of short fiction that are the biggest factor in plotting it—you can have as large and elaborate a plot (and world) as you like, but you’ve only got a certain amount of space to fit it all into. So you have to slice off whatever won’t fit, and either imply it or do without it.
I also feel that good plotting isn’t just following traditional forms—not that a writer can ever totally escape traditional plots, they’re the air we breathe basically and there are plot shapes that readers come to expect and that our minds just produce without even thinking about it. But it’s important to question those expectations when you see yourself reproducing them. Is that really what you want to say? Is that really what your characters would do? Thinking of the characters as people, as though they were real people, not stereotypes, or dolls you’re moving around. Plot is very much the result of character, just as characters are a product of their world.
(I’ve got nothing against moving dolls around and telling stories, I spent a lot of my childhood with an assortment of paper dolls who lived in a town made of cardboard boxes and had all kinds of drama, much of which I don’t even remember now.)
If readers were to look at three stories in this book, what would you most want them to read, and why?
Hmm. “Lake of Souls,” certainly, because it’s new. The others—it’s difficult to say! It would depend so much on which reader and what I thought they would like best or what they might want the most out of a story.
You commented in a recent interview with Locus Magazine that “Nobody paid much attention to my stories.” The publication of Ancillary Justice was met with a heap of awards. Did the recognition and attention create a sense of pressure, did it motivate you to write more, did it change your perspectives on the industry?
It was a very, very strange experience. To go from publishing but only a few people seemed to have read my work to what seemed like the whole SFF world knowing my name—it was just bizarre and hallucinatory. It was exhilarating and also terrifying, because it wasn’t just a few short fiction readers seeing the work, it was seemingly everyone.
At first it made writing a lot more fraught—so many people were expecting more work from me and highly interested in what it would be! It was terrifying. But after a while it actually got easier, and now sitting down to a new piece doesn’t inspire the anxiety it used to. After such a large sample of reactions to my work, it’s clear to me that some people will like it and some won’t and that’s just how things are, so I’m writing for the people who will like it.
When I first started out, I was desperate to sell my work and I would have written whatever in any sort of way that might get an editor to cut me a check and publish my words. I kept looking for whatever that one thing would be—“The Endangered Camp,” in fact, is a product of my having seen an interview with John Joseph Adams—who was reading slush for F&SF at the time—where he said that he wished he would see more stories in slush about dinosaurs, or about space elevators, more post-apocalyptic stories, or stories about Mars. And I was trying to sell to F&SF and hoping JJA would pass my stories up to Gordon, and I thought “Well, the dinosaurs had an apocalypse, how do I involve Mars or a space elevator?” I didn’t get the space elevator in.
I’m happy with how that story turned out, actually. But one of the things I’ve learned is that working too hard to please some theoretical editorial taste isn’t going to help you much in the long term. I mean, unless you’re a genius at doing that, which I’m sure some people are. But these days I’m going to focus on what interests me in a project, and not what I think an editor will like. And when I tell writers that—I taught at Clarion West a few years ago, and just a few months ago I taught at the first Wandering Wormhole, a bunch of fabulous young writers—I often get skepticism in return. And I remember that my perspective now is very, very different.
What else are you working on, what’s coming up that readers should know about?
Currently I’m working on a draft of my next novel, which doesn’t have a title yet, but is set in the Imperial Radch universe.
Ann Leckie
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ann Leckie
Ann Leckie receiving the Hugo Award in 2014
Ann Leckie receiving the Hugo Award in 2014
Born March 2, 1966 (age 58)[1]
Toledo, Ohio, U.S.[2]
Occupation Author
Nationality American
Period 2006–present
Genre Science fiction, fantasy
Notable works Ancillary Justice
Notable awards Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award, BSFA Award, Locus Award
Website
annleckie.com
Ann Leckie (born March 2, 1966[1])[3] is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. Her 2013 debut novel Ancillary Justice, which features artificial consciousness and gender-blindness, won the 2014 Hugo Award for "Best Novel",[4][5] as well as the Nebula Award,[6] the Arthur C. Clarke Award,[7] and the BSFA Award.[8] The sequels, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, each won the Locus Award and were nominated for the Nebula Award. Provenance, published in 2017, and Translation State, published in 2023, are also set in the Imperial Radch universe. Leckie's first fantasy novel, The Raven Tower, was published in February 2019.[9]
Career
Having grown up as a science fiction fan in St. Louis, Missouri, Leckie's attempts in her youth to get her science fiction works published were unsuccessful. One of her few publications from that time was an unattributed bodice-ripper in True Confessions.[3]
After giving birth to her children in 1996 and 2000, boredom as a stay-at-home mother motivated her to sketch a first draft of what would become Ancillary Justice for National Novel Writing Month 2002. In 2005, Leckie attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop, where she studied under Octavia Butler. After that, she wrote Ancillary Justice over a period of six years; it was picked up by the publisher Orbit in 2012 and published the following year.[3][9]
Leckie has published numerous short stories, in outlets including Subterranean Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Realms of Fantasy. Her short stories have been selected for inclusion in year's best collections, such as The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, edited by Rich Horton.[10]
She edited the science fiction and fantasy online magazine Giganotosaurus[11] from 2010 to 2013, and is assistant editor of the PodCastle podcast.[12] She served as the secretary of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America from 2012 to 2013.[13]
Imperial Radch trilogy
Leckie's debut novel Ancillary Justice, the first book of the Imperial Radch space opera trilogy, was published to critical acclaim in October 2013 and won all of the principal English-language science fiction awards (see Ann Leckie#Awards and nominations). It follows Breq, the sole survivor of a starship destroyed by treachery and vessel of that ship's artificial consciousness, as she attempts to avenge herself on the ruler of her empire.
