Posts Tagged: Ancillary Sword

ann-leckie

Today, Orbit Books announced that they have purchased two new science fiction novels from Ann Leckie, Hugo Award-winning author of Ancillary Justice and former editor of GigaNotoSaurus.

“The first novel is tentatively scheduled for Fall 2017 and will be set in the same universe as her previous Ancillary books,” Orbit revealed in the official press release, satisfying fans of her hugely successful Radch Empire trilogy. “The second will be an unrelated science fiction novel.”

“Ann Leckie is a major new voice in science fiction,” said Tim Holman, Publisher at Orbit Books. “The unprecedented success of her debut novel, Ancillary Justice, marked the beginning of what promises to be a remarkable writing career, and we are hugely looking forward to continuing our partnership over the coming years.”

“I’m so happy to be able to continue working with Orbit!” said Leckie. “It’s been an amazing couple of years together, and I’m looking forward to spending more time in my science fictional universe, and more time with my readers.”

The two novels will be published by Orbit simultaneously in North America and the United Kingdom.

2015 Hugo Nominations v 0.1
Best Novel

The flush of the 2014 Hugo Awards is fading, and, with the holidays just peeking around the corner, I wanted to take the time to discuss some of my favourite novels from 2014, the ones that, at this very moment, would comprise my nomination slate for the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel. Will it change by next spring when nominations are due? Undoubtedly.

These are all terrific novels, and, if you haven’t read them already, well, I envy you.

Best Novel

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

Say hello to the best fantasy novel of 2014.

Even as I was startled by its twisted depth, I adored every moment I spent with City of Stairs. Colonialism lies at City of Stairs‘ centre, and RJB handles it with equal parts boldness and delicacy. The ruined beauty of Bulikov and its fallen gods haunted me long after I turned the final page.

Robert Jackson Bennett is best known for his contemporary fantasy and horror crossovers, such as American Elsewhere and The Troupe, so his move into more traditional epic fantasy put him on the radar of a lot of new readers, and the result is something special. On first reading City of Stairs, I described it to a friend as “China Mieville without the ego.” I’m not sure I still agree with that statement, because it’s unfair to saddle one writer with another’s baggage, but while reading City of Stairs I couldn’t fight the feeling that RJB was mixing and refining elements from some of my recent favourite fantasies. Other touchstones exists, such as Kameron Hurley’s The Mirror Empire and Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence, that place RJB among the most exciting and vibrant young fantasy writers working today.

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

Buy City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

Read More »

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Buy Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie: Book/eBook

Ann Leckie, author of the much lauded, and many award winning, novel, Ancillary Justice, announced on her blog that her Imperial Radch series has been optioned for television by Fabrik and Fox Television Studios. “They have previously worked together on The Killing for four seasons on AMC and Netflix,” Leckie said, “and they started their relationship with Burn Notice.”

Leckie warns her fans not to get too far ahead of themselves, though, citing Hollywood’s glacial pacing and labyrinthine nature. “Ancillary Justice has been optioned for TV,” she said. “Now, ‘optioned’ doesn’t necessarily mean that anything is going to actually happen–things get optioned and then never made, quite frequently.’

With the production of a television adaptation of James S.A. Corey’s Expanse series in full production, this is a great time to be a fan of televised science fiction. Though the question begs to be asked, where Corey’s work is straight forward science fiction with all the fixins for television, Leckie’s series is a whole different beast, and many of its strongest facets — such as its handling of gender, and its protagonist’s preternatural cognitive abilities granted to her as an ancillary — may prove difficult to adapt to a television script.

“Bringing [Ancillary Justice] to any sort of screen (not counting your eReader screen, of course!) would be… an interestingly difficult project,” Leckie admitted. “I made sure to have a conversation with the folks at Fabrik about my specific concerns–namely, the approach to gender, and the issue of whitewashing (as in, I do not want to see the book whitewashed, I would like to namedrop LeGuin and mention her Earthsea experience here, thank you). I was very pleased with their response.”

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

Publisher: Orbit Books - Pages: 400 - Buy: Book/eBook
Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

Ann Leckie can dance.

