J's Pages

Space zombies! Well, okay, maybe not what you're thinking. This book doesn't tell about a cosmic invasion of flesh eating, ambulatory corpses. It's actually a bit more pedestrian--a bot closer to the original concept of a zombie. 

In the far future, humanity has reached the stars and has done what humanity does best: conquered it. The galactic empire is known as the Radch. The Radch conquers planets, in part, by using undead soldiers called ancillaries. These are conquered people who are killed, and then reanimated by the massive artificial intelligences that run Radch ships and space stations. Each ancillary is an extension of the central A.I., tending to the duties assigned by the human crew. A particular ancillary may serve as an invading soldiers, occupying troops, administrative assistants, or janitorial staff. But each ancillary is constantly connected to and perceives itself as the central A.I. Well, at least until the network breaks down and each ancillary has to fend for itself. 

That's what happened to ancillary One Esk 19 of the ship Justice of Toren. As the story opens, she is on a personal mission on a backward planet on the border of Radch territory. How an ancillary came to have a personal mission and what that mission is is slowly revealed as the story jumps back and forth between the present and events that occurred 20 years before. Ms. Leckie did a very good job of using that method to draw me into the tale while building the world (galaxy?) in which it occurs. 

 Check it out! 

LibraryThing link