Translation State by Ann Leckie
Posted in Reading Reviewed, Science Fiction at 12:00 on 29 January 2025
Orbit, 2023, 424 p.
Like her previous novel, Provenance, this is set in the author’s Imperial Radch universe but well away from the ongoing internal Radch conflict set out in her first three books.
This one has three viewpoint characters with their relevant chapters following in a strict order. Enae is a woman who spent most of her life in thrall to her grandmother but found her expected inheritance did not exist. As a make work job she is given an assignment to find a refugee from LoveHate Station who fled from there two hundred years ago. She could have paid this token attention but decides she may as well do a proper job.
Reet is a misfit, an orphan brought up by kind adoptive parents but who became aware early on that his thoughts and tendencies were unacceptable to society.
Qven is brought up very strangely indeed, in a group of similar juveniles whose status varies from stage to stage as they grow collectively older but whose interactions can be cannibalistic.
Both Enae and Reet’s chapters are in the third person but Qven’s is in first.
It does not take the reader long to work out what Reet’s origins are and their relationship to Enae’s quest. Qven is facing the necessity to “match” with someone else to become a functioning adult. Failure to do so will result in an unpleasant death. His intended match is someone not to his taste.
All comes to a head on a habitat of the Presger Translators, the group who mediate the treaty between humans and the dangerous aliens the Presger. Translators are bred for this purpose and are not considered fully human. Indeed any human who ventures into Presger – or even Translator – areas forfeits human status.
Prior to his arrival there Reet had been inveigled into an association with the Hikipi, a group who believe that, since no human has seen them, the Presger are illusory. This is used against him at the crux of the novel, a committee meeting to decide whether Reet is actually human, a question which by then also encompasses Qven.
Leckie has an unusual way with personal pronouns, Enae thinks of hirself as sie and uses hir as a possessive. Other pronouns to be found here include e and em as well as the more common ones. There is also an inordinate amount of conversation and consideration of tea and coffee drinking.
All in all though, an above average space opera.
Pedant’s corner:- “there were a ridiculous number of shops” (there was a ridiculous number of shops.) “Shaking hir head at her foolishness” (Leckie’s control of her pronouns failed her here. ‘Shaking hir head at hir foolishness’ would be truer to her text.)
Tags: Ann Leckie, Imperial Raadch, Provenance, Science Fiction, Space Opera, Translation State