Ann Leckie returns to the world of the Imperial Radch in this standalone.
The Temporal Location of the Radiant Star has always been a source of both conflict and hope for the people of Ooioiaa. However, the imperial Radch see it only as an inconvenience, an antiquated religious site soon to be absorbed into their own, superior culture. But local politics is complicated, and the Radch have made one last concession: One last man will be allowed to join the mummified bodies in the temporal location to become a "living saint".
But this one decision will ripple out to affect every part of the city. Amidst a slowly worsening food shortage, riots, and a communication blackout from the rest of the Radch Empire, a religious savant will entertain visions of his own sainthood, a socialite will discover zer comfortable life upended, and a young man sold into servitude will find unlikely escape.

My Review:

If you’re wondering where this fits into the chronology of the Imperial Radch, well, so was I. If you’ve not read the Imperial Radch series that begins so marvelously, with Ancillary Justice, you might want to go back and do that. Because DAMN but that opening trilogy (Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy) is AWESOME.

Also it’s the record of events elsewhere in the Radch, the events that are causing so many difficulties on Ooioiaa, the tiny, remote, mostly disregarded and still in the process of being colonized by the Radchaai, the planet on which this story about colonization, colonialism and collateral damage takes place.

In other words, Radiant Star is a bit of a side story to the main action of the series. Or, at least it is from the perspective of the Radchaai governor, her staff and all the functionaries with her on Ooioiaa.

But only until Governor Charak concludes that the weeks she has been entirely cut off from communication and resupply from the vast bureaucratic empire of the Imperial Radch represents, not a mere technical glitch, but a disaster of such epic proportions that multiple gates in the empire’s vast travel and communications network are offline – AT THE SAME TIME.

She knows something terrible must have happened – but she doesn’t have any information to tell her precisely what and how bad the disaster might be.

Without access to the resources that keep both the economy AND, more importantly, the FOOD SUPPLY on Ooioiaa stable, and without the ability to call in “the cavalry” if that stability becomes UNstable, Governor Charak knows that her mission is in trouble.

Not that she doesn’t have enough personnel and especially ancillaries from her ship, Justice of Albis, because if she is willing to be bloody-minded about it she can put down any rebellion on the part of the population. But her mission is to govern these people, not conquer them. Killing a wide swath of those people – if it can be prevented – is against her mandate.

However, between the truly weird planetary conditions on Ooioiaa, the lack of imports from well, anywhere at all to supplement the food supply, a little bit of human stupidity and a whole lot of human greed, the native food supply on Ooioiaa can’t cope with the number of people it is currently supporting.

Inflation and food shortages are not enemies that Charak can negotiate with. She can use the ancillaries to guard what’s left, but her attempts to increase that food supply don’t just fail, they make the situation catastrophically worse.

People are starving on the streets. Well, nearly all of them. If Charak’s attempt to add to the food supply marks the human stupidity that fuels this mess – and it does – then the greed of the local officials who are hoarding food and stealing the little bit that does manage to come in through bribery and outright corruption – turns the whole thing catastrophic.

Fortunately for Charak, the rank corruption of the local officials stinks so badly that a lot of the population’s ire will be turned on them instead of her, once the crisis is over. If it doesn’t end in a planet of graves.

Escape Rating A: This was a LOT. Not necessarily in pages, but in density. There’s a lot going on on Ooioiaa and there’s a lot of story to tell and a lot to think about as that story gets told. Something which was definitely true in the original Imperial Radch trilogy. I think you could start here, because this is very much a side show to the main action of the trilogy. But, but, but, Ancillary Justice sets up this universe in a way that is a bit more focused because it’s filtered through one viewpoint, from a character who is very much learning how things work as they go, so the reader gets to learn along with them.

This story, while it’s to the side of the main one, is absolutely complete unto itself – but it relies on that prior knowledge – even if that prior knowledge isn’t exactly new – to allow the reader to immerse themselves in the story. So you could start here and the story here would work but I know I’d feel the missing-to-me bits floating around the edges and it would drive me bananas. (Your reading mileage may vary on this. I fully admit to being a completist.)

I absolutely did immerse myself fully in this story. This was a one-evening – well, one evening and night – read for me. I fell under its spell in the first chapter and didn’t emerge until I was done after midnight.

Radiant Star is science fiction of the type that Lois McMaster Bujold once described as “the romance of political agency”. While this is certainly about colonialism and colonization, those themes are explored through the people and the political machinations of those people on both sides of the equation. That Ooioiaa is a planet with its own long history, that it has been established and populated for millennia means that its people understand that this is what the Radch is and it’s what the Radchaai do and that they do not have the means to stop any of it. All they can do is attempt to preserve their culture and heritage for a few more generations.

The Radchaai, on the other hand, see the Ooioiaans as mostly civilized but not quite civilized enough. That the Ooioiaan religion includes a LOT of beliefs that the Radchaai find anathema (and vice versa) doesn’t exactly help this situation. That the Ooioiaan religious hierarchy is corrupt down to its bone marrow and fighting amongst its own factions doesn’t exactly make either side more tolerant of the other – but Charak has the power to force the issue. She can’t make the Ooioiaans worship the Radchaai god, but she can co-opt the Ooioiaan religion. That’s ALSO what the Radchaai are good at.

As much as I’ve talked about the situation, because it is fascinating and the workings – and non-workings – of the levers of power fascinate me, the story is told through its characters. After all, the reader can’t FEEL for a system – however intricate – but absolutely can feel for the people being jerked around BY that system. And of course, boo and hiss at the people who are being the jerks.

