Ancillary justice, by Ann Leckie

St. Louisian Ann Leckie’s debut novel has just won about every science fiction honor there is – she is the first ever winner of the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke awards in a single year -- and it is relatively rare for women authors to be recognized by any of these awards.  So I was anxious to go back to reading sci-fi, which I gave up long ago after several years on binging on classics like Stranger in a strange land, Dune, the Foundation Trilogy, and a lot of trash being remaindered out of Paul’s Books.  I found the book slow going at first – the confusion the reader feels is intentional, however.  One is never quite sure of how to picture the person being referred to, although genders are present, since only the female pronouns are used and the proper names give nothing away.  The action whips back and forth between the present, twenty years ago, and a millennium previous.  These devices, however, mirror the disassociation that the main character, Breq (aka “One Esk”) feels.  She is an AI who once controlled not only the starship “Justice of Toren,” but countless “ancillaries,” human bodies who have been reprogrammed and engineered to serve as extensions of herself.  After a cataclysmic event, she is reduced to a single human body, and a drive towards revenge.  Although some remnants of her special implants and abilities remain, she is no longer almost omniscient and she must struggle to see through a single pair of eyes and act as a single person.  Not too surprisingly, she becomes more human as the novel progresses – she already had a very un-AI interest in collecting music and singing.  The first of a proposed trilogy.   I look forward to the author’s talk on October 8.  396 pp.