The mystery of a missing translator sets three lives on a collision course that will have a ripple effect across the stars in this powerful new novel by award-winning author Ann Leckie.

Qven was created to be a Presger translator. The pride of their Clade, they always had a clear path before them: learn human ways, and eventually, make a match and serve as an intermediary between the dangerous alien Presger and the human worlds. The realization that they might want something else isn’t “optimal behavior”. I’s the type of behavior that results in elimination.

But Qven rebels. And in doing so, their path collides with those of two others. Enae, a reluctant diplomat whose dead grandmaman has left hir an impossible task as an inheritance: hunting down a fugitive who has been missing for over 200 years. And Reet, an adopted mechanic who is increasingly desperate to learn about his genetic roots–or anything that might explain why he operates so differently from those around him.

As a Conclave of the various species approaches–and the long-standing treaty between the humans and the Presger is on the line–the decisions of all three will have ripple effects across the stars.

Masterfully merging space adventure and mystery, and a poignant exploration about relationships and belonging, Translation State is a standalone story set in Leckie’s celebrated Imperial Radch universe.

In Translation State Leckie returns to the fantastic universe she imagined in the Imperial Radch trilogy. The standalone nature of Translation State makes no assumptions or requirements about the reader’s knowledge of the preceding trilogy, although it offers lots of comfort and familiarity for those who enjoyed the adventures of Breq and The Justice of Torrens. The narrative picks up a little while after the events described in Ancillary Mercy, the concluding volume of the Imperial Radch series, and a couple of minor characters from that book make an appearance in the later sections of this story.

The strangeness of the multi-personned artificial intelligence of The Justice of Torrens encapsulated in its last surviving ancillary Breq was a more than sufficient novum to sustain reader interest through the previous trilogy. This did mean that the nature of the incredibly unknowably alien Presger remained – perhaps appropriately – unexplored. Although the human presenting Presger translators offered a delicious enigma and it is that narrative avenue which Translation State develops in some intriguing biological and spatial directions.

In the Imperial Radch,  Justice of Torrens/Breq gave a powerful first person protagonist tale (although Torrens’ multiple discrete entities did make for something of an omniscient and omnipresent first person protagonist). In Translation State, Leckie gives alternating viewpoint chapters to approximately three protagonists.

There is third person, Enae – duty bound and driven granddaughter of a recently deceased but utterly unforgiving and autocratic matriarch.  Enae made a fascinating character coming to terms with the death of a psychological abuser to whom her life had been one of dedicated and largely unrewarded or unappreciated service. The fallout of her grandmother’s last will and testament leaves Enae as something of an inconvenience to be sent far afield on a forlorn mission chasing the two-hundred year cold trail of a fugitive. I liked Enae’s work ethic, committing herself to actually succeeding in her job rather than accepting it simply as an excuse to swan around imperial space on a well-funded and endless cruise of tourist sights and shopping sprees. In her diligence, Enae becomes the unwitting catalyst in the lives of the other protagonists.

There is Reet, one of many adopted offspring of a generous spirited foster family. Like Enae, Reet has reached a nexus in his life where the chance of a new purpose, new employment even, is opening out before him.

And then there is Qven, alone of the protagonists gifted a first-person voice. This perspective suits, indeed arguably is essential, to convey the alien strangeness of e’s migration through stages of growth from tiny to little, to small, to edge. Such is the process by which e and his cohort of similar beings journey towards adulthood and grow into Presger translators. It is at times an amoral, almost feral, kind of existence with a fascination about internal biology and function that at times borders on the kind of Fed West sociopathy.

The original trilogy made clear the incredible power of the Presger, able to destroy the imperial Radch and any other civilisation at will, its amorally genocidal imperative held only in check by the abrupt realisation that the humans were sentient and so subject to some Presger version of the Federation’s self-limiting Prime Directive. On that thin sliver a treaty was agreed for the humans and other races to peacefully coexist on the border margins of the immeasurably more powerful Presger.

