• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
  • Comment Policy
  • Nav Widget Area

    • Instagram
    • RSS
    • Twitter

Pretty Terrible

Pop Culture Criticism by Natalie Luhrs

You are here: Home / Book Reviews / Review: Provenance by Ann Leckie

December 19, 2017

Review: Provenance by Ann Leckie

This book. I’d been waiting for Provenance to come out and then when it did, I was so slammed by work that I didn’t get a chance to read it until Thanksgiving and that ain’t right. But read it I did and then I was very sad when it was over.

I do not want to be out of the world, it is terrible to be out of the world.1p. 294

Ingray is one of three foster children raised by Netano Aughskold and she’s in fierce competition with her brother Danach to be named heir. Ingray is from a public creche—an orphan, essentially—while Danach was born to one of the other prominent families on Hwae.

Ingray knows that she doesn’t have much chance of being named her mother’s heir, but she has to make one final try.

Her plan’s quite simple. She’s going to smuggle a notorious thief named Pahlad Budrakim out of ”Compassionate Removal” (it’s not), and convince em to show her where e hid the irreplaceable Garseddai artifacts that e stole from eir foster father.

Of course, this requires all of Ingray’s money and if she’s unsuccessful, she’ll be destitute. But she also doesn’t feel as if she has any other choice, either.

To understand why the Garseddai artifacts are so important, you have to understand Hwae. They call artifact vestiges and as such, they have tremendous cultural and political significance. If Ingray is able to return the Garseddai vestiges to Prolocutor Ethiat Budrakim, she will have defeated her brother and be named her mother’s heir and have no worries about her place in the world.

Naturally nothing goes according to Ingray’s plan. When Budrakim is awakened from stasis, e claims to not be Pahlad Budrakim at all and isn’t sure if e wants to go back to Hwae. Once e agrees—and takes on the identity of Garal Ket—their ship is held in port due to the Geck claimant it as theirs and not the captain’s. Tic Uisine—the captain—has all the proper paperwork and after a delay, they are able to leave Tyr for Hwae.

When Ingray and Garal arrive at Hwae, they find themselves in the middle of a number of exceedingly delicate situations.

There’s an archaeological dig headed up by an Omkem woman, Zat, and her assistant Hevom. They’re investigating deposits of ruin glass in a nearby nature preserve, in the hopes of discovering evidence that the Omkem have a claim on Hwae, which would then allow them some control over the interstellar gates in the system.

And from there, things just start…accreting until the book is basically a katamari of plot-things, but all interrelated and crucial to the story.

Ingray is a wonderful protagonist. She’s persistent but she also struggles with knowing her own worth; having grown up in such a cut throat environment means that she’s not a good judge of her own strengths and she consistently underestimates herself. Her growth is so well done–she doesn’t suddenly become awesome at everything, but she is so much more confident and sure of herself at the end than she is at the beginning of the book.

The concept of the vestiges is a brilliant way to examine culture and how that informs each individual identity. The question of what makes the vestiges important keeps coming up—is the importance the objects themselves or the meaning that the Hwaeans invest in them?

And how will the Hwaeans’ sense of themselves shift if their most important vestiges are lost to them or if the foundation of their entire form of government is shown to be false through Zat’s excavations of ruin glass?

Then there’s the Geck, who have their own ways of defining belonging and not-belonging.

The Geck are an extremely mysterious species who don’t like to leave their home system; based on the appearance of the Geck ambassador to the Presger (en route to a conclave to decide if the Radchaai AIs are people and if they are, if they should be admitted to the treaty), I’d say they live in an aquatic environment.

It turns out that Tic Uisine is one of the humans who lives with the Geck, but is not truly Geck because his gills didn’t come in. He was exiled to a space station where he then managed to get away and eventually become a citizen of Tyr. His relationship with the Geck is complicated and heartbreaking and the passage where the ambassador is telling Ingray about it is one of my favorites in the entire book.

This book is all about identity and how we define ourselves—and how others define us. From Taucris, Ingray’s childhood friend who didn’t choose her gender or adult name until she was past the usual age, to Tic Uisine, Garal Ket, and Ingray herself—everyone is in a state of becoming who they are or leaving who they were behind them.

But mostly because fuck them, that’s why.2p. 71

Book Information

Review: Provenance by Ann LeckieProvenance by Ann Leckie
Publisher: Orbit
Format: Paper
Purchase: Amazon | IndieBound
Rating:
Synopsis:

A power-driven young woman has just one chance to secure the status she craves and regain priceless lost artefacts prized by her people. She must free their thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned.

Ingray and her charge will return to their home world to find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating interstellar conflict. Together, they must make a new plan to salvage Ingray's future, her family, and her world, before they are lost to her for good.

This post contains affiliate links to Amazon.com and IndieBound.com.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Science Fiction Natalie Luhrs

About Natalie Luhrs

I'm a lifelong geek with a passion for books and social justice.

Reader Interactions

Links Roundup 12/15/17
Staying Organized in a Disorganized World

Comments

  1. Paul Weimer says

    December 19, 2017 at 10:25 am

    Thanks for this review, Natalie.

  2. I_Sell_Books says

    December 29, 2017 at 12:27 pm

    I started reading it before Thanksgiving and haven’t picked it up since. Not because it’s not a good book…I think i’m just not enraptured with it.

    • Natalie Luhrs says

      December 29, 2017 at 12:33 pm

      Totally legit! Not every book is for every person! My catnip may not be your catnip.

  3. Happy says

    January 1, 2018 at 12:21 pm

    I loved it so so so much! I agree, the meeting with the ambassador is possibly the best scene in the book (though the scene with the digging mech is a close contender).

Primary Sidebar

Welcome

Hello! I’m Natalie Luhrs. I write about books and culture and whatever else strikes my fancy. I have so many opinions.

I was a nominee for the Best Fan Writer Hugo in 2017.

Search

Upcoming Conventions

None, because pandemic. Woe!

Support Pretty Terrible

Updates by Email

Blog posts, cat pictures, and other random things in email? Sign up here.
 

 

2021 Reading Challenge

2021 Reading Challenge

2021 Reading Challenge
Natalie has read 6 books toward their goal of 50 books.
hide
6 of 50 (12%)
view books

Recently Read

The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows
The Relentless Moon
A Wizard's Guide To Defensive Baking
Mischief
Architects of Memory
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water
Unconquerable Sun
Bury Your Dead
The Brutal Telling
A Rule Against Murder
The Cruelest Month
A Fatal Grace
The Angel of the Crows
One Summer in Paris
Still Life
The Crossroads of Should and Must: Find and Follow Your Passion
Family for Beginners
The City We Became
Seven Sisters
The Harbors of the Sun


Natalie's favorite books »

Footer

Helpful Links

  • Home
  • About
  • Comment Policy
  • RSS - Posts

Archives

Looking for Something?

Recent Posts

  • Recent Reading, January 2021
  • Could I possibly catch a break now?
  • Some Positive News, For Once
  • Still Too Broken to Fix
  • Three Things Make A Post: August 17, 2020

Copyright © 2021 Natalie Luhrs · Pretty Happy On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in
"It's chaos, be kind." Michelle McNamara

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.