[jandrese]

I read the first three books of the Imperial Radh (Ancillary Justice) series and for all of the love they get online I found them rather dull. There's this fairly dramatic collapse of a galaxy spanning empire happening in the background while the protagonist frets over the level of offense she might cause at the tea party if she chooses to wear the more scandalous gloves. The last book gets a bit more into the fractured psyche of the ruler, but even that gets shoved in the background far more than you would expect so the protagonist can worry about how she might hurt the feelings of the local planetary governor if she doesn't show up for his garden party.

The protagonist is basically a disconnected Borg drone, although in their universe the drones are left with a bit more autonomy than the Star Trek equivalents, but because the protagonist is disconnected it doesn't matter nearly as much as you would expect.

If you're interested in a big space opera about an empire falling apart I found the Collapsing Empire series by John Scalzi to be much more engaging.

[msabalau]

As a matter of taste, fair enough.

But having recently read about all etiquette concerns of the Japanese admirals doing their life or death struggles during WWII, it hardly seems unrealistic.

For a lot of people, seeing people navigate multiple military/social/political spheres is part of the appeal of imperial fiction.

[Something1234]

Book recommendation about Japanese etiquette are very welcome. I was reading chip war recently and the wife of the Sony ceo throwing American dinner parties was insanely interesting to me.

[jemmyw]

I quite liked the focus on minutiae while the bigger events were happening in the background. The third book even discussed it - we live or die today after this battle, but if we live then we still need to do the staff rota. It gave a little sense of realism that made the larger events more relatable.

[lproven]

> while the protagonist frets over the level of offense she might cause at the tea party if she chooses to wear the more scandalous gloves

I have to admit this made me boggle.

I really enjoyed them _because_ the culture was strange and unfamiliar and it was just assumed you'd know what was going on -- which is exactly what mainstream fiction does, of course. (Aside: that's one of the things I enjoyed most about the Three Body Problem.)

Compare with most SF which is "20th century California, but it's in space". (Note: I have never been to California.) Or most fantasy, which is "noble square-jawed heroes in a Hollywood movie parody of the middle ages". It's dull. Leckie gave us something different without infodumps.

As for the empire collapse thing: well, in real life, if you're in the middle of world-changing events, the thing is you still need to wash your socks and get to work. This is realism. It's more involving than some mighty imperial Mary Sue deciding the fate of worlds, as per Asimov's Foundation or something.

[grogenaut]

The first bit of Ancillary Justice story is a slog like the first 80 pages of anathem and as purposefully confusing, but 3x longer.

I get why the author did it but and it was a good payoff on realizing and stressing inherent societal biases, like any good scifi should break your brain a bit and point out where you are being intellectually lazy. It just didn't need to be so long. And also the story just wasn't all that interesting if I recall. Kinda someone wandering in the wilderness iirc.

I actually liked the latter parts of the series once I got past that. Got more into a detective novel and some political intrigue. The gender bending/fluditity came into it's own at the end as you had many characters against current gender norms that you hear described through actions and then "meet" much later in the book, realizing all the assumptions you were implicitly making being wrong. along with all of the drones who wouldn't really have a gender anyway or might switch gender constantly, so why are we forcing our mental model of gender on them (fair enough).

If you like challenging your brain a bit power through the first book, but it's definitely not the traditional science only sci-fi. I see why a lot of people like the book and I see why a lot of people hate it because it's not a deathstalker novel. It's kinda like when my dad was really pissed when we watched the live version of Cats because "it wasn't what I expected". I was 8, and was like "what did you expect?" "I don't know, but not this" to which my 6 year old brother said "It's definitely about cats".

[WolfeReader]

"The first bit of Ancillary Justice story is a slog like the first 80 pages of anathem and as purposefully confusing, but 3x longer."

Maybe this is weird, but your quote here just piqued my interest in Anicllary Justice way more than the other good reviews have done.

[jkestner]

I love Ancillary Justice even though I don’t think I should - must be the long payoff. Of course, you can get some of the same themes in an easier (and no spaceships, sentient or otherwise) read with Leckie’s other book The Raven Tower.

[lproven]

> The first bit of Ancillary Justice story is a slog like the first 80 pages of anathem

I thought it was great. It hooked my interest immediately and then kept me engaged.

I didn't notice a slog at the start of Anathem either time I read it, TBH.

