I’ve just devoured Ancillary Mercy, the third instalment in Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy, and I recommend you all stop what you’re doing and pick up the first book of the series.

A civil war lies at the heart of the story, but it is not one waged between citizens of the same country. Rather, it is fought between the many selves of a single entity. If that sounds vague, it’s because it’s hard to find accurate words with which to describe the Radch universe. Even the book’s narrator Breq struggles with language too limited for the concepts being explored. This is a story where, for lack of any genderless alternative, ‘she’ is used as the default pronoun. (Fellow fans of Ursula Le Guin, take note!) And the book gets more compellingly strange from there; Breq used to be a spaceship. She was, simultaneously, the mind of several hundred soldiers living aboard that spaceship. The story opens with her having been brought to very reduced circumstances, plotting her revenge.

Ancillary Justice, the first book in this series and Leckie’s debut novel, achieved the unprecedented by winning all four major science fiction awards of 2014. It’s easy to see why. Leckie’s writing has a directness and lack of ornamentation appropriate to the AI narrator, but Breq still manages to be a sympathetic character with a beautiful sense of irony and wit. Her unique situation means the story is often told from many locations at once, creating a kaleidoscope view for the reader. Subtle interactions between characters carry weighty meanings that are not always apparent until later. I laughed out loud more than once at one character’s passive aggressive use of crockery. In short, I found this series an absolute delight.

If you’ve been hesitant to try reading sci-fi, this is a great place to begin as it’s such a sublime example of the genre. If you’re already a seasoned enthusiast, you’ll enjoy Leckie’s subversive and original take on popular themes from the genre, such as artificial intelligence and transhumanism.

Ele Jenkins