The sequel, Ancillary Sword, was published in October 2014, and the conclusion, Ancillary Mercy, was published in October 2015. "Night's Slow Poison"[14] (2014) and "She Commands Me and I Obey"[15] (2014) are short stories set in the same universe.
Other novels
In 2015, Orbit Books purchased two additional novels from Leckie. The first, Provenance (published on 3 October 2017), is set in the Imperial Radch universe.[16] The second was to have been an unrelated science fiction novel.[17] In April 2018, Orbit announced that Leckie's first fantasy novel, The Raven Tower, would be published in early 2019.[18] Another standalone novel set in the Imperial Radch universe entitled Translation State was published on June 6th, 2023.
Bibliography
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (December 2016)
Novels
Set in the Ancillary universe
Imperial Radch trilogy
Ancillary Justice. (1 October 2013). Orbit. ISBN 978-0-356-50240-3.
Ancillary Sword. (7 October 2014). Orbit. ISBN 978-0-356-50241-0.
Ancillary Mercy. (6 October 2015). Orbit. ISBN 978-0-356-50242-7.
Other novels
Provenance. (26 September 2017). Orbit. ISBN 978-0-316-38867-2.
Translation State. (6 June 2023). Orbit. ISBN 978-0316289719.[19]
Non-Ancillary novels
The Raven Tower. (26 February 2019). Orbit. ISBN 978-0316388696.[18]
Short fiction
"Hesperia and Glory". (2006). Subterranean Magazine 4.[20] (Reprinted in Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2007 Edition, edited by Rich Horton)
"Footprints". (2007). Postcards from Hell: The First Thirteen.
"The Snake's Wife". (2007). Helix #6. (Reprinted on Transcriptase[21])
"Needle and Thread" - co-authored by Rachel Swirsky. (2008). Lone Star Stories #29.[22]
"The Nalendar". (2008). Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Issue #36. (Reprinted in Uncanny Magazine #2, January 2015[23] and as audio on PodCastle #52, May 2009[24])
"Clickweed". (July 2008). A Field Guide to Surreal Botany.
"Marsh Gods". (7 July 2008). Strange Horizons.
"The God of Au". Helix #8. (Reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2009, edited by Rich Horton)
"The Endangered Camp". (2009). Clockwork Phoenix 2. (Reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2010, edited by Rich Horton)
"The Sad History of the Tearless Onion" (12 June 2009). PodCastle Miniature #33.[25]
"The Unknown God". (February 2010). Realms of Fantasy.
"Beloved of the Sun". (21 October 2010). Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
"Maiden, Mother, Crone". (December 2010). Realms of Fantasy. (Reprinted in Lightspeed, January 2015 and as audio on PodCastle #500, 11 December 2017[26])
"The Endangered Camp".[27] (12 March 2012). Clockwork Phoenix 2. (Reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2010 and Forever Magazine, March 2015)
"Saving Bacon". (39 July 2014). PodCastle #322.[28]
"Another Word for World". (2015). Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Stories Inspired by Microsoft.
"The Justified". (2019). The Mythic Dream.
Set in the Ancillary universe
"Night's Slow Poison". (2012) Electric Velocipede, reprinted (2014). Tor.[14]
"She Commands Me and I Obey". (2014). Strange Horizons.[15]
Critical studies and reviews of Leckie's work
Sparks, Cat (February–March 2014). "[Untitled review of Ancillary Justice]". Coda. Reviews. Cosmos. 55: 105.
