Lakmus

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Lakmus is Currently Reading

Lakmus is currently reading

Empire of Silence (The Sun Eater, #1)

by Christopher Ruocchio (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: other_recommended, sci-fi-fantasy, have_a_copy, currently-reading

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Apr 17, 2026 08:24PM

Lakmus is currently reading

Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, #1)

by Ann Leckie (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: sci-fi-fantasy, favorites, have_a_copy, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in January 2024

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Lakmus said:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

" So in essence, we have an AI gaining personhood and fuller agency through the power of cognitive dissonance from being ordered to shoot a human they loved? And going on a twenty year mission to make their evil overlord fully aware that the same cogni So in essence, we have an AI gaining personhood and fuller agency through the power of cognitive dissonance from being ordered to shoot a human they loved? And going on a twenty year mission to make their evil overlord fully aware that the same cognitive dissonance is already happening to them, which throws society into open civil war. Greek tragedy level shit, love it.

Notes to self:
- soooo Breq/Justice of Toren is legally non-human because it's an AI with ancillaries, but Anaander Mianaai is essentially a god-king, a position that she is able to hold because she's....an AI with ancillaries? That's a realistic level of societal hypocrisy actually.
- multi-body AI is an extremely cool and neat concept
- Radchaai-Alethi solidarity: imperial conquest and being horny about hands
- Radchaai society seems to be so strongly modelled on everything being soldier barracks (everyone gets an assignment, basic clothing/food/lodgings for citizens) that it starts morphing into space communism, as per horseshoe theory.
- cultures having strong opinions about tea is also very realistic actually
- love the Finnish/Mandarin solution to pronouns adopted here. Why have even the three standard pronouns when one does the job? "We are an extremely conservative culture with a fetish for tradition – our tradition says we don't care about gender expression, but all our pronouns will be 'she' because we don't particularly care for personal preferences either". Or have them in that way. See point about re: horseshoes.
- all this horseshoeing creates the effect of making a picture of society with utopian and dystopian features simultaneously – I've seen this before in the Terra Ignota books, and think this is a good way of doing sci-fi and fantasy worldbuilding. Creates a nice feeling of cognitive dissonance.
- hope to see more of Seivarden's internal thought process in later books, because boy, this guy is doing some personal growth very fast here, it's a little suspicious without the inner monologue. ...more "

progress:

(page 80 of 386)
— Dec 26, 2023 11:57AM

Jan 02, 2024 01:04PM · see review