Which we do. Because there are plenty of both.

One of the fascinating things that we don’t see very often in SF or Fantasy is that a lot of this story centers around the religious practices of the Ooioiaans along with the machinations of their clergy in order to maintain and expand their secular power. Admittedly, the machinations we see plenty of in SF/F, but the actual practices, not so much. In that part of the story, Radiant Star brought to mind The Cemeteries of Amalo sequel subseries for The Goblin Emperor, both because The Goblin Emperor is an SF story, although with a fantasy feel to it, that is very much about political agency and political power, and because The Cemeteries of Amalo series which begins with The Witness for the Dead, views that world through the eyes of one of the members of its religious orders, someone who is themself a true, righteous believer but sees their superiors for the humans they are and their jockeying for power and positions as the distractions from faith that they have become.

The ending of this story tied the whole thing up in a bright, shiny bow that also looped in EVERYTHING that happened in the original trilogy AND swept up all the religious and political loose ends in a way that was the best kind of deus ex machina. Because the machina isn’t deus at all – it just has really excellent timing. Bringing this fascinating epic to a grand AND hopeful conclusion.

Just as hopefully, I hope that this is not the end of the Imperial Radch sequels. Because the three we have so far, Provenance, Translation State and now Radiant Star, have all been VERY worthy successors to that landmark (maybe that should be spacemark?) award-winning series and I would love to have MORE!

Following her record-breaking debut trilogy, Ann Leckie, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke and Locus Awards, returns with a thrilling new story of power, theft, privilege and birthright.

A power-driven young woman has just one chance to secure the status she craves and regain priceless lost artefacts prized by her people. She must free their thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned.

Ingray and her charge will return to their home world to find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating interstellar conflict. Together, they must make a new plan to salvage Ingray's future, her family, and her world, before they are lost to her for good.

My Review:

Provenance was awesome. I mean like stay up half the night, read in the bathroom at work awesome. I’m not sure it matches the blurb AT ALL, but I loved every minute of it.

It also reminded me more than a bit of John Scalzi’s The Collapsing Empire, but I’m absolutely not sure why. It just did. And since I loved that too, it’s a good thing.

Although it was a bit hard to tell from the promos, Provenance is part of the Imperial Radch of Ancillary Justice. Well, it is in the sorta/kinda sense. This is the same universe that was created for that series. The Radchaii are a presence. But not a big one. Or a particularly well-liked one. Provenance, instead, takes place outside of the Imperial Radch, in a system that acknowledges the existence of the Radch and resents the way that the Radchaii act as though they speak for all of humanity – which they don’t. Except when they kind of do.

Politics is always fascinating. And makes for the kind of large-scale conflict that can drive a book series into the stars.

The conflict in Provenance is a bit smaller scale. The story here takes place on Hwae, and involves a kind of cold war turned lukewarm over the control of the gates that make interstellar travel both possible and reasonable.

It’s also about what a society believes about itself, and what it values.

And strangely enough, it really is about provenance, in its dictionary definition. The Hwae give great weight and reverence to what they call “vestiges”. In their culture, “vestiges” are certified artifacts of important, or not so important events. To make it clearer, the Hwae would consider a signed, original U.S. Constitution, or a signed, original Magna Carta, for example, as a “vestige”. These are artifacts of important events that were present at the event itself.

What’s at issue in Provenance is that the Hwae veneration of “vestiges” has extended to anything that might have been tangentially present at an important event or in the proximity of an important personage. And material at that remove is all too easy to fake. After all, how does one determine if a specific floor tile was or was not ever trod upon by one our “Founding Fathers”? Or one of theirs?

So this is Ingray’s story. She attempts, through some rather underhanded means, to gain access to a treasure trove of stolen “vestiges”. She’s trying to impress her mother and gain a much needed advantage over her brother. She’s certain that she needs to do both if she’s to keep her place in the family, and keep her home.

And she might be right.

But what she discovers instead is part of the vast and rather stinking underbelly of her own culture, and the even nastier ways that their enemies are attempting to exploit that stink for their own nefarious ends.

Caught in the literal cross-fire, Ingray can only do what she does best – indulge in five minutes of panic and then think her way out. Even if her exit is, as it often is, out of the frying pan into the fire.

Even if that fire is gunfire.

Escape Rating A: If you are searching for an excellent piece of science fiction, particularly space opera of the “diplomacy is war waged by quieter means” type, Provenance is a winner from beginning to end.

It starts out small, and keeps growing bigger and bigger as the story goes on. We start with Ingray and her rather ingenious but extremely foolhardy plan. She just wants to get back at her brother, who is a douche. And she does it because she’s just tired of him being smug and superior. She hopes to embarrass him, she does not expect to gain actual permanent ascension.

And yes, there’s an element of be careful what you wish for, because you might get it, woven into the story.

What makes this story work is the way that the complexities are introduced. While this is not told in the first-person, Ingray is still our point of view character. As her view expands, we learn more about her world and what moves and shakes it. As does she.

So we start with an uncertain young woman in the midst of a not terribly well thought out scheme that has just gone awry. While parts of the scheme might have had large implications, her purpose was relatively small – putting one over on her brother.

But as her rather rudimentary plans go further and further out the airlock, more people, more situations, and more politics get involved. All seen from Ingray’s perspective, as she has to cope with more and more crap being thrown at her. And always feels, as most of us do at least some of the time, that she’s in WAY over her head while the crap is continuing to rise.

Our perspective and understanding grow. As does hers. And we feel for her as it does. So in the end, we stand with her as all her choices come full-circle. And she leaps out.