Awards and nominations
Ancillary Justice (2013)
2013: won the Nebula Award for Best Novel
2013: won the BSFA Award for Best Novel
2013: won the Kitschies Award Golden Tentacle (Debut)[29]
2014: won the Hugo Award for Best Novel
2014: won the Arthur C. Clarke Award
2014: won the Locus Award for Best First Novel
2014: won the British Fantasy Award for the Best Newcomer (the Sydney J. Bounds Award)
2016: won the Prix Bob-Morane [fr] for Best Translated Novel[30]
2016: won the Seiun Award for Best Translated Novel[31] (Japan)
2013: Nominated for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award
2013: Nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award[32]
2014: Finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel[33]
2014: Finalist for the Compton Crook Award[34]
Ancillary Sword (2014)
2014: won the BSFA Award for Best Novel[35]
2015: won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
2014: Nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel[36]
2015: Finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Novel[37]
Ancillary Mercy (2015)
2016: won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel[38]
2015: Nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel[39]
2016: Finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Novel[40]
2016: Nominated for the Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel[41]
Imperial Radch trilogy (2013–2015)
2017: Patrick Marcel [fr] won Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire for Best Translator (Jacques Chambon Translation Prize) for Les Chroniques du Radch, tomes 1 à 3[42] (France)
2017: Nominated for Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire for Best Foreign Novel[42] (France)
2017: Nominated for the Seiun Award for Best Translated Novel[43]
Provenance (2017)
2018: Nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel[44]
Personal life
Leckie earned a degree in music from Washington University in St. Louis in 1989.[3] She has since held various jobs, including as a waitress, a receptionist, a land surveyor, a lunch lady, and a recording engineer. She is married to David Harre, with whom she has a son and daughter, and lives with her family in St. Louis, Missouri.[3][45]
Aliens, Mind-Controlled Robots & Multispecies Conflict: Q&A with 'Provenance' Author Ann Leckie
News
By Sarah Lewin( space.com-spaceflight ) published September 26, 2017
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Provenance book cover
"Provenance" (Orbit books, 2017) by Ann Leckie (Image credit: Orbit Books)
In "Provenance" (Orbit Books, 2017), released today (Sept. 26), a woman who's trying to recover priceless artifacts ends up at the center of a multiculture, multispecies conflict on a planet covered in ancient ruins.
The new novel's author, Ann Leckie, explores another corner of the universe explored in her trilogy that began with the Hugo-winning"Ancillary Justice" (Orbit Books, 2013).
Space.com caught up with Leckie to talk about alien cultures, mind-controlled robots and where she's going next. [Inside 'Ancillary Justice': Q&A with Sci-Fi Author Ann Leckie]
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Space.com: Why did you decide to write this new story in the universe you explored for the "Ancillary" trilogy?
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Ann Leckie: I had decided that whatever my next project was going to be, I wanted it to be something fun — something that I would find fun and that readers would find fun. And I said, well, what's a space opera thing I really love? One of my favorite tropes is ancient alien archaeology, [so] I started reading about the history of archaeology, and that ended up bringing me into the history of art collecting and museums. In the end, the ancient alien artifacts never really made it into the story, but I ended up writing a story about collecting artifacts, collecting things that were significant, and museums, although there aren't technically museums in this world. But that was essentially how I came to it; I started with one idea and ended up veering off to the side of it.
Ann Leckie, author of "Provenance."
Ann Leckie, author of "Provenance." (Image credit: Orbit Books)
Space.com: What were some of the themes you were excited to explore in the story?
Leckie: When I was reading about the history of museums and, to a certain extent, the history of archaeology, I was really struck by the way that civic museums — places like The British Museum [in London], the Met[ropolitan Museum of Art] in New York — are, in some ways, a claim to a particular heritage … The standard path is Egypt, Greece, Rome, medieval Europe and then us, the modern era. In some ways, it's a claim to have inherited a particular civilization or a claim to be the holders of that civilization.
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That got me started thinking about also how that applies to families, and that became a major theme of the book: how people deal with their families, the kinds of things you inherit from your family. Do you want them; do you not want them? Are they good; are they bad? Often, they're both, or they have elements of either. Some people have it worse than others; some people have it better than others. That question of parents and children and family relationships became really central.
Space.com: Did you incorporate any research into real-world science or culture into your world-building?
Leckie: I did, but there wasn't necessarily one [culture] in particular. I did do a fair amount of reading about art collection, about art fraud, about the history of museums in general. With the Radch [the civilization in the "Ancillary" trilogy], there was a very definite model; it wasn't my only model, but the main model was the Roman Empire. In this case, there isn't actually a particular culture, so I was just grabbing things that I thought looked cool and sticking them together.
Space.com: You showed interactions between really different human cultures, and with human and alien cultures, such as the Geck, as well.