[renewiltord]

This is pretty amusing but true. I enjoyed the series for its quirks (unable to detect many character genders) but it’s very young adulty with focus on social things and stuff. I think the concept of non-human-minds is better explored by Linda Nagata’s series. You can kind of start in the middle with Edges and go with that.

[whimsicalism]

"Young adulty"? As much as I like murderbot, it comes across as quite pulpy in comparison - I don't really find Imperial Radh very YA at all.

[renewiltord]

Haha, I agree with you on Murderbot https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42301763

And I liked the initial Imperial Radch and I liked the idea of the fracturing empire and the gender bits but my feelings now about it are influenced by some of the characters’ overthinking. Then again, perhaps placing a troop transport sentient ship’s mind into a person gives them terrible social anxiety.

Still, I was recommending it soon after I read it. These are opinions that I have now a long while after.

[derwiki]

I have a nagging feeling that Collapsing Empire isn’t “good” literature (the swearing and sex?) but really enjoyed it, along with the other Scalzi books I’ve read. As others have pointed out, the reason for collapse are unique compared to other collapsing empire stories.

[mrgoldenbrown]

Shakespeare is full of swearing and sex. Neither is a clear sign of good or bad literature, unless you have a very specific definition of "good literature" in mind.

[NBJack]

Sex? Scalzi barely touches the subject; contrast that with Arthur C. Clark and his, ah, more detailed scenes, or Heinlein. And I've read quite a few of Scalzi's works (including the Empire series).

Can you offer a comparison? I don't have a good understanding of your baseline.

[whimsicalism]

Scalzi is not highbrow sci-fi (whereas the Radch series is a bit), but it’s still good!

[loeg]

Yes -- agree with you on Ancillary Justice (could not finish it) and Scalzi's Collapsing Empire is fantastic. Eric Thomson's Ashes of Empire series is sort of in a similar vein, although IMO not as good.

[finnh]

Definitely don't read the most recent one, Translation Space. It's some very bad "I like you but I don't know how to say it!" YA-vein tropes and the climactic scene is, essentially, people walking around a circular hallway a couple times.

It was so bad it caused me to re-read the original three, and I realized that only the first was one was any good.

[HelloMcFly]

> the climactic scene is, essentially, people walking around a circular hallway a couple times

I feel like once you decide you don't like something, it's very easy to get reductionist about it in a way that makes it sound stupid or trite even if the reductionist statement is true. This summary to me is a quintessential example.

I liked the book alright, but certainly not enough to get into a debate about it. If you liked Leckie's other work, you'll probably find something to like here too, no matter your feelings on hallways. But maybe not!

[human_person]

Its probably my least favorite of all of her books but I liked the approach to describing an additional dimension. And the idea of the alien translators grown in human bodies and the development of a species/culture

[petesergeant]

Translation Space was not an interesting book to me, where I remember sincerely enjoying the first three.

[lproven]

It took me a while to find this, because the title is in fact Translation State.

[phire]

> the drones are left with a bit more autonomy than the Star Trek equivalents

I'm not sure I would describe it as more autonomy. The central ship computer was absolutly dominant within the hive mind, and had control over the ancillaries at all time.

It's more like personalities of the ancillaries feed back into the hive mind at a somewhat subconscious level, and had quite a bit of impact on the overall personality.

> If you're interested in a big space opera about an empire falling apart I found the Collapsing Empire series by John Scalzi to be much more engaging.

Yeah, the Imperial Radch series is not about the empire falling apart. That's just something happening in the background, which sometimes drives the plot forwards. Its primary goal is to explore the question of "what does it mean to be human"

I really enjoyed John Scalzi's Collapsing Empire series, which is directly about the fall of a civilisation, and how to save the people.

The interesting thing is that Collapsing Empire bucks the usual trend of empires falling apart because they grew too big, internal political instability or external rivals. It was stable and only falls apart because the form of FTL they were using to connect their star systems fell apart, and none of the star systems were self sufficient.

Also in the genre of "space operas with collapsing empires", I do recommend Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire.

[randomcarbloke]

I really like Scalzi's ideas, I just can't stand his execution.

[NBJack]

Much of a fan as I am of his works, some of them certainly fall flat. Lock In is a great example; I loved his world building, but both of his first two books felt like it channeled Matlock or CSI with their endings, with exposition and some kind of reveal that felt out of character. I also admit lost interest in Old Man's War after The Last Colony.

Redshirts however is a master class in satire of Trek, and Starter Villain made me laugh.

I also admit Wil Wheaton's narration of his books always feels spot on to me.