Ann Leckie Takes Arthur C Clarke award with Ancillary Justice:
Great news for fans of Ann Leckie! Her debut science fiction novel “Ancillary Justice” was awarded the coveted Arthur C Clarke award! No small feat when you consider her book trumped works from experienced authors Phillip Mann and Christopher Priest.
The novel was narrated by Justice of Toren, a former sentient consciousness that was at one time a military spaceship of monumental proportions. In the novel, Justice of Toren now exists only in the body of a single corpse soldier. Ship AIs can simultaneously occupy multiple corpse troops to provide physical interaction with cadre of the empire. Difficult narration, to say the least, but carried out with style by Leckie.
I won’t go into a review of the novel because many other bloggers have already written fantastic reviews. Take, for example, the review of “Ancillary Justice” by a Dribble of Ink’s Foz Meadows. You will fall in love with the writing used to describe “Ancillary Justice” in this review.
When the Hugo Awards arrive “Ancillary Justice” will be going head to head with “Neptune’s Brood” by Charles Stross; “Parasite” by Mira Grant; “Warbound, Book III of the Grimnoir Chronicles” by Larry Correia; and “The Wheel of Time” by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. Yes – that’s all 15 WOT books weighing in at around 4.4 million words.
According to John Scalzi on his blog Whatever, it’s by no means a “slam dunk” for the Wheel of Time as many fans and pundits postulate. As Scalzi notes, “Ancillary Justice” is racking up awards and “has been nominated for just about every major science fiction award this year — Hugo, Nebula, Clarke, BSFA, PKD — and is arguably the most talked and praised science fiction novel of 2013.”
Any way you slice it, “Ancillary Justice” is an excellent read. Offworlders wishes Ann the best of luck at the Hugo Awards. Will a bevy of loyal Annonites carry her to victory one more time? Time only knows. . . .
What are your thoughts on the novel?