Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke Award-Winning ANCILLARY JUSTICE

I would say The Ancillary Justice trilogy is one of my favorite series of the last 30 years. Such a confusing, fresh, and ultimately clearly new and novel take on selfhood (with very satisfying gender themes too). This little book seemed like a school girls giggle...There were actually hints of deeper ideas here - was there something unusual about her lost hairpins? Did a mechanical assistant, painted clearly a very bright pink, kill the ambassador? What was that tingle in the back of her neck? Is there some kind of AI presence. But no, none of these really interesting hints find fruition. Maybe there are more books coming?

I really enjoyed the Ancillary series and was looking forward to this new book.
What a disappointment : flat or stereotyped characters, childish plot, boring end.
I almost gave up several times.
Not worth anyone's time or money

The excessive mixed use of the New English words "e" and "em" and the normal English words "he" "her" "them" "they" totally destroys the ability of me as a reader ( for over 60 years) to maintain a sense of continuity. When the writer decides to be cute in using these two "words" and then uses the regular words, in the same paragraphs it becomes impossible to read! I could not got more than half way into the first chapter, and would have thrown the book away if it had been physical. I do not do that often!

In the hope of improving her chances of becoming family heir, Ingray Aughskold springs a thief from prison in order to recover his cache of stolen memorabilia, her home planet of Hwae’s most treasured possession. When the plan backfires and she gets embroiled in problems with the authorities, a diplomatic accident with an alien species ambassador and murder, instead of upping her social status, she effectively turns into a pariah. Can Ingray overcome the obstacles thrown in her way and still claim her family name or could she perhaps strike out on a new path, where she herself rather than her provenance forges her destiny?

The answer becomes clear way, way too early—midway through the novel, but this is not the book's biggest problem. Provenance is simply set in the same universe as and immediately follows Leckie’s award-winning Imperial Radch trilogy, which makes the comparisons between the two simply unavoidable. And in particular, Ancillary Justice, the first book in Imperial Radch, is a tough act to follow—incredibly bold and original structure, captivating characters, breath-taking world-building, all of which combined into a book that swept all major awards of 2014 and might as well turn out to be the best sci fi novel of the decade. In other words, Provenance has been burdened with expectation before it was even conceived, to say nothing of published.

On the positive side, Leckie demonstrates, yet again, that she is unrivalled at world-building. Where the Raadchai drank a lot of tea, were gender-neutral and had very interesting ideas about would be considered vulgar in dressing (e.g. not covering your hands), the Hwaeans have a third gender, make extensive use of hairpins and determine social standing based on the possession of ‘vestiges’, i.e. memorabilia. Using common concepts and familiar objects to create vastly alien, yet completely absorbing and relatable cultures seems to be Leckie’s forte and the description of Hwaean culture alone would be a good enough reason to tackle Provenance.

Unfortunately, the positive parallels end here. The plot, even if intricate, is rather shallow. Not only the ending, but practically everything that happens in the latter parts of novel can be guessed before you are even halfway through. The pace is languid at best, and reading turns into a slog at times. The characters are likeable, yet entirely forgettable and not particularly engaging. There is nothing here that can even remotely measure up to the structural originality of Ancillary Justice, with its multiple narratives of several of the ship’s avatars at several different points of time or with Breq's complexity as a character who is no longer just a ship, yet still hardly a man.

All this being said, Provenance is very, very far from being a bad book. The problem is that it is really, really far from being a great book, either. It is true that Leckie set the bar so high with Imperial Radch that practically everything she could have possibly published in the wake of the trilogy would pale in comparison. But the question is whether Provenance perhaps comes out a bit too bland, a bit too smug, a bit too pedestrian, even if for a novel that was practically destined to be a ‘letdown’?

Although less ambitious than her Imperial Radch trilogy, Ann Leckie has crafted an entertaining, and at times touching, novel. Taking place within the same universe as her previous novels, Provenance is a coming of age story about a woman named Ingray. Her personal journey is compelling, if fairly predictable and not particularly thought-provoking. While Ingray is no Breq, Leckie has set a high bar for herself, and the ease with which she develops her characters would put a lesser author to shame.

The plot is entertaining and engaging. While not overly predictable, it is rarely surprising. That is not to say that the story deals in tropes or cliches. Rather, the reader will be left satisfied, but will not be startled or awed by the events which unfold.

