Superb space opera about Breq, the last remaining fragment of an AI that once controlled a massive troop transport and thousands of ancillary bodies on behalf of an ever-expanding, ruthless civilising empire ruled by a single individual with thousands of bodies. Within reach of an object she has been searching for for nineteen years, she stumbles on a familiar person dying in the snow and, against her better judgement, rescues them for reasons obscure even to herself.

Leckie does any number of clever and interesting things in this volume, not the least of which is that the narrative is effectively a translation from a language and a society that does not acknowledge gender, so, because a neutral term would be the objectifying 'it,' the default pronoun for any individual is feminine, unless there is a specific reason for noticing gender or she is addressing individuals from societies a bit more prickly about the subject. It's a clever conceit, and eliminates gender inequality from a society with plenty of other social inequalities to contend with.

Ancillary Justice reminded me quite strongly of the work of both CJ Cherry, though not, perhaps as intensely psychological and claustrophobic, and Iain M Banks, though a little more restrained in its baroque expansiveness. Excellent.