Will I love Ancillary Mercy?

What a phenomenal novel by Ann Leckie! I came across Ann Leckie’s series as I was working through books about cloning while I was writing my books. What do I love about it? The concepts, for sure: AI ships being negotiated, the entire idea of shipping minds around, a leader who sabotages herself to the detriment of her realm. All of these have been done to some extent before, but not at the scale that Ann Leckie takes on. She also manages to avoid some dead clone tropes and dead or dying AI tropes while she entertains. This novel (and… show more.

Bresq, the main character, is a very unusual creature. She is powerful, intelligent, and driven by compassion. It is interesting to read about a galaxy-spanning empire built on the bodies of human troops, sentience warships, and AI/human hybrids. The story explores themes of oppression, gender, identity, colonization, survival, and revolution. The way this book handles gender is to make it impossible to think about gender, in the ways we are used to. Good book and series.