Ancillary Mercy

This trilogy was so great. I love everything that the author did with gender and language. I love everything about how the series spends so much time on the question of who deserves respect and why...or perhaps rather why we attribute respect to certain individuals.

It's just so good. I'm so excited to read the standalone novels as well. Especially because I want to learn more about the Presger!

This final book in the Breq trilogy is so satisfying. We get action and infiltration, we get multiple emotional tangles from Seivarden and Breq, we get station politics and the protest line, and we get plenty of thematic discussion around self-determination.

The Translator Zeiat and Sphene comedy routine in this book is also so good, even if it feels tonally out of place at times. (I also think Zeiat and Dlique work better on a reread where Translation State has provided some more context about the Translators and it feels less wacky.)

In the end it’s only ever been one step, and then the next.

I think this trilogy could be unsatisfying to some, in that nothing gets fixed or is truly resolved. To me, it feels like a satisfying model for incremental change, starting with making things better for the people and spaces around you.

Strong end to a fantastic trilogy. Along with developing everything that Sword set up, it does a fantastic job of deploying comedy. I can think of very few other writers who've managed to have real laugh-out-loud comic relief that not only doesn't detract from all the serious things in the book but actually develops the plot and builds the world further.

I really want to read more about the Presger, and to read a book or short story that looks at Breq through other characters' eyes.