Ancillary Justice is the first in Leckie's space trilogy, "Imperial Radch."
The Radch government has risen to power thousands of years in the human future, especially by way of Artificial Intelligence, which combined with human androids, or ancillaries, create entire armies for ruling over the human-occupied planets of the far-off future.
One of the major features of the novel is the obfuscation of gender, since the Radchaai AI don't think in gender. This means that almost everyone in the novel is viewed as a woman, including Breq, the main character.
Breq is reconnected with an ancient associative, Officer Seivarden, whose precarious condition reminds Breq of the destruction of her starship, the Justice of Toren. As an ancillary, Breq has existed for a long time. In present day, Breq is seeking revenge against whoever was responsible for her attack 19 years prior.
She comes to learn that there is a secret war in the Radchaai world, due to fundamental differences between two strands of a meta-conscious Lord of the Radch, Anaander Mianaai, who has split herself into various ancillaries to govern the expansive empire, and those ancillaries are the entities who started to disagree. Breq finds the version of Mianaai who aligns with Breq's peaceful attitude, and she waits for an opportunity to help this version of Mianaai to win against the other, the Mianaai responsible for the destruction of Breq's ship.
