Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Title: Ancillary Justice 
Author: Ann Leckie 
Type: Novel 
Genre: Science Fiction 
Series: Yes, Imperial Radch #1 
Pages: 409 
Copyright: 2013 
Publisher: Orbit 
Rating: 4 out of 5


Cover Rating: 2.5 out of 5
I do not think I would have read the book if I had seen this cover. I was picturing something more like a planet dark blue with a yellow line of light on the edge from maybe one of the lotuses that Breq carries. I don't think that the Star Wars theme cover is bad I just don't like it as much. I think I did a much better job imagining what the ships looked like that the cover does. Even though the cover does fit the book it doesn't make me what to read the book at all. Thus I would say it is a failure in that respect because what is inside is an amazing story.

Before Cover was drawn.

Summary: from Good Reads.
On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.

Breq is both more than she seems and less than she was. Years ago, she was the Justice of Toren--a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of corpse soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.

An act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with only one fragile human body. And only one purpose--to revenge herself on Anaander Mianaai, many-bodied, near-immortal Lord of the Radch.

From debut author Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice is a stunning space opera that asks what it means to be human in a universe guided by artificial intelligence.

My idea for the cover

Feelings: 
I thought that this was a hard book to read. This was largely because of how gender is written. The narrative is in the first person and the narrator comes from a place were gender is neutral and thus has a hard time defining gender when she is talking in other languages and must identify the gender of the person she is talking to. The language the narrator speaks uses the female pronoun "she" "her" for all genders and this can get a bit confusing.

"I'll rent a sledge," I said, "and buy a hypothermia kit."
Behind me one of the patrons chuckled and said, voice mocking, "Aren't you a tough little girl." (p. 2)

This is the only indication I have of the narrators gender through out the book. Gender is often from another characters insight or comment and not from Breq. I really liked Breq, the narrator, she (using it here not because she is female but because that is the pronoun the book uses) is very different from most narrators I've read. There are many odd things that we learn as we travel with Breq. The book also follows Breq's character 20 years in the past leading to the events of today.

For the first fifty pages maybe more I found the lack of gender really hard to follow. However, I did get used to it and as we gathered a group of characters and stayed with them it got easier to follow what was happening and not get caught up in the oddness of only seeing the female pronoun used.

She was probably male, to judge from the angular mazelike patterns quilting her shirt. I wasn't entirely certain. It wouldn't have mattered, if I had been in Radch Space. Radichaai don't care much about gender, and the language they speak--my own first language--doesn't mark gender in any way. (p. 3)

I don't want to give to much away about the story because it was really good and I thought reading it without a cover or a story blurb added to the appeal of the story.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes Science Fiction.