This was a really entertaining read. I love a good space opera. I haven't read any of the author's previous works but I was able to follow along. This one works great as a standalone. I plan to read the Imperial Radch trilogy to gain more insight into this world. Lots of fun. Lots of aliens and drama. Highly recommend

All I want is for Ann Leckie to continue writing more Imperial Radch books. This continues to be as good as her previous books and one of my favorite series.

This story is set in the same universe as the Imperial Radch trilogy, Translation State follows Enae, who leaves her long-standing isolation to being given a diplomat title and assigned to investigate a missing translator no one expects to be found. This is a standalone book, however, it seems like a good intro to Leckie's world. Thank you Netgalley for the eARC!

An immersive sci-fi world that cements the fanfare around Ann Leckie's storytelling - especially as someone interacting with her writing and worlds for the first time. The multi-pov, interwoven narratives were engaging and stood the landing with stakes and intrigue.

Leckie is not always the easiest of reads, but she's ALWAYS thought provoking. I still use her book, The Raven Tower, to teach voice in writing. This book was a nice continuation of her Radch series, but also works as a standalone. I'll always read her books.

I have not read any of Ann Leckie's books prior to picking up Translation Slate.

I love the sci-fi atmosphere Ann creates and it brims with an indepth world structure.

There were times I connected with the characters and many times I did not. My biggest issue was the uneven pacing, which took me out of the story a lot and broke the connection between the book and I.

This was an okay read for me, but I think many fans of Ann Leckie will enjoy this one and if you're interested on reading this book, then checkout her other works first.

I loved this book until the end; up until that point I was thinking this was Leckie’s best novel to date, but I felt the final resolution was unsatisfying. That said, this was still a fantastic read overall, continuing on the themes of personhood and family that Leckie does so well. I truly loved seeing more about the Presger Translators; how messed up and creepy they are but presented so nonchalantly.

While this is a standalone, I wouldn’t recommend it if you haven’t read the Imperial Radch trilogy and plan to, as it spoils the finale of that trilogy (and I think you’d appreciate this book more with that trilogy as context).

This was such an interesting story! I really enjoyed the unique plot and the characters. I look forward to the author’s next work!

I hadn’t experienced any novels from Ann Leckie, so I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed Translation Slate. While it takes a little while to get a concept of the different characters and all their stories, everything comes together spectacularly

This was a great addition to the main series, although I wish I had reread the series before this one! So definitely don't go into it blind. Also I just adore the cover!

I requested this for consideration for Book Riot's All the Books podcast for its release date. After sampling several books out this week, I decided to go with a different book for my review.

See my review in Nov/Dec 2023 issue of Analog Science Fiction:

https://www.analogsf.com/current-issue/the-reference-library/

Set in the same universe as Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy, Translation State follows Enae, who leaves hir long-standing isolation for what was supposed to be an interstellar goose chase. After hir demanding grandmaman dies, Enae is given a diplomat title and assigned to investigate a missing Presgr translator no one expects to be found (but that the government still wants the goodwill for pretending to look for). Only, Enae doesn’t just pretend to look; sie discovers sie has quite the knack for investigating the 200-year-old cold case.

This is how hir path crosses that of Reet, an adopted maintenance worker whose mysterious origins and unsettling impulses might be explained by being the child of the fugitive translator, if you ask Enae, or the last descendant of a lost sovereign line, if you ask one particularly zealous diaspora social group. Rounding out the POV characters is Qven, a young Presgr terrified of their species’ ritual of merging with an elder, a rite of passage which will see Qven’s selfhood entirely dissolved. Enae, Reet, and Qven’s explorations of their own identities wind up having interplanetary consequences, but it’s the way Leckie gives weight to the small moments, both personal and shared, that make this book sing.