The novel is at its best when dealing with the relationships between characters. It is at these times that the story is the most thought-provoking and touching. The reader will be left wanted to know more about the relationships between Ingray and characters she interacts with.

Overall, I would recommend this book to Ann Leckie fans, although I wouldn't classify it as a must-read. It is accessible to those who have not read the Imperial Radch trilogy. However, Ancillary Justice is a superior novel. If you haven't read that yet, start there.

This is a return to the universe of the Radchaai, but not their empire or its fleet.

Ingray Aughskold, of Hwae, daughter of a prominent politician, is on a mission. Not for her mother, but for herself. She wants to be her mother's heir, and her mother has set her and her brother up to constantly compete to impress her. That brother, Danach, is often a jerk, but he is more of a risk-taker than Ingray, and has simply created more opportunities for their mother to be impressed.

Ingray has a plan to fix that, taking a major risk with, potentially, huge reward. She's paid for a convicted thief of vestiges, the vital mementos that are critical to social and political status on Hwae, to be retrieved from a prison planet from which no one ever returns, to recover the vestiges he stole.

He arrives in stasis, and when removed from his stasis pod, he claims he's not the man she expected, Pahlad Budrakim. There are also problems with the somewhat dubious freighter captain she hired to bring them back to Hwae. The Ambassador of the alien Geck, en route to the conclave to discuss the rebel Radch AIs' request to be recognized as a significant species under the treaty, also makes problems, claiming that the freighter captain is a Geck citizen, and that he stole three ships, including the one he is now using in his freight business.

This is all only a tiny glimmer of the problems they'll have when they get to Hwae.

Ingray is a smart, capable young woman, who does not have the killer instinct of her mother or brother. This causes them and others to form certain assumptions about her, while others in her small circle of family and friends perhaps have a different view of her. This isn't the intense drama and galaxy-shaking drama of the Ancillary books. It's a smaller, more intimate story, closer to a comedy of manners. This doesn't mean the stakes aren't very real, for everyone involved, and Ingray does a lot of growing and maturing over the course of the story.

This reads like a standalone, but I'd be happy to see more of Ingray and her friends, should they turn up in future books. Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

I bought this because I absolutely loved the Ancillary trilogy. I found that world rich and enjoyed the unusual point-of-view protagonist, and wanted to see more set in this world. I found this book disappointing. First: this is not a heist book. If you are expecting a heist: there is no heist, there is no thieving adventuring. This would more aptly be called a political thriller circling a murder, but only once you reach chapters 10-12. Until then, it's just boring.

I found none of these characters terribly engaging. The "power-driven young woman" of the description is constantly second-guessing herself as she grasps for approval she doesn't want from a family she doesn't seem to like for reasons that aren't really clear. She keeps saying she'd be fine if she did nothing, so...why is she doing this? And aside from events that occur moments before the book actually starts, most of the events happen to our passive cast. Our second character, the thief, is fairly devoid of personality for a while (and never really develops one).

The world isn't as well culturally fleshed-out as Radch Space was, largely because we benefited then from a protagonist who explained things to the reader. Here we're left to muddle along with sleepy Ingray. One irritating stylistic choice is that Leckie drops an invented gender-neutral series of pronouns that initially read like slang dialectic and eventually just becomes silly. Knowing the Ancillary books played with gender pronouns clued me in to what was going on, but reading "e," "em," etc is stiff and I had to stop at "nuncle" and "nother."

On the plus side, once there's a murder the plot picks up considerably (skip to chapter 10). Suddenly Ingray has reasons to do things and not waffle endlessly about it. Characters are motivated to take action, the politics actually get involved in the story, the amount of time spent moping drops. It never gets as good as any of the Ancillary books, nor does it do anything so interesting, but it becomes quite readable and even enjoyable. I would give the front half of this book 2 stars and the back half 4.

