Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (3 stars)

The final book in a spectacular trilogy by Ann Leckie. Wait, what, final? There's nothing final about this. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Oh, wait, lets have a cup of tea.

Some spoiler tea ahead.

Good, now back to the novel. Dear god, why are we still on this damn space station? I thought this was a space opera? Oh well, lets have another cup of tea and watch the Presger translator do something weird, hah it ate an oyster with the shell on. Oh Jar Jar, I mean, translator.

Oooh, Anaander is coming with her warships, here comes a battle. Ah...nope. Thank god we have a popgun-ex-machina to save us from those nasty action scenes. Lets have a cup of tea.

The bullets I had fired at them were so small that even if any of the ships’ sensors could have seen them—and they could not—they would not register as a danger.

Wait, here comes the climax, here it comes! Breq falls over, Jar Jar throws up, and the most powerful person in the galaxy was defeated. Presger-treaty-ex-machina for the win. Nothing to see here. Have some tea, sorry about the chipped enamel.

And don't complain about the ending, I see you already complaining about it, stop it. I'm going to preempt you all, so there:

Every ending is an arbitrary one. Every ending is, from another angle, not really an ending.

That may have been overly mean, but I was incredibly disappointed by this book. Leckie is a fantastic writer so she carries the story anyway, and I did enjoy reading it, but sadly the trilogy didn't come close to living up to the promise of the first novel.

Given how open the entire ending was, I assume, and hope, there will be more on what happens when AIs are recognized by the Presger and are no longer controlled by humans. And whether cloning will really work out for ancillaries, or if they will go back to kidnapping humans.

And I hope there will be less tea drinking.

3 stars.