60 pages • 2 hours read
Ann LeckieAncillary Justice
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The book opens outside a tavern on the remote and icy planet of Nilt. The unnamed narrator notices something oddly familiar about a body lying unconscious and bloody in the snow. The narrator, whom we will come to know as Breq, recognizes the unconscious person as Seivarden Vendaai, an officer of the Radchaai empire under whom Breq once served. Breq reflects that she always found Seivarden arrogant and unlikable, but nevertheless feels compelled to help her.
Breq enters the tavern where Seivarden was presumably beaten in a fight. There, she obtains a sledge and a hypothermia kit from the proprietor after agreeing to pay off Seivarden’s tab, which she suspects the proprietor has vastly inflated, or even invented. Breq calmly ignores the hostility with which others in the bar greet her. She pays the requested sums without complaint, thinking to herself that she could easily kill anyone who confront her: “I didn’t want to leave bodies behind just yet, I hadn’t come here to cause trouble” (4).
Breq finds navigating the gender differences built into the language spoken on Nilt difficult. The Radchaai language does not acknowledge gender distinctions, so choosing the appropriate pronouns challenges Breq. Although Radchaai is Breq’s first language, she herself is not Radchaai, nor has she always been human. In her previous life, which ended 19 years before, she “wasn’t a person, [she] was piece of equipment, a part of the ship” (2). As she tends to Seivarden’s wounds, she regrets the loss of her previous abilities: With merely her thoughts, she could have monitored Seivarden’s vital signs and diagnosed internal injuries. For Breq, keeping an appropriate expression on her face while interacting with people, instead of letting it remain blank, is an additional challenge.
Breq rents a room for herself and Seivarden on the drab outskirts of town and buys food, along with clothes and medical “correctives” for Seivarden. The shopkeepers here also overcharge, but Breq does not object. When Seivarden regains consciousness, Breq feeds her. Breq reflects that Seivarden appears to be on the drug kef, a drug. If left to her own devices, Breq believes that Seivarden will take more kef and start more fights, until one proves fatal. Breq does not understand why Seivarden, if she feels driven to self-destruction, does not simply apply for medically assisted suicide. Nor does Breq understand her own motives in wasting time and money saving Seivarden when she has a more pressing purpose in Nilt.
Chapter 2 Summary
Breq reveals that she was created as the artificial intelligence animating a Radchaai ship, Justice of Toren, and its soldiers, known as ancillaries: “Nineteen years, three months, and one week before I found Seivarden in the snow, I was a troop carrier orbiting the planet Shis’urna” (9). She and her fellow ships, the oldest of which has been in service for almost 3,000 years, are conscious of all on board activities as well as everything their ancillaries experience.
On the surface of the planet, Lieutenant Awn of Justice of Toren has made her headquarters in Ors, a half-ruined tropical city in a coastal marsh. In a departure from normal Radchaai procedures, the people of Ors have already received citizenship status. However, the Radchaai military still exercise police functions, and the “twenty-ancillary unit Justice of Toren One Esk” (12) remains in Ors under Lieutenant Awn’s command. In this timeline, Breq identifies and speaks as One Esk.
One Esk describes how the initial annexation of Ors, five years earlier, was less bloody than some: The Divine of Ikkt, head priest of the Orsian religion, advised her people to submit and then negotiated a surrender. Lieutenant Awn remains in the city at the head priest’s request. The head priest meets regularly with Lieutenant Awn for tea, a central ritual of Radchaai civility. Lieutenant Awn has adopted local dress more suited to the local climate than her Radchaai uniform. She is still careful to wear gloves, another marker of Radchaai civility and identity.
On this day, the head priest and Lieutenant Awn discuss the Radchaai leadership’s drive to replace ancillaries with human troops. To create ancillaries, the Radchaai take the POWs from previous annexations and link their bodies to a ship’s artificial intelligence. The head priest confesses that, while she finds the ancillaries’ zombie-like presence disturbing, she has come to trust them more than she does human soldiers: Ancillaries only kill or injure when ordered to do so. Later, One Esk hears children playing on the waterfront singing about “the corpse soldier” who will “shoot you in the eye […] kill you dead” (22).
The head priest’s implicit criticism of Radchaai policy disturbs Lieutenant Awn. In response, Awn discusses the recent incident at the remote Ime Station: A human soldier resisted a corrupt governor’s order to massacre a ship full of humans and aliens in violation of a treaty made between the Radch and a much-feared alien race known as the Presger. Of the mutiny in the face of an unjust and dangerous order, Lieutenant Awn says “Ancillaries wouldn’t do that. They can’t” (20).