I loved Ancillary Justice - great concepts, page turning execution, sympathetic characters. The two sequels were somewhat less compelling, but were always bound to suffer in comparison to a truly novel novel. I had high hopes for what Leckie might produce after getting distance from AJ, but after reading Provenance, I couldn't be more disappointed and AJ looks more and more like a one hit wonder. Like a band that's been toiling for years and hits big with a first album but can't meet the pressure of demand for a quick second release and flops, Leckie serves up a trite and predictable plot, cardboard characters, and frankly and most painfully, boredom. I have not been so bored by a book in years - where AJ sucked you into an enthralling universe with unique points of view, Provenance sucks the life out of the reader with cliched plot devices and a static setting that barely exists and then solely as backdrop for the characters to rehash the same discussions over and over again. Most of the dialogue feels like filler, which makes the 430 page length achieved with the largest font I've ever seen in a non-children's book even more painful - I'm not sure why publishers think readers won't take a sub 400 page book seriously, but even most college freshman know that padding margins and bumping up the font size isn't going to fool anyone. Finally, while I'm sure the author feels her conceit of the "neman" characters who can (as far as I can discern) choose their genders or not, at their whim, makes Provenance "relevant" to contemporary political concerns, the constant repitition of the fake pronouns "e", "em", and "eir" only served to add confusion (and ultimately annoyance) to boredom - a terrible combination.

I expected Provenance to be excellent, coming off of Leckie's Ancillary trilogy. What I was surprised by was also how gentle it was; this is a universe where horrible things can happen, and the novel doesn't let us forget that, or pretend they don't matter when they happen to someone else, but the characters it focuses on (and the stories it tells) are the ones who see someone hurting and go out of their way to be kind, supportive, and understanding. It's also, as the title suggests, a novel about identity -- how we form it, why it matters, and what _about_ it matters. For everyone, the question is: who are they, if not who other people tell them to be? And this is why I call it gentle, because of how warmly the story treats them, even in the midst of all the political intrigue, the murder and invasion, the inter-family crisis of succession that drives the plot; it is a story that always wants them to be happy, on their own terms.

I almost wish these characters would just go drink tea. I loved her first two books and liked the third, and will probably not be able to keep myself from buying her next book, whatever it may be. Im sorry I spent the time to slog through this one

This was a bit of an odd book. Pretty imaginative world. From what I gather, there have been other books set in this world. The world building was pretty light, but overall I was able to just go with it and figured out most of the important stuff from context. So maybe a bit light on world building for someone that hasn't read any other books, but not bad. Our main character was a bit odd. She seemed very young and naive. Yet at the same time her history says she's been raised in a cutthroat political environment and has been scheming for years. Maybe not with the best of them, but up there. It created a bit of dissonance for me.

The beginning was good, but as the book went I gradually realized that the characters were all full of this odd teenage combination of rage/revenge/apathy. The rage/revenge feelings wore off by halfway through the book leaving her with apathy and a sense of duty caused by here naivety. As we were approaching the climax I realized I didn't feel any tension in the writing and didn't care at all how things worked out. So I stopped reading a bit over 75% in.

Not as good as the Ancillary trilogy, but a satisfying, well-crafted book. The canvas is much smaller: The cover blurb describes Ingray as "a power-driven young woman" seeking to "regain priceless lost artifacts", but it is more accurate to say that she is trying to impress her mother by tracking down a rival family's presumed-stolen 'vestiges'. (A vestige is a collectible of historical interest. On the planet Hwae vestiges are culturally and politically significant.) Ingray's plan isn't very good, and it goes wrong in interesting ways.

'Provenance' is a pleasant and well-crafted book. There is good world-building, with much bigger events are happening in the background, but they only allowed to get in the way of Ingray's story when they become part of it.

Provenance is a new, stand alone novel set in the same world as the Imperial Radch trilogy, a stunning space opera story that begins with Ancillary Justice. However, you absolutely do not have need to have read the Imperial Radch trilogy. Provenance takes place on a new planet and has a new cast. Readers who found the Imperial Radch trilogy confusing might enjoy Provenance more, as the narrative is more linear.

Ingray’s hunting for a way to impress her mother and one up her brother, her continual competitor. She hatches a risky scheme that involves her springing a political rival’s child from a prison planet. Unfortunately, the person she sinks all her resources into rescuing is not who she thought e was. But all’s not over yet, for Ingray’s thought up a new plan to salvage the situation. She just didn’t anticipate the involvement of aliens or a certain untimely death…

I really liked the world building in Provenance. Ann Leckie excels at world building. Ingray’s culture places enormous importance in vestiges, objects that were close by to some historical event or person. They’re obsessed with vestiges, and the person Ingray’s originally trying to rescued was accused of stealing eir family’s vestiges. If Ingray can find out what happened to them, she’ll hold something of immense political and monetary value.