Leckie: The contrast is so fun. Writing the Geck ambassador was a lot of fun. Reading and writing, I really enjoy seeing the way that a human culture that might be more or less understandable to us looks different when set next to a very, very different culture that almost might be unrecognizable.
Space.com: What was the hardest part of switching away from the characters and cultures you'd already established in previous books?
Leckie: After three books, what became difficult was, I had to do a lot more construction. By the third book of the trilogy, I already had the main things laid out, and I was just working around the structure that was already there. With this one, although the familiar universe gave me a substrate that I could work with that was super helpful, there was a whole lot that I had to build from scratch, and I wasn't used to that! I had done my building a couple of years ago — and now I have to start over fresh, and it's kind of a tough job. [Space Movies to Watch in 2017]
Space.com: Can you talk about the technology, like the remote-controlled "mech" robots, that you deployed throughout the book?
Leckie: The mechs were fun. What I wanted was something that would have a much more biological component than we usually think of machines as having. I did do some reading about how, for instance, spiders moved and worked. And they end up not being really like spiders, but I kind of cheat and call them spider mechs. But I did kind of want to go in a more biological direction with that, and I also wanted something that could act as kind of a mask, because a main thing that happens in the book is that nobody's sure who's operating what spider mech. That's kind of their main use.
But I have to admit, when I started writing, very often, what I'll do [is] just throw a bunch of things in the first couple chapters, and then as I'm going along, I'll pull things out of that box and use them. When I wrote the spider mechs, I was just like, "This is kind of cool," and I didn't know that was how I was going to use them … I was just intrigued by using something that seems like it might be an AI but wasn't an AI, something that needed involvement from another person.
I was also thinking of — there are quite a few stories where characters act using remote controls. They'll be living on Earth, and they'll work on Mars by "telepresence"-ing into a machine, and then do some work on Mars and come out of the booth or whatever. That takes a huge amount of attention, it seems to me, and also there's a weird time-lag thing. And I thought, I kind of want to play with that, with the idea of how much attention does it take to do some of these things? Because in some stories, it's like, here comes the hero … You're just going to be sitting down, thinking about nothing but working this mech, and you can't just go, "Oh, I'm going to pick up the controls and work this fancy thing." It's actually very difficult; you have to spend a lot of time and practice learning how to do [it]. [Best Space Books and Sci-Fi: A Space.com Reading List]
Space.com: Your "Ancillary" books are known for portraying a genderless society, and "Provenance" has three genders. What prompts you to continue exploring that theme?
Leckie: I'm not 100 percent sure. In some respects, I think my interest developed because of having written "Ancillary Justice," which I began writing thinking, "Wouldn't it be fun to write a society that doesn't care about gender?" As I dug more into that, that became more and more complicated a problem, and I saw that it was way more complex than I had thought it was when I started. To some extent, the process of learning things as I wrote the trilogy has made that a more interesting topic for me even than it was when I began.
In this one — when I finished the trilogy, a lot of people really enjoyed the use of default feminine in the trilogy. It was something I really enjoyed, but some folks had pointed out, and I think they're right … that as cool and fun as that is, that does kind of not acknowledge the way that gender is actually fairly complex.
In a lot of respects, this book isn't about gender at all, but I wanted to acknowledge that yeah, gender is more complicated, and it's not. We say there are two categories; that's our culture. Other cultures have different answers and different structures for how they deal with this, and so I just wanted to say — and, in the future, in space, with people all over the place — you're going to get a lot of different ways of looking at this.
Space.com: If you move on from this universe, what will you explore next?
Leckie: My short fiction was set in a very different kind of universe, and people who read me as a short-fiction writer were kind of surprised to discover that I had a totally different science-fiction universe. And so it would be fun to get back into that world, which is one that I really enjoyed. But also, I certainly don't want to bore myself. The trilogy — each of the three were very different books even though they were part of the same trilogy, because I would have bored myself otherwise. I just like to do different things.
Space.com: Do you think you have some stories about those ancient alien artifacts still to come?
Leckie: Oh, I would imagine so. Ancient alien artifacts are kind of awesome and cool, right?
This article has been edited for length. You can buy "Provenance" on Amazon.com.
Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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LAKE OF SOULS: The Collected Short Fiction
Ann Leckie
Read by Adjoa Andoh
Adjoa Andoh narrates a short story collection by Ann Leckie that includes 18 works set in the worlds of the Imperial Radch and the Raven Tower, as well as several stand-alone pieces. Andoh's stellar skills are on display in every piece, making the stories of gods, humans, and other assorted beings incredibly compelling. Standouts include "The Sad History of the Tearless Onion," in which Andoh unleashes her dry wit on a very funny story; "She Commands Me and I Obey," in which Andoh calmly narrates the horror of a coup in real time; and "The Unknown God," in which Andoh gives a remarkable turn as a frog. A stunning performance by a master narrator. K.M.P.
