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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   3057 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 2, 2022

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Just finished Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice. I was very impressed by the density of plotting. Shades of Dune, but clearly a much bigger influence from the Culture series. Would recommend.

Today I trawled a used bookstore going down my list. The best find was Thunder Below by Eugene Fluckey, a WWII captain who got into by far the most submarine combat. I did pick up various sci-fi/fantasy and a couple Audubon field guides, but I'm most excited about that memoir. Oh, I also found a 2-volume of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, which I purchased for historical interest. I don't expect that I'll actually chew through it any time soon.

One of those books I've never really contemplated reading on account of who the author is and who are her friends.

Am I missing anything ? Is it better written than Iain Banks, not too preachy or stupid ?

People kept telling me to read e.g. Ursula Le Guin and then I stopped in disgust when the author started talking about a planet stealing natural resources from another planet and exporting them by rocket. Wood was mentioned as a commodity. There's suspension of disbelief and there's that.

Oh, goodness. You're probably not going to like it.

There were no obvious SoD-breakers to the setting, in my opinion. It's not hard sci-fi; the underlying principles of the tech aren't reliably explained, but the results are reasonably utilized. No rocket equation issues. Tech is far more constrained than Culture "a wizard computer did it." The worldbuilding is well-executed, and the empire feels like a product of its tech and history rather than a plot contrivance.

I don't know anything about the author or her friends, but I can make some educated guesses. The empire's language is aggressively non-gendered, which the narrator always renders as "she* on account of being a warship. I will argue that such features are well-used rather than preaching or a gimmick--the narrator constantly misgendering non-imperials gives away her background--but if that raises your hackles, you will not enjoy the book.

Doesn't sound too bad, I'll probably check it out. Thanks!

I'm kind of surprised you enjoyed Ancillary Justice so much, because I actually thought it was quite dull. The problem (to me) was that the author had interesting ideas for a setting, but no plot to back it up. Which, in fairness, is kind of like Dune. But I think that this book had even less interesting of a plot than Dune has.

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