The Imperial Radch trilogy was known for playing with gender, and the same is true with Provenance. Ingray’s culture has a tertiary gender system: men, women and nemen (who use e/em/eir pronouns). One of the things I loved about Provenance was how it showed (or at least hinted) that not everyone fit neatly into this system. For instance, one of the characters delayed choosing her gender for a long time and faced a lot of social pressure as a result. I read her as gender-fluid without the words to describe herself in a culture that doesn’t recognize genders outside of their tertiary system.

It was also fun to see how Ingray’s people viewed the Radchaai, who’ve been our focus and protagonists in the last trilogy. The Radchaai diplomat was absolutely hilarious — completely arrogant and obsessed with tea.

I did enjoy the family relationships in Provenance. Ingry’s an adopted child of a prominent political house, and her mother plans to chose her heir from between her and her brother. But everyone knows it will be her brother. Hence Ingry being so desperate to prove herself. The family relationships are strained and difficult, but there did seem to be love beneath them.

I’d heard Provenance described as a heist, which made me excited. Turns out, Provenance wasn’t as heist like as I’d hoped. I’ve seen other reviewers calling it a comedy of manners, which I think is a very accurate description.

Ingry herself didn’t stick out much to me. I didn’t dislike her, she was just sort of… forgettable. I think the same can be said of Provenance itself. While there were things I enjoyed about it and it was fun to spend time with, it didn’t stick with me much after I’d read it.

Big fan of Ann. This book was a good continuation of the world she built in the trilogy. Especially liked the extended view of the Geck. Tough to get around the fact that, for me at least, it was a fairly predictable young-woman-coming-of-age story. A well written and enjoyable one to be sure, but still... Also, there are a couple of gaps in the narrative that really irked. When you have an action moment that is suddenly resolved with no explanation...ugh. Pet peeve.

The only thing that didn't surprise me about this book is that it was 5 star excellent.

Like a lot of people, I think I was expecting something more similar in tone to the Radch trilogy, given that it's in the same universe and the somber nature of the almost all-black cover. But Provenance is a different kind of book entirely, and that turned out not only to be ok, but absolutely perfect.

Lighter, funnier, and more personally focused, Provenance still manages to do so many of the things I loved about Leckie's previous work. A not-strictly-binary approach to gender is presented as perfectly normalized in several societies - human societies (at the risk of using a stale internet culture reference, this is the future liberals want). Also, HELLo queer romances! Yes, plural. This made me indescribably happy. Especially for the main character, Ingray, who has a lovely character growth arc over he course of the novel.

Ingray is exactly the kind of normal, slightly provincial person Breq wasn't, and she's out of her depth through most of the story. But her obvious inexperience in nefarious dealings, which is a major theme of the first chapter, made her instantly likeable, and she proves her ability to rise to the occasion throughout the course of the novel.

More generally, Leckie does something else with her sci-fi that I haven't seen very often elsewhere. Her space-worlds are some of the most imaginarily accessible I've ever read. Where other space operas, both written and filmed, are filled with complicated or strictly functional equipment and drinking glasses that look more like something out of a mad scientist's lab for no discernable reason, Leckie's characters have furniture like an antique wooden desk with decorative inlays, porcelain tea sets, and they eat apples and cheese. Even when that old sci-fi trope (cliche?) of the oddly flavored protein food substitute makes its appearance (supplemented by dehydrated noodles), it makes sense for it to be there, since the chracters are traveling on a small space freighter that wasn't really designed for passengers.

Possibly the only quibbles I have about the book are that it's not really a murder mystery as I'd seen it billed - more like a tale of political intrigue - and that there's some repetitive running back and forth between locations once the characters reach Ingray's home planet that could have been spared with a tiny bit of torque on the plot.

Easily one of my favorite reads of the last 12 months or more

Set in the same universe as her previous, Imperial Radch Trilogy," is the story of foster child, Ingray, who hatches a daring plan to claim the respect of her powerful mother. Everything goes horribly wrong.... If you want to learn more about the Geck, briefly touched on in the Imperial Radch series, this is for you. It's a lot lighter than the last outing, more about families and children, less about grand themes. It's a fun read. Warning: Not for arachnophobes.

