Rachel's Reviews > Translation State

** spoiler alert ** Leckie’s Ancillary series is down in my reading history as one of my all-time faves, but it seems – at least for me, as a reader – she peaked too early. Raven Tower was one of the most boring books I’ve ever read, and Translation State shares some of its main flaws. To wit: unengaging characters; the bizarre decision to give the MCs no real emotional arcs or connection with others; an underdeveloped environmental concept; and a first-draft writing style that is so very far from the first trilogy that I can only assume she needed those ‘first book years’ to polish and hone and she’s not getting remotely enough time these days.

Check it out:

‘Either way, they’ll fix it and come get us.” Maybe. Sie hoped. But there was no point in thinking about that, in wondering what would happen if no one came looking for them, if no one could. If that happened, they would find out soon enough, no need to speculate. “We just have to be patient.”’

I was impressed – perhaps easily so – by the gender conceit in the Ancillary series, wherein everyone is viewed as default female. There’s at least five genders at play in this book, nominated by ‘hir’, ‘them’, and ‘e’. I guess people with skin in the game in this matter will find this more interesting than I did. I’m all for neopronouns because I find the narrative use of singular ‘they’ headache-inducing, but in fact, the other pronouns also jerked me out of the reading process just as much, which I didn’t expect. I’m also not sure what the value-add was. In the case of Enae, I saw one typo that read ‘her’, and this plus the long hair in a braid and the caretaking ‘spinster’ role sie occupied inevitably lead me to read hir as female. I didn’t feel there was much substance to this world-building because the genders are so established that there’s zero obvious friction with their identification, but there’s also no gender roles issue, so it’s like … how did we get there from here? Even a passing reference to ‘in the past’ could have helped. The argument in queer fiction is that it doesn’t have to be about The Struggle all the time, but even straight romance has to deal with heteronormative dynamics on some level. I dunno. I would have found a dissection of this more interesting than the actual plot, is the problem.

The plot starts with the disinheritance of Enae after the death of hir grandmother, and subsquently sie’s given a makey-upey diplomatic role. Similar to all the action in this book, Enae’s mission flip-flops between ‘this isn’t a big deal’ and ‘this is the biggest deal of all actually because otherwise there's no story’. It's like Leckie couldn't decide where she wanted her stakes to land and went for 'high AND low'.

Enae gets involved with a complicated yet boring scenario in which a Presger Translator escapes their (I guess) breeding ground and two hundred years later (what) this results in the birth of Reet, who is raised human in a classic hidden hero trope. Reet meets Qven, another Presger Translator who is, going by context and actions, about sixteen years old. Qven is also a cannibal who’s vivisected and eaten thirty-seven people. There’s some scenes early on that belong way more to the horror genre, and let me tell you I am NOT here for unflagged crossovers like that.

What’s most astonishing is how little effort goes into trying to humanise Qven in terms of making them an object of sympathy. I’m clearly SUPPOSED to sympathise, and root for Qven and Reet to overcome their very sixteen-year-old scruples about how the other one doesn't return their FEEEEEELINGS, but I don’t. Qven. CANNIBAL. 37 VICTIMS. You GOTTA try harder than that.

‘“After tea and cakes we talk about weather, and then I tend to the plants. Would you like to see my plants? I have radishes and potatoes. And we could maybe get some others.” He looked at me blankly. “I am not a potato,” I warned him.’

I take it back – Qven is more like a five-year-old. They and Reet also have insta-love, in case you’re interested.

The ‘matching’ between Qven and potential partners is possibly a metaphor for rape or something, given how Qven ends up feeling about it, but mostly it’s giving big 20teens YA fantasy worldbuilding vibes. O NOES, I’M A PICK ME IN THIS DYSTOPIA! The fact that the other two alien species are, respectively, big hairy things and metal spiders, further speaks to the lack of imagination deployed in the worldbuilding. Should have just stuck to the sentient spaceships.