Though I’m sure there are layers that only those familiar with the Imperial Radch trilogy will notice and appreciate, the standalone Translation State and its rich exploration of self-identification and personhood serve as a fantastic introduction to Leckie’s world. So don’t hesitate to jump into Translation State if you’re – like me – new to Radch and simply drawn to a thrilling mystery where the most intimate emotions can fuel a universal upheaval. — SG

This was a very enjoyable space opera set in the same universe as the Imperial Radch trilogy. I enjoyed the light, cozy feel of the book. Leckie's writing is immersive, and I absolutely loved reading this one.

Translation State is the first of Ann Leckie's novels I've read, and thus the first Imperial Radch universe novel. This is billed as a stand-alone novel, and easy to dig into.

Leckie's exploration of gender in the Radch universe is well known. In Translation State, she dives further into what makes one a member of a certain species, especially when some of her species meld(?) into each other, for a vehicle (used loosely), a translator, a god, a ship, an AI. It's a stunning exploration of what norms one has, who(/what) has value over another species, inheritance of both wealth and power in clades, and political treaties.

It's also a mystery. A translator was lost, hundreds of years before present. A newly wealthy diplomat is sent to find them. Other clades and groups want to claim Reet as well. The Presgar, mysterious beings in the Radch universe, are also interested, and dealing with a rogue juvenile one of their own. A tribunal is called, and interrupted by a space attack.

Combining philosophical questions, space battles, love, gender, family, betrayal, significance, self-awareness, adoptive and found families, this book has more to offer than just "alien sci-fi." It will be one of my Must Recommends and I'll be reading the trilogy ASAP.

I’m a huge Ann Leckie fan, so I was super excited to read this book. I feel like it’s very much a Leckie novel, for good and for ill. If you like her books, you’re going to love this one. If you don’t… you really won’t enjoy it. It’s super complicated, with a plot that meanders before escalating incredibly quickly. I really enjoyed the book, but it definitely had some pacing issues. However, it was still super interesting to read. It does require having read her imperial radch trilogy to limit the confusion/learning curve.

This was my first Leckie and I absolutely loved it; immediately recommended it to four other people. Such a strong sense of the world, but also able to weave all the protagonists together in a way that felt additive rather than frustrating. (Multiple POV novels sometimes feel like kicking a can down the road! Not here, though.) Political intrigue plus fascinating alien brains, extremely my jam.

Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of Transtlation State.

Translation State takes place in Leckie's Imperial Radch world (the Ancillary series + Provenance) about 10 years after Ancillary Justice. Translation State can safely be read as a standalone though I suspect some secondary story lines are richer if you have read the prior books. I have read and lovel the Ancillary books but don't really remember much beyond what an ancillary is and that there is a lot of tea.

Translation State is a coming of age story for each of its 3 MCs with a dash of mystery and political maneuverings. The story is told in alternaing chapters from the POV of Enae, Reet, and Qven. Enae finds xirself sent off to "investigate" a 200 year old disappearance. Xe isn't expected to get anywhere with the investigation. The investigation leads to Reet - an infant foundling now 30ish years old whi has never quite fit in. The third MC is a Presgr Translator juvenile on the cusp of adulthood. I am not sure if some of the things I learned about the translators are things I missed or forgot in the earlier books or if they were new here.

I very much enjoyed the setup and interweaving story lines. The first two thirds felt stronger to me than the finish. I am not quite sure why. The different civilizations and species are well represented. I like the further explorations of who counts aspeople - this is never the main plot but is a definite underlying theme.

I have been in a reading anything but Romance slump and Translation State is helping want to go back to reading more sff. I will probably start with a re-read of the earlier Imperial Radch books. Recommended.

Like much of the Imperial Radch series, Translation State concerns itself most with what it means to be a person, and who gets to make that decisions as new and alien consciences emerge. Following a trio of narrators comprised of human, near-human, and spectacularly, absurdly alien we travel further in the future as decisions are made both near and far as to what rights should be accorded to a species whose assimilation into a greater space pact is by no means straightforward.