Hachette Audio 15.25 hrs. Unabridged
Trade Ed.: DD ISBN 9781668637739 $31.99
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 AudioFile
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"LAKE OF SOULS: The Collected Short Fiction." AudioFile Magazine, vol. 33, no. 2, Aug.-Sept. 2024, p. 53. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A805665271/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3e2de9c8. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.
Lake of Souls. By Ann Leckie. Apr. 2024. 416p. Orbit, $30 (9780316553575); e-book (9780316553810).
Leckie's short stories cover plenty of ground, from spacefaring explorers to fantastic worlds where bargains with gods are an everyday occurrence. The title story is told from two wildly different perspectives: one narrator is searching for a name, telling something of a coming-of-age story; the other is telling a story about planetary surveying and some spectacular evolutionary shenanigans. "The Unknown God" is a god living as a human, making extraordinarily human mistakes backed by unfortunately divine power, eventually being forced to face the consequences. "She Commands Me and I Obey," one of the tales of the Imperial Radch universe, tells a story about political maneuvering framed as a ballgame that will determine who sits on the Council. Fans of Leckie's work will find plenty to enjoy here--there are stories set in both the Imperial Radch and Raven Tower universes--but those wishing to dip their toes into new worlds are also in for a treat. The stories are entertaining, pack surprisingly dense plots into small packages, and have plenty of juicy subtext to reward re-reading. --Regina Schroeder
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 American Library Association
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Schroeder, Regina. "Lake of Souls." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 14, 15 Mar. 2024, pp. 51+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A788124976/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=31010cc4. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.
Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction
Ann Leckie. Orbit, $30 (416p) ISBN 978-0-316-55357-5
Hugo and Nebula Award winner Leckie (Translation State) collects 18 stories for a stunning showcase of her talents. Leckie plays with tone--from dark political intrigue in the sci-fi "Another Word for World," to the Burroughs-esque "Hesperia and Glory" and the rollicking Wodehousian "Saving Bacon"--but in every borrowed style (and in the style that is deeply her own), the detailed worlds, intelligent plotting, and clear-eyed compassion make these stories standout. Some illuminate new corners of established worlds: fans of The Raven Tower will especially enjoy the entries that follow some of that universe's thousand gods, from the tiny skink god trying to fool the powerful Nalendar river into giving up its treasure ("The Nalendar") to the outlaw sea captain who makes a deal with the covetous, ambitious deity of Au ("The God of Au"). Keen readers of the Imperial Radch books will likewise be delighted by Easter eggs sprinkled throughout the stories that tie into those novels, particularly "She Commands Me and I Obey," about a sacred ballgame that decides a regional government. Leckie's fans will treasure this. Agent: Seth Fishman, Gernert Co. (Apr.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
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"Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 5, 5 Feb. 2024, p. 156. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A782952654/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e421c94a. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.
Leckie, Ann LAKE OF SOULS Orbit (Fiction None) $29.00 4, 2 ISBN: 9780316553575
An acclaimed SFF novelist's first short-story collection encourages her characters to talk it out, for good or for ill.
Leckie likes to explore a theme across several works; for example, her Imperial Radch trilogy and related novels (including Translation State, 2023) examine issues of autonomy and what a person owes to themself versus their obligations to family and society at large. In these stories, some of which are stand-alone, some of which are set in the Imperial Radch universe, and many of which are written in the world of her short fantasy novel The Raven Tower, the prevailing theme is communication. Several stories involve people from different species or backgrounds trying to talk to one another, navigating cultural and biological differences or poor translations. Leckie examines the issue in a multitude of scenarios, including a wounded human anthropologist encountering an alien on a spiritual journey, an unwilling elderly diplomat and an angry young priestess from opposing political sides who must ally when their flier is shot down, a conflict among space-traveling dinosaurs resolved via a song, and a peevish and perhaps deluded young man's attempt to will a change in reality itself. Some may be disappointed at how few Imperial Radch stories there are; what is there will definitely appeal to fans but is also accessible to those who haven't read the books, even if they don't pick up on all the nuances. A full half of this volume is devoted to The Raven Tower stories, which are bloodily clever and darkly comic but overlap far too much in plot. They mainly concern mortals and local gods making contracts with one another for power but desperately seeking loopholes. The many different approaches Leckie takes to her subject are amazing, but when brought together, the overall collection comes across as more than a little repetitive.
If variety is the spice of life, then this otherwise accomplished volume could use some more seasoning.
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"Leckie, Ann: LAKE OF SOULS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A779191244/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=aa843b71. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.