When her debut novel, Ancillary Justice, released in 2014, nobody expected it to hit the science fiction community like a nuclear bomb. But it did. And Leckie was dancing the whole way through.

It was a firecracker of a novel — small and intense — but the unusual narrative structure and Leckie’s bold take on gender might have limited the audience to the most passionate and feminist-minded readers. Instead, the exact opposite happened: Ancillary Justice wasn’t a small snap, crackle, pop in a corner of fandom, it was a conflagration of love and adoration heard ’round the community.

Ancillary Justice won almost every major literary award for science fiction and fantasy in 2014, including the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel, and has sold over 30,000 copies to date, proving that not only is there a market for progressive, thoughtful space opera, there’s a thirst for it among readers. Ancillary Justice was a huge critical and commercial success, but with that success comes a lot of pressure for a sequel that lives up to its predecessor and satisfies its many fans. Writing under that sort of pressure can be the first stumbling point for many first time novelists, but Leckie never misses a beat. Read More »

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

Buy Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie: Book/eBook

To say that Ann Leckie’s debut novel, Ancillary Justice (REVIEW), was last year’s most surprising critical darling wouldn’t be far from the truth, but anyone with knowledge of Leckie’s previous short fiction should not have been shocked to see the bold space opera make so many waves. Ancillary Justice recently won the Kitschies’ Golden Tentacle, and found nominations for the 2013 Philip K. Dick Award, the 2013 Nebula Award and the 2013 BSFA Award for Best Novel. It is expected by many (myself included) to make the Hugo list for Best Novel when nominations are tallied next month.

Ancillary Sword does not have the luxury of obscurity, as Leckie was quick to point out when I reached out to her to discuss the sequel. “I wrote Ancillary Justice in a sort of isolation — only my friends knew I was working on it,” she said. “Some of them had opinions on the work, but mostly it was just me, writing and thinking about it. Ancillary Sword, though — now Ancillary Justice is out, I’ve been seeing reactions to it, and speculations about Ancillary Sword, and it’s kind of odd, to see people tweet about where they hope or assume the book or its characters might go.”

Fans have a lot to look forward to, and the back cover blurb for Ancillary Sword gives a good idea of what they’re in for.

The Lord of the Radch has given Breq command of the ship Mercy of Kalr and sent her to the only place she would have agreed to go — to Athoek Station, where Lieutenant Awn’s sister works in Horticulture.

Athoek was annexed some six hundred years ago, and by now everyone is fully civilized — or should be. But everything is not as tranquil as it appears. Old divisions are still troublesome, Athoek Station’s AI is unhappy with the situation, and it looks like the alien Presger might have taken an interest in what’s going on. With no guarantees that interest is benevolent.

“When I wrote Ancillary Justice,” Leckie explained, “I knew that the story wanted to be a trilogy — it’s funny, isn’t it, how you just think of things in familiar forms, as though there’s some universal reason a story should be a hundred thousand words long, or else three chunks of a hundred thousand each, and not some other length or structure. It just goes to show how strong some expectations are.

“Anyway. I felt from the start that the story wanted to be a trilogy, but I also had no way of knowing if I could even sell one book, let alone three. So I decided to write Ancillary Justice as though there would only be the one book–but I also tried to leave some options open in case I would actually get to continue.”

Breq is facing somewhat different problems, now she’s gotten what there is to get of her revenge and is still alive to face new problems.

The critical success of Ancillary Justice opened many doors for Leckie and her trilogy. Breq’s journey through the the first novel left readers with an empire on the verge of civil war and utter collapse, and Ancillary Sword promises to deliver questions to some of the trilogy’s most pressing questions, though not in exactly the same way that Ancillary Justice first asked them.

“Of necessity, the settings of Ancillary Sword aren’t quite so far-flung as Ancillary Justice,” she explained “[and it] isn’t exactly the same sort of book as Ancillary Justice. Breq is facing somewhat different problems, now she’s gotten what there is to get of her revenge and is still alive to face new problems. Regardless, I do hope that readers enjoy it.”