Radiant Star by Ann Leckie: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

Radiant Star by Ann Leckie

Radiant Star is part of the Imperial Radch series, but a stand-alone. While it’ll work best if the reader knows the world and the previous events, it can—to an extent—be read as a stand-alone too. It’s set during the timeline of the original trilogy, but it’s only tangentially touched by those events.

Planet Aai is drifting in space without a sun, completely encased in ice. But it’s inhabited, and the city of Ooioiaa is a thriving underneath the ice. The ecosystem is delicate though, and the planet is heavily dependent on outside provisions. The culture and society are delicate systems too, which the Radchaai discover a bit too late after they conquer the planet.

Thirty years after the arrival of the Radchaai, the planet finds itself cut off the rest of the universe. Since there’s no communication and no way to travel in and out of their space, they don’t know what’s happening or how long it’ll last, and there are no provisions. The Radchaai governor realises that food will soon become scarce and introduces the Radch food stable, a fast-growing algae, into the ecosystem. At first, it works fine. And then the ecosystem collapses and the governor has a famine at her hands.

The governor has other problems too. The local religion that worships the Radiant Star, waiting for its return, is fractured into sects that are constantly fighting, and she has to share space with them. An introduction of the last saint—a practice the governor is trying to end—pushes matters to a point, destabilising an already fragile society.

Within this framework of a city on a brink of collapsing, three people emerge. Speaking Savant Keemat, who becomes convinced that they should be the last saint; Jonr, a neglected son of a consoror system who was supposed to be shipped out of the planet before the Radchaai arrived, but who has been stuck in a stasis pod for three decades, only to emerge to a changed world with no place in it; and Iono, whose father is supposed to be the last saint, which pushes him into a personal crisis and questionable choices. Other characters feature too, but these three are the main stories. Everything is narrated by an all-knowing, unknown person years after the events of the book.

The stories are, in a way, about small personal goals that either work or fail. They don’t come to a point simultaneously, and only Keemat gets the ending they wish and work for. Iono, who isn’t a very likable character, gets what he has coming, but also not. Jonr’s story is the one I had highest hopes for, but it ended up being the most neglected one. It doesn’t really lead to anything but a status quo for him, nor does it have any impact on the overall plot. We don’t even get a last chapter or epilogue from his POV, nor do we learn what had happened to the consoror he’s in charge of.

The chaos that the planet finds itself in comes to a surprisingly peaceful closure soon enough. Nothing much changes on the planet in the end. The Imperial Radch has changed, but that doesn’t really impact the story here. All the solutions to the governor’s problems seem a bit like deus ex machina, as the narrator divulges information as they see fit, the actual plot happening behind the scenes. Most of the time, the plot was revealed backwards, after the fact.

This was perhaps the simplest, most straightforward book in the series so far, and most readable and easiest to follow. Ancillaries featured, but weren’t a POV character, so there were no complicated scenes where the reader had to follow many events at once. The plot was simple, about the consequences of meddling with the ecosystem. The characters were mostly grey and a bit difficult to root for, except for Jonr who deserved all the best. The problems solved fairly easily and I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the book ended.

This was an engaging book, but it wasn’t mind-blowing like the previous ones have been. But anything Leckie writes in this universe will interest me, and I’ll definitely read more.