Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Mercy & Ancillary Sword - Ann Leckie

I just finished reading the Imperial Radch Trilogy. Highly recommended. 

The first book, Ancillary Justice won the Hugo, the Nebula, the BSFA, the Arthur C Clarke and the Locus awards. I don't think any Science Fiction novel has won as many awards.
It's definitely not your basic level Sci-Fi.
The series is made up of 3 books: Ancillary Justice, followed by Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy.

A friend of mine is going to start reading this and I though a brief summary would help her.

The beginning of Ancillary Justice is very confusing and it's possible this will discourage many readers.
But if you can get your head through the first 2 chapters you will probably love this series.

Ann Leckie explores AI (Artificial Intelligence) quite a bit. The main character is an AI. She is a ship, a soldier, a human, and a computer ... all in one.

The opening chapters don't explain this and I had to read quite a bit till I was able to process this info.

I was questioning human intelligence and asking myself whether AI is less important.

Are they in fact of equal value?

Should we be afraid of AI?

Maybe in the future AI can be see as a partner to human intelligence. 

Is artificial intelligence part of our evolution? 

The true first editions are all soft cover / paperbacks.

This is I understand the first hardcover version.

There was a Limited lettered edition which sold for $250 USD

(Lettered: 52 signed copies, bound in leather, housed in a custom traycase and sold out pre-publication)

 

There was also a Limited edition  version that had a price of $50USD

(Each volume is signed by the author and numbered out of 500)

Burton, MI, Subterranean Press, 2015

SPOILER ALERT 

  ................ don't read past this if you are worried about spoiling the story

The story is set thousands of years in the future.
The names of the three books, Justice, Mercy & Sword are also the names of the 3 classes
of space warships that feature in the Radch universe.
Ancillaries are the solders which "man" these warships.
"Man" is probably not the right word to use as most of the characters are gender neutral.
and the main character calls everyone she, regardless of whether they are male or female... but that's another story.
 
Each warship has its own compliment of hundreds to thousands of Ancillary troops
(the number of solders depends on the type of warship).
These troops are essentially captured enemy human solders from past battles who's minds and identity are wiped and reprogrammed with the ship's AI (artificial intelligence). You can think of each ship and it's ancillary troops as one and the same organism....as sentient beings. To top it off, the AI's have emotions.

The main character "Breq" also goes by the names One Esk 19, and Justice of Toren.
She is an ancilliary.
She is the last remaining fragment of the AI of the troopcarrier "Justice of Toren". This AI is trapped in a ancillary human body when the mother warship is destroyed.
The first book covers the events of how she takes revenge on the person who destroyed her warship
(Anaander Mianaai).
It's really her quest for justice, so the name of the book is apt.
 

Human's are present in this universe, and they live in harmony with AI's.  Actually the human ruler is evil, and the AI's are on the side of good. The suggestion is that artificial consciousness is not to be feared and is as relevant as human consciousness. AI may even come to the rescue of humanity.

Breq struggles to reconcile this as her humanity starts to reassert itself. She is after all an AI inside a human body.

The portrayal of gender is also fascinating since the main characters are essentially computers that don't see the need, nor understand gender. The novel makes the case that gender is irrelevant. It's interesting that to the computers, the default gender is female.

The concept of Justice is of course explored and I think found to be quite fluid and abstract.

The main conflict starts when the ruler Anaander Mianaai has a fight with herself.

This sounds confusing, until you realize what the ruler is.

Anaander Mianaai has been cloning herself for the last 3000 years. So she never dies and can in effect

rule forever. To make matters more interesting, she clones herself thousands of times, so a clone of her can be on every planet and station of significance. Some of these clones develop new personalities (as you'd expect over thousands of years) and set up a rival govt.

The story is basically one of two beings disagreeing about the nature of Justice.
Thinkers from Plato to Shakesphere have asked this very question.

Sci Fi Links

+  Asimov's (Isaac) Foundation
+ Asimov  - I, Robot -  - novels & Magazines
+ Dune - The Chronological order of the novels
+ Dune Universe Timeline

+ Hugo Awards Best Sci Fi novels of the 1950's
+ Hugo Awards Best sci fi novels of the 1960's
+ Hugo Awards Best Sci Fi novels of the 1970's
+ Hugo Awards Best Sci Fi Novels of the 1980's
+ Hugo Awards Best Sci Fi novels of the 1990's
+ Hugo awards Best sci fi novel of the 2000's (2000 - 2009)
+ Hugo Awards Best Sci Fi novels for the decade 2010-2019

+ Nebula Best Sci Fi Novel awards 1960s
 
+ Star Wars 
+ vorkoisgan saga reading order - Lois McMaster Bujold

These are the hard cover versions

+ Subterranean Press