Until the late 15th century the word ‘girl’ meant a child of either sex. Boys were occasionally called ‘knave girls’ and girls ‘gay girls’.
QI Series G, Episode 7, 'Girls and Boys'
Book I: Ancillary Justice
Book II: Ancillary Sword
Book III: Ancillary Mercy
This trilogy of books by Ann Leckie is about an interstellar empire - the Radch - which is ruled by a many bodied person. In the Watchmen movie, there is a scene where Dr. Manhattan while having sex with his girlfriend splits himself (but remains one person) so that he could do more to the woman, while another body of his continued his work. She got angry. Which puzzled me. So, this ruler had many cloned bodies which all shared one mind but could act independently.
The story is centered on a sentient remnant of a sentient A.I. powered ship which had many human minds and bodies slaved to it. All the stimuli that those bodies experience are integrated into one "person's" experience. Sort of how a person can have one hand in hot water and the other in cold water and both sensations are integrated. This remnant, called Breq was on a revenge mission against the many bodied ruler of the Radch and precipitates her (but actually his) disintegration and that of the empire, a rather classic "an eye for an eye" type revenge.
I first read the books around 2015 - 2016. I was not impressed, and I was even a bit annoyed at it. I did not think the story was interesting or original. The characters were not particularly interesting. There was a lot of focus on the emotions of the people and the machines. The main characters are all military who seem to focus excessively on their emotions and those of their colleagues. There is a lot of eyes filling up with tears, a lot of weeping and a lot of wiping away of tears. There was some uninteresting sexual tension. There was some cultural obsession with tea utensils and dishes reminiscent of the interest that the Japanese in The Man in the High Castle had in pieces of American kitsch. It was all rather bland. There were no interesting sci-fi concepts. While the multiple bodies bit was interesting, there were too many other annoying things in the books and so the negatives outweighed the positive. Although I had been sufficiently intrigued by the shared mind concept that I reread the books after 8 years. The impulse to read it again was strengthened when I read A Fire Upon the Deep last year. I was not too impressed by that book either.
When a book is written by a minority person especially from a third world country and very especially a woman; or when a book focuses on a gay or transgender character; or when the author is a political or religious refugee dissing their own culture; the reviews of the book, regardless of the actual merits of the story, will almost always talk about how brave the person is or how incisive the opinions in the book are or how interesting the story is. In this book, the default pronouns are female. The only word for parent is mother; for a sibling, it is sister. Citizens of the Radch (Radchaai) traveling in non-Radch places are easily identified by their misuse of pronouns; by their confusion at gender specific markers - clothing, hairstyles; by their confusion at the word brother, and so on. And so, I think the book got rave reviews for this propagation of the "gender is a construct" gospel. Otherwise, I honestly do not understand what was so great about the story that it would win so many prizes.
The quote at the beginning of this piece is relating to a sentiment which sometimes seems to say that if something has been done for a long time, then it is ok. I have noticed in books that Americans think watching European films is a sign of culture, perhaps because European culture is so much older thus it would be filled with nuance. The same sentiment might inform the preference for old films, preferably if they are black and white. Among some Nigerians, American movies (especially comedies and comedy series) are seen as inferior to British ones, again because British culture is older. American humor is seen as lacking nuance and the canned laughter as a prompt to people to laugh who would otherwise not know when something funny comes on screen. The American fare and whatever popular new movies are popular are seen as lower quality because they are contemporary and popular. This bias against the new and the familiar can be seen as a form of conservatism, the notion that the older culture is closer to the source, thus purer, and therefore better. Thus, the quote above should indicate that the current resistance in society towards gender neutrality which is based on conservatism is flawed. Since in olden days, children were addressed by a gender-neutral term.
Despite not liking the prominent downplaying of gender differences, the book made me think that perhaps such differentiation does not matter. The gender of the protagonist is not revealed throughout the three books. Revealing it would not have added anything to the story, so perhaps the author's aim was achieved.
The book's writing style is readable. It is neither beautiful nor ugly prose. There are enough mysterious things, especially in the last book that would engage the reader to read to the end and learn how they are resolved. It is not a book I would recommend, but it is readable.