Overall, it is a very cozy space opera and if you are looking for an epic spacefaring adventure, this is not it. But if you are looking for something gentle and want to enjoy a tangential sense of belonging, then full speed ahead.

[To be published on Nerds of a Feather on 3 August]

The Presger: a mysterious alien race that commands the power to annihilate any ship they encounter, and are held in check only by a treaty they’ve struck with humans and other species in their portion of the galaxy. Why they agreed to uphold the treaty in the first place is something of a mystery: clearly the Presger do not require or benefit from its non-aggression provisions, since they are in no danger from anyone. But this treaty is all that keeps non-Presgers safe from Presgers, so everyone is extremely keen to make sure that things go well and no one causes trouble. Now that a new sentient species has demanded recognition under the treaty, a massive Conclave is in progress to renegotiate the terms, and everyone is nervous and keener than ever to keep the Presger happy.

For readers of Leckie’s Ancillary trilogy, or the standalone follow-up Provenance, this setting is familiar—and, indeed, characters from these books do appear here in Translation State. But it also stands alone well, so readers looking for a single-book sized entrance into the world of the Radch could do worse than to start here.

Dominant among humans are the Imperial Radch, a huge empire whose influence and power affect everything that happens in other human polities. Yet the main characters in this book are not Radchaai, but inhabitants of smaller polities and territories, each with their own priorities that do not necessarily align with the Radch. Three intertwining plot threads structure this narrative. First, we have Enae, from Saeness Polity, who upon the death of hir family’s matriarch is kicked out of hir family home and shunted off to a government job where sie is assigned make-work non-tasks. That non-task turns out to be to track down a Presger fugitive who disappeared 200 years ago. No one expects Enae to find anything — the trail went cold centuries ago — but the Presger have requested it, and everyone wants to keep the Presger happy. And Enae—finally free of hir family obligations — is keen to do the job properly.

Enae's investigation leads hir to Reet, a young man living in the Sovereign Territory of Zeosen. Reet has struggled with strong and perplexing urges since childhood, namely a burning desire to rip people's skin off and see what's underneath. So far, he has not acted on it, but he (understandably) struggles to fit in, and so has spent his life drifting without purpose. This directionlessness finds direction when Reet is adopted by the Siblings of Hikipu, a splinter ethnic group who insist on seeing him as the descendent of a lost leader who disappeared when their ancestral home of Lovehate Station was destroyed and the Hikipu had to flee.

Finally, we have Qven, a young Presger Translator-in-training. Translators are a population of altered humans, engineered by the Presger to serve as intermediaries between the utterly incomprehensible Presger and everyone else. One alteration is an overpowering instinct toward cannibalism, which leads Translator children to eat each other with distressing casualness. (The urge dissipates with adulthood.) Qven's problem is the opposite of Reet's: Instead of lacking direction and seeking it out, Qven chafes against their imposed future that they cannot find a way to escape.

The eventual conjunction between these three plot lines was not, in the end, terribly surprising, but it did a lovely job of developing the politics of the Raadchai sphere at both macro and micro levels. This was accomplished most effectively with Reet’s storyline. As he learns, the Hikipu fret against the dominance of another group, the Phen, in Zeosen, and their fretfulness sometimes turns violent. Moreover, the more radical among their number claim that the Presger do not actually exist, that they are a hoax, a bogeyman invented to keep other polities subservient to the Radchaai. This political and ethnic strife is set in counterpart against Reet’s adoptive family, who belong to another minority group, the Chirra, and are perpetually striving to show that they are the ‘good ones’. They counsel all their children to avoid taking too much interest in political causes, because when minority groups start getting political — as the Hikipu do — the response is much harsher than when majority groups start causing trouble. When the Presger and the Radchaai start taking an interest in Reet, his association with the Hikipu naturally becomes problematic. This entire conversation was rich and chewy and well-constructed, showcasing the kind of political world-building that Leckie excels at.

