Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (2nd book) - the worst sequel ever

Republished with modification.

Initially I was surprised to find this book, a sequel to a famed "Ancillary Justice" at our local digital library. Usually, its really hard to get hold on popular titles. 

Ann Leckie's first book "Ancillary Justice" was so well written and so good that I expected a long waiting period before I could have a chance to read this 2nd novel. In fact, this second book too has been nominated and shortlisted in best novel category at 2015 Hugo awards (first book actually got the award). Hugo awards this year will be announced on August 18, 2015.

But now after reading it I want to express my deep disappointment with the book. This is probably the worst sequel of any science-fiction novel. I can't understand how anyone could nominate it for anything, let alone for Hugo prize. I started to doubt the quality and integrity of nomination procedures for Hugo awards. 

When looking at the readers review summary for this book on Goodreads where it has got score 4.1 (quite high), one can only wonder if we are reading the same book. I can't explain this score, except that many people do not want to believe that after "Ancillary Justice" Ann Leckie could write such a totally unreadable sequel (it appears that only 3% of reviewers, or just under 300 reviewers at Goodreads, gave this book score 2 or 1, as it would deserve, if you would have asked me).    

I could not even understand what was this book about. There was no guiding concept to keep the story together. This is supposed to be a galaxy wide space adventure and to keep the whole story fixed on irrelevant individuals on one of the remote space stations made no sense. 

The low quality of this book could explain why it was available so easily at our local library. I put "no read" recommendation for this one.

posted by David Usharauli  

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