Provenance

Leckie’s “Ancillary Justice” was a tour de force, once its unusual writing style clicked in my brain. The rest of the Ancillary series was more normal, so easier to follow but less interesting and less compelling. This related book, “Provenance,” is simply unpleasant and uninteresting. It’s a struggle to read because the central character is so self-involved and annoying; I wish the narrator would just shut up already. Worse, the plot is so uncompelling, a mediocre mystery whose resolution is unimportant. The rest of the characters are both forced and uninteresting. I’m halfway through and just can’t torture myself any more.

Set in the same universe as Leckie’s Ancillary novels, but with a very different viewpoint character and different stakes. I’m not entirely sure whether to call it a “standalone” (a philosophical question that could be debated endlessly) given that Provenance benefits heavily from background knowledge from the Ancillary trilogy, but the plot is self-contained and the central characters have no overlap. This is, in some ways, a coming of age story in which a protagonist from a privileged (if not secure) background struggles to find her path forward. In common with the third volume of the Ancillary books, it reminds me strongly of the folk tale motif “six go through the world” where the protagonist gradually gathers a posse of allies, largely by simply being a good, ethical person. I may be a sucker for that type of story. The gradual (and sometimes confusing) build-up of tensions, mysteries, and perils pays off with a fast-paced and satisfying climax. Bonus points for casual and positively-portrayed queerness of several types.

Very different from the Ancillary series but amazing in its own way.

"Yesterday's rain had washed the sky a cloudless blue," I want to have Ann's babies. #Plurality of worlds is some poetic license. #Quantum mechanics=Art=Mana