Translation State
Ann Leckie. Orbit, $29 (432p) ISBN 978-0-316-28971-9
Hugo and Nebula award winner Leckie (Ancillary Justice) returns to the Imperial Radch universe in a staggering standalone novel that follows three people brought together by the mysterious disappearance of a translator. After Enae's Grandmaman dies, diplomat Enae finds a welcome distraction in an impossibly open-ended assignment to track down a fugitive who disappeared 200 years before the start of the book. Aboard the station Enae is headed to, diplomatic liaison Reet searches for answers about his past as an orphan and adoptee, but finds only further questions. Meanwhile, an attack on juvenile Presger translator Qven, part of a spectacularly weird alien race designed to translate alien Presger into human, derails Qven's life and ruins their prestigious prospects. When Qven understands what their clade has planned for them as punishment, Qven decides to flee, putting them on a collision course with the other protagonists. It's exhilarating to see the way these seemingly disparate story lines knit themselves togethet as all three protagonists become embroiled in a political mess that threatens the treaty that safeguards interspecies coexistence in space. Leckie's humane, emotionally intelligent, and deeply perceptive writing makes this tautly plotted adventure feel fundamentally true while also offering longtime fans a much anticipated glimpse into the Radch's most mysterious species. Readers will be thrilled. Agent: Seth Fisbman, Gernert Co. (June)
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"Translation State." Publishers Weekly, vol. 270, no. 13, 27 Mar. 2023, p. 66. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A752228594/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3e273dd5. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.
*Leckie, Ann. Translation State. Orbit. Jun. 2023.432p. ISBN 9780316289719. $29. SF
The vast Imperial Radch is at war with itself after the events in Leckie's Ancillary Mercy. Three individuals, all discarded or considered superfluous by their own societies, find themselves on a collision course with each other and with forces either wishing to shore up the fracturing power of the Radchaii or pry their galaxy-spanning hegemony even further apart. But the individuals they think they are using for their own political purposes (Enae the no-longer-needed caregiver; Qven the ruined translator; and Reet, whose parent fled Qven's fate and whose humanity is now being legally questioned and psychologically assaulted) come together to fight the empire and secure freedom for themselves--and quite possibly for worlds beyond counting. VERDICT Readers who enjoyed Arkady Martine's "Teixcalaan" series will see fascinating similarities in this portrait of a rapacious empire as it begins to fall, while any SF reader who loves political skullduggery told through fascinating and empathetic characters will be captivated by Leckie's latest foray into the Imperial Radch in all its complexity and corruption. Highly recommended. -- Marlene Harris
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Harris, Marlene. "Translation State." Library Journal, vol. 148, no. 4, Apr. 2023, p. 89. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A744137442/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8c60b53f. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.
Leckie, Ann TRANSLATION STATE Orbit (Fiction None) $29.00 6, 6 ISBN: 9780316289719
A seemingly pointless quest ignites a political firestorm in this space opera follow-up to the Imperial Radch trilogy and Provenance (2017).
Enae Athtur (whose pronouns are sie/hir) is forced from hir childhood home and hir comfort zone to take a job for the Saeniss Polity's Office of Diplomacy that's intended as a sinecure: searching for traces of a fugitive Presger Translator who disappeared 200 years ago. Meanwhile, despite having been raised by kindly foster parents, Reet Hluid has never quite fit in anywhere. Ignorant of his origins, trapped in a dead-end job, friendless, and tormented by strangely compelling daydreams of vivisecting the people he meets, he thinks he's finally found community with the Siblings of Hikipu. On what appears to be very little evidence, they claim that Reet is a Schan, a scion of their long-vanished royal line, and welcome him to their fellowship, which celebrates their cultural heritage and perhaps dabbles in a little terrorism. And Qven, brought up in the innocently violent nursery of the Presger Translators, fears losing themself in the transition to adulthood, which involves a physical and mental merging with another person; their attempt to escape that apparent inevitability leads to Qven's permanent disgrace. When Enae does what no one expects--actually finding the trail of the lost Translator--it upends the lives of Enae, Reet, and Qven and threatens the treaty that protects humanity from the Presger, an impossibly powerful and enigmatic alien race. It all sounds very complicated--and it is, enjoyably so--but basically, this is yet another opportunity for Leckie to explore her favorite themes: the meaning of family, humanity, and the right to one's personhood. Although the novel is mostly set outside the Radch Empire, the events of that trilogy and of Provenance have a profound effect on the action here, and they also share some characters. This work also addresses many questions from the previous books about the peculiar behavior of Translators, whose originally human DNA has been substantially reengineered by the Presger.
