Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword is my pick for first.
Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor puts me in a quandary as to which book should be second place.
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For me, the Hugo is an award that says a book is fabulous, shows me something new and different, blows my mind with magic, technology, setting, culture and/or concept and above all make it accessible, immediate and visceral. I need to be able to fall into the world, into the character without feeling hitches and jerks and I need to feel deeply connected to the characters and their plight.
Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword is my pick for first. Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor puts me in a quandary as to which book should be second place.
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Ancillary Sword was not what I expected. I was expecting a imperialist space opera with a helping of milSF.
That wasn’t what I got. It was a very personal story, and I’m pretty happy with that. Ancillary Sword is the second book in the Imperial Radch series. The first is Ancillary Justice, which I haven't read. Some reviewers have compared this series to the C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series because Leckie is all about the personal. Ancillary Sword is a space opera, just not what some people might think a space opera should be. It was very personal, not far flung, and in some ways reminded me of Iain Banks' Matter (in his Culture series.) Ancillary Sword made my mind stretch. And it’s not because of the dominate use of the feminine pronoun. (Dudes, I cut my teen SF reading teeth on Ursula K. Le Guin's gender bending stories.) It made my mind stretch because the protagonist Breq is trying to live ethically and justly in an unethical and unjust world, and she’s not perfect but she does care about doing the right thing |
Pulp & Pixels:
An occasional blog with thoughts on words, books, tech, and of course, libraries. Obligatory disclaimer:
Pulp & Pixels reflects my (Marta Murvosh) viewpoint and does not represents the library system that I work for, the publications I freelances for, or any of the professional associations that I belongs to or have a leadership role in. Of course, if I happen to say how much any of those organizations rock, I expects there would be agreement on those points. Find my reviews of teen books at BiblioCommons , Goodreads and for a 2011 YA library services class at Murvosh Reads.
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