Storyline: 2/5 
 Characters: 2/5 
 Writing Style: 2/5 
 World: 2/5 
 The two basic challenges for the sequel writer: 1) connecting to what came before and 2) proceeding forward. Leckie struggled with both challenges in this middle volume. The standards she set for herself with her first and highly awarded book proved too high for the second installment, and the result was a stark display of ambitions left unrealized. Still, some of the science fiction elements were especially fun, and I had some real enjoyment experiencing the perspective made possible by Leckie's science fiction future. 
 So how is our author going to connect to what came before? Leckie selects the info-dump method - you know the one, where brief character histories are thrown in without any concern for how it fits with the narrative or style; a blunt functional approach that gets the job done with no fanfare. This is perhaps one of those places where Leckie was a victim of her own success; I might have been less observant or less hopeful had the series not been so acclaimed. But it was highly acclaimed, and I was hoping for improvement. There are so many little things to get right with "the sequel." When anticipating the second, I get to wonder how the new volume will begin, for instance. Will years have passed leaving us with a host of mysteries and activities alluded to or will we perhaps glimpse the highlights via flashbacks? Will we even begin with our old main character? Perhaps we'll wander the world suspensively awaiting a chance and path-changing meeting with our old protagonist. Leckie opts for the simplest and most straightforward with Ancillary Sword. And it was the wrong choice. It was a poor choice in particular because to pull off what Leckie attempted, she needed a good idea of where she wanted to take this series. I find it very difficult to believe that this is a story she set out wanting to tell, that this is a story that had been bursting forth from her mind and pen and waiting to spill forth, that this is a story she was pleased with when it came to completion. This did very little to further my understanding of the Radch empire, and I care very little about the plot she has left us with. If there was a defining character to the book at all, it was that it was moralizing. I don't object to moralizing. I appreciate it when someone feels strongly about a topic or issue and seeks to artistically convey their perception of events, their personal story, their understanding and hopes, fears, and dreams. What Leckie moralizes about here though, is imperialism. Yeah, that's right. Imperialism.... And no, this was not written in the mid 20th century, and no, she doesn't take a fresh approach to the topic. Leckie's imperialism conflates racism, slavery, child labor, indentured servitude, profiling, immigrant labor abuse, stereotyping, and ethnocentrism, and from there she grandstands and postures to make sure we know that these things are bad, so very bad. Yes, Leckie, those things are bad, so very bad. I just couldn't generate any enthusiasm for the denunciation of imperialism (and all of its apparent and concomitant evils). 
 But surely she did something nifty with gender and language, right? Well, no. I admit that I misjudged the pronoun thing in Ancillary Justice. I initially thought Leckie was a feminist and that it was a feminist tactic. In part, I thereafter judged her by the standard of how far off she was from making a clear and convincing feminist point. That was unfair. I read some of her interviews and a whole lot of reviews and analysis afterward and realize now that it was more of a language point. It was more of the idea that there are a variety of languages in the world and that some of them omit gender references. Okay, nifty linguistic trivia. I would have liked to have seen something clever done with it. That didn't happen in Ancillary Justice, and it doesn't happen here. What I learned about gender and language from Leckie's experiment was that gender references help immensely with clarity. Obviously dialogues become stale if they go back and forth with Proper name 1 says... and then Proper name 2 says... That gets old quick, but once you start using pronouns (and especially with multiple characters), it soon gets confusing trying to figure out which he refers to which man and which she refers to which woman. You take away that distinction, as Leckie does, and have a world where everyone is referred to with a single pronoun, then you add to the confusion by eliminating a useful tool. Make that single available pronoun, she and you purposefully introduce confusion into the current disorder. And I get it, at least I think I do. That useful tool of gendered pronouns has baggage. And as a thought experiment or performance art, I can appreciate being challenged. What I expect from the Orbit-affiliated, professional and award winning science fiction author, however, is a miracle. Show me how you can imbue clarity and order into conversations and narratives without gendered pronouns. Utilize the tricks of grammar and sentence structure to demonstrate how identity can be established without any hes. Put the science fiction possibilities to work, and project a future language where one can eliminate the baggage over which she's concerned, but do it in a way that adds something. What Leckie did was to omit. Because her society doesn't emphasize gender identity, attributes such as small waists, broad shoulders, bust size, fullness of lips, thinness of eyebrows, delicate features, barrel chests and the like do not tell us anything about one's gender. Fine, but what Leckie does is to eliminate all references to waists, shoulders, busts, lips, eyebrows, delicateness, and chests. There was rarely a character description in Ancillary Sword, and even more rare was there a vivid one. Because of Leckie's pronoun project, she precludes a bounty of descriptive language. Again, Leckie doesn't replace what she's omitted with anything productive. What we have is a net loss. Again, we get a decrease in clarity. This obscurity and opaqueness was pervasive throughout the novel. The science fiction word choices seemed intended to propagate confusion. Kalr refers to a piece of technology - a ship -at times, intermittently to an artificial intelligence, occasionally to the ship + its ancillaries + the AI, and at other times to the soldiers alone. The names of gods and goddesses doubled as ship names. A decade is not an increment of time and does not always refer to a unit of ten. Ancillaries are oftentimes distinguished from other soldiers by specifying that they're not human - even though they are exactly that - human bodies. I thought about making a list of these, but simply enduring it was enough for me. 
 Despite my many and strong complaints about the book, I really did like the technological side of the main character. This was my favorite element of the first in the series, Ancillary Justice, and I had some worry that it would be lost here because of plot developments in book one. This was the one place where Leckie seemed to have a continuous vision between the two books, and she turned what could have been simply sci fi gadgetry into character development and a delightful and surprising narrative shift technique. When I was flustered with the poor writing, the lack of description, the uninteresting plot, the muddled message, or the hackneyed tirade, I focused in on and enjoyed what she did with the Breq-Ship relationship. 
 I'll finish out the series, but I have to criticize and hold in contempt the science fiction community that sent this and its predecessor to the Hugo and Nebula awards finals.