Ancillary Justice grabbed me by the collar and never let go - at least that's how I remember it. Provenance, on the other hand, operates at a more dogged pace. It took much longer for me to feel vested in the characters and their stories; most are lightly sketched, not fully drawn. Although there is a sense of closure, it's episodic and clearly intended to be another series. I'll probably read it - Ingray intrigues me - but as an Overdrive check-out.

The snapshot description of this book (above) is misleading. Maybe it's meant to hook a certain type of reader, but Leckie's writing is definitely more interesting than "boy and girl meet and buck authority in hopes of arriving at a happy ending" - even if that is objectively accurate. For some reason - maybe it takes me a while to enter that world? - it takes me a couple chapters to get hooked on her books, but it's not a tedious wait, and when I do get hooked I can't put them down. Give it a try, see what you get out of it - I doubt you'll regret it!

I wanted to like Provenance; I really did. Leckie once again lost my interest as the story bogged down into a long list of characters driven by extremely subtle diplomatic protocols. Aside from a few references to ships, gates, pods, there is virtually no space-tech as suggested by the cover art. I'm sure I'm in the minority, but there is not enough here to hold my interest. ( I enjoyed A. Justice, then totally bogged down in A. Sword and didn't even try A. Justice)

Leckie’s brilliant Ancillary trilogy was so original, it was probably inevitable that her next novel would seem bland and uninspiring. Provenance carries on some of the Ancillary themes, and it is certainly an enjoyable read, with some nice touches. But ultimately, it lacks substance, and has several curiously incomplete elements.

I really enjoy everything Ann Leckie writes. Provenance starts as an extreme case of sibling rivalry, morphs into a murder mystery, then to a National-Treasure-like political adventure. I was always expecting the plot to be one thing, and then it would change. It was glorious. Somehow Leckie manages to mix so many ideas into one big whole and make it flow seamlessly.

So I liked Ancillary Justice a lot....then not so much the next two. Waaay to much tea and fish and nothing ever happened. But here is the original Leckie back again. Interesting universe, good characters, a bit...of action, etc. Fun.

Leckie’s brilliant Ancillary trilogy was so original, it was probably inevitable that her next novel would seem bland and uninspiring. Provenance carries on some of the Ancillary themes, and it is certainly an enjoyable read, with some nice touches. But ultimately, it lacks substance, and has several curiously incomplete elements.

I really enjoy everything Ann Leckie writes. Provenance starts as an extreme case of sibling rivalry, morphs into a murder mystery, then to a National-Treasure-like political adventure. I was always expecting the plot to be one thing, and then it would change. It was glorious. Somehow Leckie manages to mix so many ideas into one big whole and make it flow seamlessly.

So I liked Ancillary Justice a lot....then not so much the next two. Waaay to much tea and fish and nothing ever happened. But here is the original Leckie back again. Interesting universe, good characters, a bit...of action, etc. Fun.

I probably would have given this book more stars but I had to stop reading it a third of the way through. I’m not sure why the formatting was so messed up on my Kindle but having the random e show up throughout the text was extremely distracting. Hopefully this will get fixed and I will be able to read it because I really enjoy her books.

Happy to return to the wonderful universe Ann Leckie started in the Ancillary trilogy. There are references to those stories, but this takes place elsewhere in the universe. A good standalone story, this one like the others examines how gender, language, and politics interact, in the tradition of Ursula LeGuin, Sherri Tepper, James Tiptree, and other groundbreaking feminist SF writers. Good stuff.

Essentially a mediocre novel about politics and family disputes set in a future history. Plot, character development, and quality of writing are pedestrian. No element of the story does much to enrich the projected future history.

I really liked the main character and companions. However, about 2/3, trying to track what are all the official positions and politics becomes a bit of a drag on the story.

Overall it was a fun read and great sci fi.

I bought this book on the strength of the Ancillary series and was highly disappointed. If those books are a 10 (and they are!) this one is about a four. A quick read with a few good ideas, but much fluffier than Ancillary.

Well worked out interesting read. The degenderising of personal pronouns was worth bearing with since it aptly reflects the appropriate moral attitude towards people, one yet to be encoded in the language of any actual culture so far as I know.

The story was decent and moved along pretty well, and the writing was pretty good. However, for some reason Leckie decided to use non-gender-specific personal and possessive pronouns, which I found to be distracting and even somewhat annoying. Also, I didn't find any of the characters to be that likable, appealing, or admirable.