Books like Ancillary Justice
What should you read after Ann Leckie’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Ann Leckie
- 2013
- Space opera
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Ancillary Justice
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchAnnihilation
Jeff VanderMeer
A sharp left turn: it shares Leckie's cool, watchful narrator and almost nothing else. Take it if the pleasure was an intelligence describing what it sees and withholding what it thinks.
- One mind in many bodies
- Two timelines, twenty years apart
- Revenge planned over decades
- No empire, no politics
Great matchOld Man's War
John Scalzi
Scalzi's soldiers get new bodies too, and he asks your question far more cheerfully: how much of you actually survives the hardware you get poured into?
- One mind in many bodies
- An empire that annexes politely
- Tea, gloves and etiquette
- Light where Leckie is dense
Best for the hard worldbuildingNinefox Gambit
Yoon Ha Lee
Lee throws you in even harder than Leckie did, then locks a soldier in with a dead general living in her head. The extreme version of the two-minds problem.
- One mind in many bodies
- An empire that annexes politely
- A ruler at war with herself
- Deliberately opaque for 100 pages
Best for the braided timelinesThe Fifth Season
N.K. Jemisin
Jemisin does the split-timeline trick better than almost anyone, and her empire runs on the same logic: useful people owned outright and told it is for everyone's good.
- Two timelines, twenty years apart
- An empire that annexes politely
- Revenge planned over decades
- Fantasy, not space opera
Great matchLeviathan Wakes
James S.A. Corey
Where to actually start The Expanse: two alternating narrators, a solar system full of grudges, and a conspiracy that behaves like Leckie's empire with much worse manners.
- An empire that annexes politely
- Revenge planned over decades
- Two timelines, twenty years apart
- Plot ahead of interiority
Worth a look — with a warningNeuromancer
William Gibson
The ancestor of every artificial mind that wants something. Gibson's AIs scheme like Leckie's, though he is far less interested in what it feels like to be one.
- One mind in many bodies
- A ruler at war with herself
- An empire that annexes politely
- Dated tech and attitudes
Best for the culture clashBinti
Nnedi Okorafor
A hundred pages, and it lands the thing Leckie needs a trilogy to build: a person carrying her own customs into an institution with no place for them.
- Tea, gloves and etiquette
- An empire that annexes politely
- Everyone is 'she'
- Novella length, small scope
Best for the artificial narratorAll Systems Red
Martha Wells
Murderbot is Breq's funnier cousin: a construct that would much rather watch serials than be a person, and keeps rescuing its humans regardless.
- A ship that loves its captain
- One mind in many bodies
- Tea, gloves and etiquette
- Comic rather than austere
Great matchThe Stars Are Legion
Kameron Hurley
Bodies, ships and memory tangled together, narrated by a woman who has been made to forget her own past more than once. Stranger and messier than Leckie, deliberately.
- A ship that loves its captain
- One mind in many bodies
- Everyone is 'she'
- Body horror throughout
Best for the etiquetteA Memory Called Empire
Arkady Martine
An ambassador with a dead predecessor in her skull, working a court where quoting the right poem is a political act. The closest match on this list for tone.
- Tea, gloves and etiquette
- One mind in many bodies
- An empire that annexes politely
- One city, one planet
What should you read after Ancillary Justice?
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer — a sharp left turn: it shares Leckie's cool, watchful narrator and almost nothing else. Take it if the pleasure was an intelligence describing what it sees and withholding what it thinks.
If what stayed with you was one mind in many bodies, read Old Man's War by John Scalzi instead: scalzi's soldiers get new bodies too, and he asks your question far more cheerfully: how much of you actually survives the hardware you get poured into? Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee is the other strong option — lee throws you in even harder than Leckie did, then locks a soldier in with a dead general living in her head. The extreme version of the two-minds problem.
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