Another of Leckie's beautiful mergings of the political, philosophical, and personal.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Leckie, Ann: TRANSLATION STATE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A743460669/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=9bb2c09e. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.
Translation State. By Ann Leckie. June 2023.432P. Orbit, $29 (9780316289719); e-book (9780316290241).
Leckie's latest stand-alone is set in the same world as her Imperial Radch trilogy (Ancillary Justice, 2013) but focuses on human communities far outside Radchaai space and dives deeper into the mysterious Presger Translators. The novel starts as Enae (who uses gender-neutral hir pronouns) is thrust by hir domineering grandmother's death into a career as a diplomatic officer. Hir first, somewhat make-work assignment is to find a Translator, one of the humanlike emissaries of the mysterious and powerful Presger, who disappeared 200 years ago. Enae's journey takes hir to a segment of space shaped by a thousand years of colonialism, leading to an encounter with Reet Hluid, a young man troubled by mysterious dreams of aggression and transformation. Both Enae and Reefs lives will become intertwined with Qven, a Presger Translator juvenile who rebels at their poorly understood fate, and with other players and factions throughout space. Leckie's ability to seamlessly weave in alternate conceptions of gender, identity, and alien experience remains as strong as ever, as does the propulsive and exciting tenor of her prose. An excellent addition to Leckie's already well-realized and often strange and exciting universe, this new novel is accessible, and essential, to new readers and old fans alike.--Nell Keep
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 American Library Association
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Keep, Nell. "Translation State." Booklist, vol. 119, no. 16, 15 Apr. 2023, p. 30. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A747135427/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2f0cec8d. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.
The Raven Tower
Ann Leckie. Orbit, $26 (432p) ISBN 978-0-316-38869-6
In this complex novel, the first epic fantasy from SF author Leckie (Provenance), the best-laid plans of gods and mortals collide, throwing a nation into turmoil and setting the stage for a divine conflict that's been brewing for centuries. The tale spins out in past and present, narrated by the rockbound god known as the Strength and Patience of the Hill. The god is speaking to Eolo, a transgender warrior in service to Mawat, a young noble whose uncle has usurped his rightful role as ruler of Iraden. As the god recounts its ancient history (the narrative is told in second person, a technical challenge that Leckie surmounts with aplomb), it also relates Eolo's attempts to determine what happened to Mawat's supposedly vanished father and how this connects to their patron god, the Raven, whose power seems on the wane. With foreign gods taking an active interest in the kingdom, political intrigue brewing, and Mawat taking ever-bolder actions, Eolo must uncover Iraden's greatest secret. Through this unorthodox approach to the relationships between gods and their followers, Leckie's tale takes on a mythic, metafictional quality; the Strength and Eolo truly inhabit their roles, and the story's elements weave into a stunning conclusion. This impressive piece of craftsmanship cements Leckie's place as a powerful voice in both SF and fantasy. Agent; Seth Fishman, Gernert Co. (Feb.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
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"The Raven Tower." Publishers Weekly, vol. 265, no. 46, 12 Nov. 2018, p. 43. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A564341732/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b873b388. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.
Leckie, Ann THE RAVEN TOWER Orbit (Adult Fiction) $26.00 2, 26 ISBN: 978-0-316-38869-6
The author of four award-winning and critically acclaimed space operas (Provenance, 2017, etc.) aims her philosophical musings about politics, power, and revenge at a new subgenre: epic fantasy.
The land of Iraden is apparently the territory of two gods: the god of the Silent Forest, who protects the country and offers occasional advice to his chief votary, the Mother of the Silent; and the Raven, who speaks through a living bird known as the Instrument. Advised by a council of lords and the Mother of the Silent, the ruler of the land, known as the Raven's Lease, gains power and authority from the Raven through his oath to sacrifice his own life when the Instrument dies. In a plot that borrows from, but does not lean too heavily on, Hamlet, the Lease's Heir, the warrior Mawat, returns from battle with his faithful aide, Eolo, to discover the previous Instrument dead, his father missing, and his uncle Hibal seated on the Lease's bench. The Strength and Patience of the Hill, a third god embodied as a large stone, recounts the treacherous game of politics that plays out while also telling its own millennialong history, which gradually sheds light on the divine motivations that drive the human plots. The story's voice is a curious but compelling mix of first and second person, the god using its relative omniscience to narrate, explain, and direct action toward Eolo, who actually cannot hear the god most of the time. It is a common fantasy trope to suggest gods gain strength through faith and worshipers and that they can employ that strength to bend reality. But few authors have really explored all the implications of what happens when multiple beings with that power come into conflict. There is so much story and careful thought packed into this short volume that it should correct anyone who believes a fully realized fantasy novel requires a minimum of 500 pages.
