Ancillary Sword

Ann Leckie

Oct 2014 · Imperial Radch Book 2 · Sold by Orbit

About this eBook

Seeking atonement for past crimes, Breq takes on a mission as captain of a troublesome new crew of Radchai soldiers, in the sequel to the New York Times bestselling, award-winning Ancillary Justice.​

Breq is a soldier who used to be a warship. Once a weapon of conquest controlling thousands of minds, now she has only a single body and serves the emperor.
With a new ship and a troublesome crew, Breq is ordered to go to the only place in the galaxy she would agree to go: to Athoek Station to protect the family of a lieutenant she once knew -- a lieutenant she murdered in cold blood.

Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy has become one of the new classics of science fiction. Beautifully written and forward thinking, it does what good science fiction does best, taking readers to bold new worlds with plenty explosions along the way.

Ratings and reviews

Following the groundwork laid in Ancillary Justice, Sword begins to fill in the rest of the universe Leckie has created via the same central character. We learn more about Radch space, and more about how humans have changed in the intervening time, relative to AI. The groundwork is laid for a culmination of this story arc, but this book suffers a little from sophomoric slump. Making up for this is the continued stylistic progression of the writing, paralleling the main characters development.

Loved the hard left turn in this book! The relentless pace of Justice was thrilling but exhausting. Not as grand, not as mind twisting, but still a fantastic work that I've recommended to many.

I thought my app glitched when I got to the end. The book sets the stage for a civil and alien war, slave rebellion, and romance. Yet the story consists of a issue with infrastructure, that was resolved with a page long deux ex machina. Followed by a chapter of awkward dialogue in the hospital (that old cliche) and then its over. 100 pages of setting the stage, followed by 200 of hot air and fluff. Waste of time

About the author

Ann Leckie is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, and British Science Fiction Award-winning novel Ancillary Justice. She has worked as a waitress, a receptionist, a rodman on a land-surveying crew, and a recording engineer. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.