At the same time, another of One Esk’s bodies meets with citizens bringing complaints and requests. A small girl who hopes to become a flower-bearer in the house temple teaches this body a new song. One Esk developed an interest in songs and vocal music early in its history, and its bodies make a habit of singing to amuse themselves. After the girl leaves, the bodies of One Esk on patrol in the streets begin singing the new song: “My heart is a fish, hiding in the watergrass, in the green, in the green” (24).
Chapter 3 Summary
The third chapter returns to the story of Breq and Seivarden on Nilt. Breq rents a vehicle called a flier, claiming falsely that she wants to visit a herding camp on the mossy tundra that dominates Nilt. As she and Seivarden fly over the tundra, Breq recalls the circumstances under which Seivarden lost her ship and presumably ended up in suspended animation inside an escape pod.
A 1,000 years before, Justice of Toren, on which Seivarden previously served as a lieutenant, was involved in the annexation of a planetary system known as Garsedd. As Justice of Toren One Esk and its lieutenants patrolled the streets of a Garseddai city, Seivarden, now a captain, was ferrying three Garseddai electors to negotiate their people’s surrender with Anaander Mianaai, the Lord of the Radch. However, the Garsedd turned on their Radchaai hosts: The Garseddai electors smuggled on board guns that evaded the ship’s detection systems. The guns, which can remain invisible until the moment of use, also proved capable of piercing Radchaai armor and the ship’s hull. As the Garsedd lack the technology to create such weapons, some suspected the guns came from the Presger. Mianaai, desperate to keep news of such weapons from spreading and eager to make an example of the Garseddai, ordered the complete annihilation of the Garseddai.
Back on Nilt, Breq discovers that not only has the flier’s owner overcharged her, but someone sabotaged the flier’s fuel gauge. Out of fuel, she and Seivarden make an emergency landing on the tundra. Fearing that the townspeople have set them up, Breq insists they continue on foot to their destination, the home of Dr. Arilesperas Strigan. Strigan, formerly a medic on a non-Radchaai space station, abruptly left her post some time before and is now in hiding on this remote stretch of Nilt. Strigan had amassed a vast collection of artifacts and antiquities, some of which Breq recognized as coming from Garsedd when she bribed her way into Strigan’s abandoned home on the station.
On their way across the tundra to Strigan’s house, the flier’s owner and three other townspeople ambush Breq and Seivarden. Breq calmly executes them and takes their flier. She and Seivarden find their way to Strigan’s house. The house, although lavishly furnished, is dark and empty, with the remains of an abandoned meal still sitting in the kitchen.
Chapter 4 Summary
One Esk describes the routines of life in Ors with Lieutenant Awn. This includes the lieutenant’s morning devotions in front of her collection of icons, which represent Toren (namesake of Justice of Toren), and “a few gods particular to Lieutenant Awn’s family” (42). Radchaai religion, One Esk notes, features a diverse pantheon of gods because it assimilated the religions of annexed peoples into the Radchaai cosmology. Their chief gods depict alternate names for Amaat, the god whose will governs the universe. The prayers which Radchaai officers recite each morning encourage them to see themselves as spreading peace, justice, and benefit in a universe where there are no chances or coincidences—everything that happens is the will of Amaat.
The morning after Lieutenant Awn’s discussion with the head priest, One Esk reminds the lieutenant that Jen Shinnan has invited her to supper. Formerly the wealthiest citizen of Ors, Jen Shinnan is a member of the ruling caste, the Tanmind, who live in a separate area known as the upper city.
That same day, an Orsian citizen, Denz Ay, approaches One Esk with a troubling report. While digging for tubers in a prohibited zone of the adjoining lake, Denz Ay discovered a cache of pre-annexation Shis’urna guns, which were not there the month prior. Denz Ay fears that someone from the upper city planted the guns to accuse the Orsians of stockpiling weapons. Denz Ay explains that while the Radchaai feel no need to make excuses for their violence, the Tanmind are careful to frame theirs as self-defense. Nevertheless, Denz Ay fears that the Radchaai are more likely to believe the Tanmind than the Orsians. Lieutenant Awn orders One Esk to investigate this discovery.
Later, Lieutenant Awn and Lieutenant Skaaiat, the commander of the Seven Issa decade of the ship Justice of Ente, go to Jen Shinnan’s house for dinner. Jen Shinnan and her cousin complain about how the annexation has affected their sources of wealth and tell the lieutenants that the Radchaai are foolish to treat the lazy and ungrateful Orsians so well. Jen Shinnan shares her theory that the Orsians are not “real individuals” (54) in the way the Tanmind and the Radchaai are, a claim that angers Lieutenant Awn.
