Ann Leckie: Translation State (2023, Orbit)
lingua English
Pubblicato il 26 Dicembre 2023 da Orbit.
Anne Leckie's world building and psychological insights into the different alien, AI and human races and factions are like no other. Sometimes it's hard to follow if you don't concentrate on the story, but it definitely never gets boring. If you liked the Ancillary books, this one is definitely for you.
Yes! Radch-adjacent, if you've read the trilogy, and I'm here for it.
It feels like there must have been piles more POV characters in this book than the others but now trying to remember after the fact there were only three? Regardless, I sometimes had trouble tracking what was happening and integrating events into the core thread of the story.
Whereas I tend to classify the Ancillary trio as stories about consent that use gender and identity as world-building color, much of Translation State struck me as the inverse— a story fundamentally about identity where lack of consent is used to highlight or intensify the characters’ struggles to know themselves. The denouement however ties everything together: /informed/ consent, or gtfo.
Bonus brain-bending geometry puzzles and backstory for some of the weirder moments from translators in previous books.
CN for squick-inducing body horror (experienced by someone not expecting it), non-squick-inducing body horror (experienced by someone for whom it is normal), and neutral/normalized gore …
It feels like there must have been piles more POV characters in this book than the others but now trying to remember after the fact there were only three? Regardless, I sometimes had trouble tracking what was happening and integrating events into the core thread of the story.
Whereas I tend to classify the Ancillary trio as stories about consent that use gender and identity as world-building color, much of Translation State struck me as the inverse— a story fundamentally about identity where lack of consent is used to highlight or intensify the characters’ struggles to know themselves. The denouement however ties everything together: /informed/ consent, or gtfo.
Bonus brain-bending geometry puzzles and backstory for some of the weirder moments from translators in previous books.
CN for squick-inducing body horror (experienced by someone not expecting it), non-squick-inducing body horror (experienced by someone for whom it is normal), and neutral/normalized gore and violence. Brief analogue to sexual assault, sustained analogue to SA-induced PTSD.
Leckie continues to build worlds and cultures that turn a lens back onto contemporary struggles around identity and sovereignty. It is helpful, but not necessary, to have read her other Radch books as they do build on some earlier stories and a few characters turn up again. There is also a deeper dive into the Presgers (or at least the Presger Translators), but the author does a great job keeping terrible mysteries mysterious.
Finally, a slight spoiler, in this installment Leckie fixes the greatest flaw in her universe: the lack of coffee. I applaud her courage in bringing this beverage into a heretofore tea-centric narrative.
