Thanks to a lot of time spent on trains, and one seriously good book, I have made some progress on the To be Read pile. Specifically I have finished Ancillary Sword. It is a very different story to Ancillary Justice, but still a very good book.

I don’t have time to write a full review, but there is one thing I want to highlight. The Radch is an empire, and like all such things it encompasses a variety of cultures. As is common, those cultures that were more recently annexed tend to be seen as the least civilized, and are therefore the worst treated. In this book Breq has to deal with a space station administrator whose attitude towards civil unrest amongst the poorest parts of the population in depressingly familiar way. Breq spells it out for her:

“These people are citizens.” I replied, my voice as calm and even as I could make it, without reaching the dead tonelessness of an ancillary. “When they behave properly you will say there is no problem. When they complain loudly you will say that they cause their own problems with their impropriety. And when they are driven to extremes, you say you will not reward such actions. What will it take for you to listen?”

Let no one say that science fiction is not relevant to today’s world.

And now I can get on with Resistance, the new Samit Basu novel, because how can I resist a book that begins like this?

A giant lobster rises slowly out of Tokyo Bay. It is an old-school kaiju, three hundred feet long, and stands upright, its hind limbs still under water, in defiance of biology, physics and all codes of lobster etiquette.