Ancillary Sword

Imagine you write a novel that wins basically every major sci-fi award in English speaking world. (Not that awards actually matter.) Partly because you write great orwellian novel from the future with original spin of AI being the main character in human skin fighting an all knowing other AI that is simultaneously at war with itself. Partly, I fear, because you inject your woke ideology into it but it's not overhanded and it's enjoyable even for someone like me so activists prop it up while normies don't mind.

Now imagine you throw that original worldbuilding out the window and write a sequel confined into one space station and tea plantation on the planet. Promise of epic space opera? Nowhere to be found. Promise of over the top woke social talking points? Everywhere.

There's more characters in here so the inability to differentiate gender, to imagine what the characters look like is almost impossible at this point. Author uses only feminine pronouns so reader has no idea who is male or female. Additionally, it was established in the first book that AI with IQ probably somewhere above 300 can't tell a difference between men and women... On top of that literally everybody, even characters on ships who are from various parts of the galaxy are all “dark skinned or darker skinned”. Tea plantation is a metaphor for cotton plantations and workers are slaves in all but name.

But even despite all of that I'd be okay with the book if it moved plot forward or if characterization of anybody, ANYBODY was better. But this is a filler, a spin-off. Maybe it should've been the first act of Justice's sequel instead of whole book. It doesn't even much feel like a setup for sequel until the last 20 pages.

There's no characterization of Breq's crew. They are all human but since previous captain liked them to act like ancillaries (ship's AI in human bodies) they act like them. They're robots without a hint of character except for Kalr Five's love of porcelain, lol. And near the end they say they like living like this. Has the author ever talked to a soldier? To another human being for that matter? Is she in love with Star Trek's Borgs?
I guess that's how author masks her biggest weakness because character's from space station and plantation are also just as flat.

I fear the conclusion in Mercy won't conclude anything if it's going to be in any way similar to this book. If I ever even bother to waste more time on this series.