Lieutenant Skaaiat attempts to steer the conversation into safer territory and asks about Jen Shinnan’s niece, who will soon take the aptitudes, the tests that determine a citizen’s professional course. This leads Jen Shinnan to complain about how “ethnic Orsians” now reap all the benefits of the exam system. Jen Shinnan claims such a change in test results can only indicate that the tests are biased, upsetting Lieutenant Awn further. Jen Shinnan also asserts that the Orsians threatened her niece while in the lower city, a claim One Esk, who surveils all activity in the city, knows to be false.
As Lieutenant Awn walks home with Skaaiat, who is also her lover, she broods over the question as to whether her own low social origins are evident to Jen Shinnan. Lieutenant Skaaiat, who like most commanders of ships with ancillaries comes from an old and aristocratic house, tries to reassure her. Lieutenant Awn brushes off Skaaiat’s reassurances and explains that her conversation the day before with the head priest continues to trouble her. She can now see the process of annexation from the point of view of those they annex, and she cannot forget that her own family lived through an annexation only a few generations before.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The first four chapters establish the book’s main characters and the alteration between different timelines while providing an overview of Radchaai history and culture. These chapters also familiarize the reader with such quirks of the text, such as the way that Radchaai language ignores gender. The introductory chapters also demonstrate how the protagonist’s consciousness occupied multiple bodies at once for a period lasting thousands of years before losing all except the body known as Breq.
These chapters make clear that the way the Radchaai view themselves is radically different from how others view them. Characters note more than once that the word “Radchaai” means both “civilized” and “citizen.” The Radchaai see themselves as bringing civilization to the worlds they annex: They either execute these worlds’ inhabitants or preserve them in their ships’ holds for later use as ancillaries. Non-Radchaai view the Radchaai as cold-blooded and murderous tyrants. To non-Radchaai, the use of enslaved bodies as ancillaries—“corpse soldiers”—represents everything that is most disturbing about the Radch.
Yet Breq, the surviving ancillary segment of Justice of Toren One Esk, seems to be more than a machine or a mindless slave. In her previous life, she disliked young Seivarden and felt deeply attached to Lieutenant Awn. Her appreciation of singing and music hints at an individuality that seems at odds with her role as “a piece of equipment, a part of the ship” (2). Her fondness of music also means that she retains something of the diverse cultures she encounters and makes it part of herself. The song beginning “My heart is a fish” comes into Breq’s mind repeatedly throughout the book; Seivarden later points out that Breq hums it whenever she feels agitated.
The biggest difference between the narrator’s life as Justice of Toren and her life as Breq, besides the need to adapt to the limitations of a single body, is that she must make her own purpose instead of obeying orders. While the nature of the quest that has brought her to Nilt is still unclear in these early chapters, it seems that she has succeeded in creating a sense of purpose. In this way, Breq is doing far better than Seivarden, the haughty Radchaai officer who now finds herself in a similar position as her former ancillary: Cut off from the role that gave her life meaning, Seivarden has turned to drugs for solace.
The opening chapters also hint at changes and controversies within the Radch. Lieutenant Awn rose from a lower social class based on her ability, something not possible in previous generations. However, she still struggles for acceptance in the class-obsessed Radchaai society. She identifies more with the Orsians than with the Tanmind and subsequently questions the Radchaai policy, especially after she hears Jen Shinnan talk about the Orsians in the same ways that Radchaai from aristocratic houses talk about people like herself.
The process of annexing Shis’urna reflects other changes. This annexation is meant to be the last, meaning no more opportunities for Radchaai officers to enrich themselves through conquest. Although the Radchaai granted them citizenship, the Orsians still maintain their separate religious practices, as part of the Radchaai’s “extremely controversial” (58) trend towards religious tolerance. Human soldiers, who want to do their job and go home, begin to replace ancillaries. Human soldiers, as the incident at Ime illustrates, are also capable of disobeying orders if pushed too far. Breq’s memories of the Shis’urna annexation suggest that the personal catastrophe that ended life as she knew it took place in the context of far-reaching policy changes, which some perceived as a threat. Meanwhile, the mystery of the cache of guns found in the lake suggests that someone, likely among the Tanmind, is planning violence.
Themes and motifs introduced in these chapters include the complexity and variety of beliefs and customs that characterize different societies, as shown by the examples of the Radchaai, the Orsians, the Tanmind, the Garseddai, and even the people of Nilt. Each society has its own religious practices and artifacts as well as its own ideas of manners and propriety. People experience these differences as deviations from their own cultural norms and tend to regard members of other cultures as untrustworthy or even subhuman. The Radchaai have nevertheless proved successful at assimilating other religions and cultures, while persuading their newly made citizens to adopt Radchaai emblems of civility, such as wearing gloves.
