What an intriguing book! I will look forward to the next volume with great pleasure. We meet Justice of Toren One Esk, the one remaining fragment of a former complex of a ship (the Justice of Toren) and its hundreds of ancilliaries, otherwise known as former humans who have had machine intelligence loaded into them. And that's a rotten description of what or whom Breq is.
Breq is traveling incognito, bent on a mission that the reader discovers gradually. After coming across a former crew captain, now a drug addict in danger of freezing to death, Breq acquires her as a companion. And wonders why they saved her? Not even artificial intelligences are completely logical, it seems.
This is a complex universe, with lots of moving parts. Supposedly it is all run by the overall authority Anaader Mianaai, who also has ancilliaries of herself, I assume to be in many places at the same time. There are many varieties of human, many planets and space stations, many possible status levels. Breq is sometimes confused which pronouns to use when addressing someone new and I remained confused about gender all the way through the novel.
I was reminded of several other series that I've sampled. The names, the complexity of the setting, and the relative lack of explanation all reminded me of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series (of which I am currently stuck at the halfway point of volume 4). The AI component suggests a slight similarity to Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries and Iain M. Banks's Culture series.
I love the amount of complex plotting taking place. There's some violence, but no one is currently at war, a state that I appreciate. We'll see if that lasts during the next two books, but I can hope. I've become so bored with long fantasy books centred on warfare and battles.
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