Qven’s storyline offers an eerie look into the upbringing of Presger Translators that I’m sure readers of the Ancillary books have been craving. For all that Translators started out as biological humans, Presger intervention has changed their biology dramatically: beyond the childhood cannibalism thing, adult Translators are impelled to Match with others, a process that creates a single mind spread across multiple bodies. These properties are mentioned in the original Ancillary trilogy when Translator Dlique, and I had to stop at one point and go back to read bits with Translator Dlique and Zeiat from the Ancillary books to remind myself how it worked. But where Dlique's glimpses into this part of Presgerdom were played as a humourous weirdness to highlight the alienness of everything related to the Presger, Qven’s deeper exploration of that part of this universe was grim and sad.

In particular, the process of Matching is invoked rather awkwardly as a rape metaphor. I can’t quite put my finger on why this parallel bothered me so much. Possibly it was that it seemed too uncomfortably human to fit in to this studiedly inhuman Presger world. Yet, given the later discussion about self-determination and humanness in opposition to Presger alien-ness, that objection seems less a bug than a feature. Possibly the problem was that it was that it was not done particularly well. Or possibly it was that I’m so sick of sexual assault as a plot element in my fiction that, no matter how disguised and metaphorized it is, I itch when I encounter it. Anyway: content warning there.

This theme of self-determination characterizes much of the book from various angles. Reet looks for a purpose in his life, choosing to align himself with the Hikipu when they offer him a place, even though he doesn't really believe he is what want him to be. Qven has a brief arc in which e chooses a pronoun that is not the typical they used by most Presger Translators (although, to be sure, the use of they might be less about gender identity and more about the fact that adult Translators have Matched with others and so form a single mind composed of multiple sentient beings. For Presgers, it seems, they is not the singular they, but a truly plural one. Pronoun pedants, rejoice!). These small choices are then reflected in a much larger conflict in the second half of the book, revolving around how much freedom Reet and Qven have to declare their own species alignment. Officially, the Presger treaty grants all sentient beings, but which in practice gets complicated where Presger Translators are involved. (Remember, no one wants to make the Presger angry, and the Translators are very anxious not to let Qven go.)

If these questions of self-determination been an undercurrent theme against some other primary plot conflict, it would have worked brilliantly. But it wasn't an undercurrent theme. It was the entire plot of the second half of the book, and there was an enormous amount of speechifying and soul-searching and hesitation and even a bit of that tiresome trope of two people who want the same thing but don't allow themselves to act on that desire because each thinks the other doesn't want it and why can't they just talk to each other?! I found myself highlighting paragraphs of navel-gazing that re-trod the same ground as previous pages of navel-gazing, writing peevish annotations: ‘Get on with it already!’

This book needed something else. Some other plot element to bulk up the second half. And the potential was there to do that brilliantly. For example: Lovehate station, the ancestral origin of the Hikipu, was destroyed a few hundred years ago under mysterious circumstances. But that's roughly the same time that Presger translator fled. What happened? Is there a connection? (Surely there must be a connection.) Then, the Siblings of Hikipu are particularly eager to find the descendants of the ruling family, the Schans, who had a reputation for being brutal and bloodthirsty. Are the Schans related to the Translator? Is this Schan bloodthirstiness in fact the Presger predilections for cannibalism making its way into the historical record? And why did that 200-years-ago Presger Translator flee, anyway? And why are the Presger so keen to find out what happened to this runaway only now, 200 years later? I also would have liked to know quite a bit more about the workings of Presger Translator politics, which are built around clades and family lines that are claimed to not be important, but which are in fact vitally fundamental in Translator society. Leckie does politics so well; I'm sure she could have done something fascinating with that, rather than leave us with these tantalizing hints.

All of these plot threads could not only have been explored in substantially more detail, but also linked up with the treaty renegotiations in such a way as to lend more urgency and resonance to Qven and Reet’s quest for self-determination. But they're not. They're dropped, and the gaps are filled up with introspection and tedium.