Sharp, many layered, and, as always for Leckie, deeply intelligent.
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"Leckie, Ann: THE RAVEN TOWER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Dec. 2018. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A563598591/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5164ef3e. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.
The Raven Tower.
By Ann Leckie.
Feb. 2019.432p. Orbit, $26 (9780316388696); e-book, $13.99 (9780316388719).
Leckie's (Ancillary Justice, 2013) fantasy debut presents a world in which politics and history are shaped by the actions of extremely powerful yet vulnerable gods. The story alternates between two major threads. The first is told in second person to Eolos, a trans man and aide to Mawat, the heir to the Raven's Lease of iraden. The Lease, Mawat's father, agrees to be sacrificed when the Raven's Instrument, a mortal bird whose body hosts the Raven god, dies. When Mawat and Eolos arrive after hearing the news, they discover that Mawat's father has disappeared, and his uncle Hibal has taken the Lease for himself. Alternating with Eolos' search to discover the truth behind this strange turn of events is a story narrated by a god older than humanity itself, whose story not only reveals more about the nature of gods but weaves itself into the mysteries of the present. Leckie has created an enthralling and well-realized fantasy world, full of not only magic and gods but also characters representing a broad spectrum of gender and sexuality. Highly recommended for Leckie's existing fans and anyone looking for exciting and boundary-pushing fantasy.--Nell Keep
HIGH DEMAND BACKSTORY: Fans of Leckie's award-winning military sf series will be curious about her genre shift.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 American Library Association
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Keep, Nell. "The Raven Tower." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 11, 1 Feb. 2019, p. 39. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A574056446/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3b1e8026. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.
Provenance
Ann Leckie. Orbit, $26 (448p) ISBN 978-0-31638867-2
Hugo- and Nebula-winner Leckie returns to the universe of her bestselling Imperial Radch trilogy with this standalone SF thriller styled as a space opera of manners. Ingray Aughskold is determined to outdo her conniving brother and impress their demanding mother enough to be named her heir, even if that means gambling everything Ingray has. She leaves her home planet to break a famous thief out of prison and get help in a scheme to blackmail her mother's primary political opponent. But when the person she retrieves denies being the person she wants, her rash plan starts to fall apart. Matters are made worse by the fanatical pursuit of the distressingly odd ambassador of the alien Geek. Though full of the charm and wit characterizing Leckie's other works, including delightful appearances by a Radch ambassador and tantalizing hints about the upcoming conclave, this novel nevertheless doesn't quite have the depth and richness Leckie fans might expect. It's primarily an optimistic coming-of-age story, and it stumbles on some false promises along the way. (Sept.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
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"Provenance." Publishers Weekly, vol. 264, no. 31, 31 July 2017, p. 68. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A499863432/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f5be9bf7. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.
Leckie, Ann PROVENANCE Orbit (Adult Fiction) $26.00 9, 26 ISBN: 978-0-316-38867-2
A woman seeking the approval of her foster mother takes a desperate gamble and finds herself in the middle of an interplanetary conspiracy.To help her foster mother, Netano, shame a political rival, Ingray Aughskold of the planet Hwae bribes a broker to smuggle the notorious Pahlad Budrakim out of prison, hoping that Pahlad will reveal the location of the valuable family antiques e stole. (Pahlad is a "neman," a gender using the pronouns e/eir/em.) This supposedly simple plan soon gets complicated thanks to Ingray's scheming foster brother, Danach, a neighboring planetary government that frames Pahlad for murder, an alien ambassador with a persistent interest in Ingray and her associates...and the fact that Pahlad never stole the antiques in the first place. Setting her new novel in the same universe as her previous books (Ancillary Mercy, 2015, etc.), Leckie again uses large-scale worldbuilding to tell a deeply personal story--in this case, to explore what binds children to their families. As always, she impels the reader to consider the power language, and specifically names, has to shape perception and reality. The title is meaningful in several senses. "Provenance" initially refers to vestiges, the antiques so highly valued on Hwae, many of which are probably fakes; but more importantly, it means the struggle to understand where people come from and how it made them what they are, how they will define themselves now, and what labels they will choose to bear going forward. In aid of that point, a deeper look into the relationship between Ingray and Netano might have strengthened the book, and so might evidence of Danach's much-discussed political ability--all we see from him are smugness and petulance, while Ingray demonstrates far more political adeptness. But since the novel is told from Ingray's perspective, which is that of a woman with poor self-esteem discovering her confidence and true worth, Danach may not have been all that brilliant to begin with. More intriguing cultures to explore, more characters to care about, more Leckie to love.
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"Leckie, Ann: PROVENANCE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2017. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A499572723/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=662310c4. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.