Ann Leckie’s Radiant Star is a comparative anthropologist’s playground. It features intra- and extra-cultural tensions between the expansionist Radch empire—familiar to readers of Leckie’s earlier work but not to me prior to reading the present, new-comer-friendly, book—and the occupied Ooioians of Aaa. The only alternative to occupation for the Ooioians? Obliteration by a Radchaai AI warship stationed in nearby space named Justice of Albis. After thirty years under this Radch dominance, a fragile status quo fractures when an egotistical bicentenarian fails his ascension to living sainthood and the Radchaai commandeer one of Aaa’s central religious institutions.

All this takes place as the Imperial Raadch disintegrates and the Raadchai left on Aaa maneuver to survive this with their local privileges intact. Despite this backdrop, which of course formed the plot of the Imperial Raadch trilogy (2013-2015), Leckie’s latest novel prioritizes Ooioian religio-cultural fragmentation. Ooioian religion reveres the Radiant Star, described by Emeritus Hierarch Biven as “creator and created, the entire self-moving universe in itself” (p. 27). The methodologies and theologies around the Star have created divergent sects, ‌which have merged with ethnic identities. Ethnicism colors the city of Ooioiaa’s government and social structure. Ooioiaa has three precincts, each with a council and (for lack of a better term) an order of the Radiant Star, governed by hierarchs and run by savants; an Ooioian’s born one of either Chath, Ylec, or Athphsid, regardless of personal beliefs—which include 42 hells, the veritability of visions, and fortune telling (the Ylec “Images of Radiance”). These ethnic enclaves aren’t kept inviolate by travel bans, as our narrator notes: “the borders between precincts had always been very real, but very porous and somewhat flexible” (p. 95). Indeed, complicating religious matters further, Ooioians consider numorous consororities legitimate authorities in communicating with the Star.

The Radchaai desire access to the Temporal Location, the spiritual center of Ooioiaa where the savant orders and the living saints dwell. After all, they view the Radiant Star as another form of their own god, Amaat, or Amaat’s Emenations (p. 25). You may ask, why not build their own temple? Serque Removal, a monopolistic removal concern, has prevented the Radchaai from beginning. Radchaai condescension and Ooioian institutional opposition have therefore created an untenable situation in which the Radchaai will put their own savants in the empty Ylec quarter of the Temporal Location, meaning the Athphsid and Chath savants are neighbors with their occupiers in their holiest place.

The Radchaai perspective on the Radiant Star raises pleasantly unexpected themes of syncretism. Combining gods has existed since antiquity and persists in Leckie’s universe. The possibilities of religious diversity are endless. I wonder what this world’s syncretic god’s name would be. Perhaps “The Radiant Amaat.” Certainly even Biven says Amaat “might as well be the Radiant Star” (p. 27). My speculations aside, you might expect Ooioian sectoralism to subside to counter Radch occupation, but instead it intensifies.

Ooioian sectoralism is clearest on a saint’s ascension day. Consider the following: “All the bustle of an ordinary day—was for the most part suspended. Or at least, suspended in the Chath Precinct. In the Athphsid and Ylec Precincts, business went on as usual, except for the neighborhoods nearest the Temporal Location itself” (p. 168). Despite looming cultural dissolution, the Chath get a new holiday, because a Chath is becoming a saint; the other precincts get nothing. What’s worse is that regular Ooioians feed into cultural fragmentation: There’s no prohibition on Ylec or Athphsid Ooioians attending the ascension. At one point, we read: “some residents in the other precincts had begun to contemplate attending, on the off chance there would be some food other than skel available” (p. 124).

Despite their individuation, Ooioians share staple foods. Relevant here are the peas and pucks served for celebrations. As that last quote implies, there is as the novel begins a shortage of food, and an undesirable Radchaai staple remains the only plentiful food. (The Radchaai Governor introduced skel, a fast-growing slimy plant, to the Ooioian water treatment process to prevent starvation when the Radch’s “intersystem gates” shut down amid the Radchaai civil war.) Skel works until the pest known as sea-rot begins devouring every crop it can (except onions for some reason) because of how delicious skel’s slimy leaves are—and starvation consumes the city anyway.