The protagonists‘ fates spiral together, like rope strands braided into a single cable, around the upcoming renewal of that treaty. None of them are exactly action heroes, though Reet does have a fascination with space based soap-opera style action drama, which reminded me of Martha Well’s rogue sec-unit – the murderbot and their interest in TV serials. In keeping with the Reet and Enae’s rather ordinary and certainly non-martial backgrounds the plot is high on intrigue and, for the most part, low on physical peril and aggression. At one point I thought the story was heading towards a satisfying court room drama style solution of the Legally Blond ilk, but then Leckie threw in a curve ball (well actually more of a spiral ball) which sent the narrative in quite a different direction.

Again Leckie does a good job of conveying the alien strangeness (if that isn’t too much of a tautology) of the Presger translators, the various unpronounceable other species and the Presger themselves – who remain a shadowy background presence mediated by the words and actions of the translators. (A bit like Sauron in The Lord of the Rings, casting a long shadow, yet never seen in person, and only heard through the words of his emissary the Mouth of Sauron). I particular appreciated Leckie’s nod to some cosmological realities in having a low-g adapted species, all stringy and sinuous. I know that the producers of Star Trek the original series, for sound budgetary reasons, decided that the voyages of the star ship Enterprise would only take in ‘earth like’ class M planets. However, an appreciation in sci-fi of the diversity of gravitational field strengths and consequences for evolution and adaptation is as rare as it is welcome.

Leckie extends the toying with gender that we saw in the Imperial Radch series, introducing a new palette of pronouns which, as a reader, one quickly gets used to. In addition, a key theme that she plays with is not simple gender and gender identity, but what it means to be human and to identify as human. Again building on the Imperial Radch trilogy and the likes of Justice of Torrens/Breq aspiring for personhood, there are some thought provoking ideas about what it is that makes us human. I could almost imagine a clique of ‘human-critical’ influencers foaming at the mouth as they declaim ‘I know what a human is, do you?!’ Nonetheless, it’s an interesting discussion about personhood, self-awareness and that sense of belonging – not just with others, but in your own skin that has some contemporary resonances.

As Batonen, the stringy low-g adapted alien, puts it at one point,

“The Radchaai definition of human is far too restrictive for our taste.”

And as Enae, in discussing with Reet his foster parents, says

“Belonging isn’t always about genetics.”

As Reet reflects

“These past few months he’d belonged somewhere, known all this time that there was somewhere he’d come from, somewhere his quirks were recognised. He hadn’t realised until he’d found it just how much, how badly, he’d needed that.”

Which to be honest sounds like it could be any of us discovering our own found families within the SFF community.

I found echoes too of my favourite movie the incomparable Lilo and Stitch with its overarching sense of family, of belonging and how that can transcend – even redeem – the most monstrous of instincts.

However, my final resonance – somewhat bizarrely for an SFF book – is with the Flat Earth Society, a real group on Facebook convinced that there is a global(?!) conspiracy to deny the ‘real’ flat nature of the Earth enclosed by a wall of ice masquerading as the South Pole. Leckie, in creating a similarly deluded group of conspiracy theorists, takes a sharp pen to indict the dangerous power of the wilfully stupid and how this drives them to absurd extremities and insane denials.

There is an incident where one character from this group tries to deny the very existence of the Presger, dismissing them as a conspiracy of fake actors, false flag events and misinformation (Much as the Flat Earthers dismiss Australia).

“There are no Presger, all of you so called Presger translators are no more than humans pretending to be something more, something else.”

“You are so very wrong, “Translator Dlar said softly.

“Prove it then. You can’t can you?”

Translator Dlar smiled, a small tight expression. Then they picked up a tea bowl from the table nearest them, smashed it back down, swept the fragments into one hand, poured them into their mouth, and swallowed them.

[Their accuser] scoffed. “Street magic. Or an engineered digestive system.”

Translator Dlar smiled again, unhinged their jaw, and vomited up the tea bowl. Whole and undamaged.

“Very good,” [He] said contemptuously. “You must have practiced that a lot.”

For me, that wilful evidence denying stupidity serves as an allegory for so much dangerous contemporary idiocy beyond even the flat earthers and on to ‘climate change denialism’ and ‘stop the steal’ idiots.

However, beside that exploration of dangerously deluded, wilfully stupid, conspiracy chugging dangers to society, Leckie offers a compelling extension of the issues she explored in the Imperial Radch, through the eyes of (approximately) three engaging and very different protagonists.

Translation State is available now – you can order your copy on Bookshop.org