Ancillary Mercy

Ann Leckie
Book 3 of the Imperial Radch Trilogy

The final installment of this trilogy and I am not disappointed. Having read 1 & 2 out of order, I am finding that it was actually quite a good accident. The 2nd (Justice) was the best in terms of hook and action and setting the stage. The 1st (Sword) then gave lots of backstory and fixed a few misconceptions I had. But in all, I was allowed to imagine the world without having it fed to me directly first. Finally, the 3rd (Mercy) completes the action. I also felt like the style Leckie uses here started off very much as reporting, filling in some backstory from the point of view of Breq -- which evolved over the course of the book into personal narrative. This was, I am sure, intentional as it mirrors the identity journey of Breq and it was highly effective.

The story picks up with the Mercy of Kalr (Breq's ship) managing security in the system and navigating the civilian adminsitration as well. The appearance of a Presger translator, an unattached ancillary and another instance of Anaandar Mianaai makes the political intrigue of who supports whom quite thick. In many ways, a classic space opera. But when we start getting to ideas of identity and Significance with respect to the AI's, I am again reminded of the current (real-world) fear of AI taking over the world and pushing humans to extinction. Fear that any true AI would become all powerful and couldn't possibly have a need for humans. And the suggestion (I wish I could remember where I first saw this idea) that this concept of AI is based on the perception of an AI being male. In Leckie's trilogy, gender pronouns are irrelevant in the Radchaai language and nearly everyone is referred to as she. In addition, the AI personality is largely stereotypically female (nurturing, self sacrificing for those whom they are responsible, etc.). Why are we not seriously working at this? While current tech companies continue to develop AI, they are not seriously working to fix gender inequity amongst their developers, directly pushing the fear of dominant/out-of-control AI being born closer to reality.


Read