What happens when people expect peas and pucks instead of skel for a saint's ascension but there are none to be found? How much worse can that reaction be made by there being no prior announcement to soothe puck-starved hearts? The rightly disappointed crowd hurls skel at the Chath Savants who are carrying their would-be saint to the Temporal Location, and the elderly saint—who has been fasting for an extended period—dies of starvation or stress or old age before he can enter the Temporal Location and imbibe the mummifying elixir, nullifying his potential ascension. The Athphsid discover the saint’s death and their hierarch, Osifo, mocks the Chath hierarch Niranhin, who still wants to install a corpse (for the sake of generating more donations and celebrity for the Chath). The Athphsid refuse this Chath sacrilege and the two sects brawl in the Temporal Location. Leckie presents the consequence for literal sectoral squabbles: the Radchaai Governor expels the Chath and Athphsid from the Temporal Location—and, with the Ylec order defunct, the Radch can seize the city’s main religious site unopposed.

Emeritus Hierarch Biven gave his successor a prophetic warning earlier in the novel:

I will retire to my heritage, and will not interfere with you. You will wedge your way into friendship with whatever priests the governor appoints, you will offer spiritual counsel to the governor, leavened with a good deal of flattery l, and with such allies you will push out the Athphsid … You will finally be in sole control of the Temporal Location, the sole recipient of the gifts of all the pilgrims and seekers of light and knowledge. But in that moment you will discover that the place belongs not to you, but the Radchaai, and they will not hesitate to discard you when you cease to be convenient. (pp. 27-28)

Biven’s prediction is correct on results rather than detail. The savant’s absence allows a Radchaai-caused crisis to cement Radchaai political and religious domination in Aaa. Furthermore, starving people are desperate people, and the richest Ooioians see the potential for yet greater wealth in their desperation. Ooioian councilors extort their neighbors, their lackeys “skim” food off the top of fishing expeditions so severely that nothing arrives at port, starving Ooioians devour the city’s rats to extinction (in a tale later mythologized in a similar manner to the deeds of Saint Patrick [p. 243]).

In desperate times, people intensify their eschatological devotion. The Radch exploit that devotion for self-preservation. When the Ylec Images of Radiance, which have been lost for centuries, “miraculously” reappear when the Ooioians (and the Radchaai) need them most, the Radchaai usurpers present these Images in a long speech, livestreamed in front of the Temporal Location. A card drawn as part of a ceremony of fortune-telling depicts an onion, a symbol of “purity” (against sea-rot) and divine providence. All this coincides with the governor’s promise to punish hoarders and extorters, along with her announcement that the authorities have indeed managed to make sea-rot resistant skel—and that more is being made as she speaks. Her words passify the Ooioians.

In a single move, the Radchaai Governor seizes total power of the city—because Ooioian leaders focused on exploiting their citizens instead of unifying, on religious battles instead of harmony. The Governor controls the Temporal Location with her chosen “consorors” and “savants,” arrests all the Precinct councilors for extorting the Ooioians, and, with the help of Justice of Albis, delivers abundant food from elsewhere in a new Republic of Two Systems, born out of the ashes of the Raadch civil war; and allows one last saint in the Temporal Location, Savant Keemat. Keemat has befriended one of the Radchaai consorors, and this same consoror convinced the governor to keep Keemat inside the Temple. No doubt, Keemat’s ascension—confluent with Radchaai power consolidation—serves to gain the Radch public approval.

Radiant Star is, then, a tragic tale of how cultures are absorbed and diluted into Empires, told through three distinct perspectives with their own competing interests which all impact the novel. Some act out of devotion to the Star, others out of salvation for their personhood, or to attain status and respect among the elite. In the end, Ooioian society loses itself in its most vulnerable moment. The only consolation is that the Radchaai, too, have broken apart due to their civil war and never regain official control of Aaa, although “it would be centuries before any governor of Aaa actually dropped any association with the Radchaai, at least in name” (p. 286). Which begs the question: Is Aaa’s cultural milieu intact? I firmly believe it isn’t. The Radchaai, even if they assimilate with the Ooioians, have altered the nature of their society. The old religion has been expelled, and even if the new Consorors worship the Radiant Star, they do it through the lens of Amaat and employ a heretical item rejected by the active sects that prefer visions; the Radch disarm the local government and act as a novel, central authority planetside; and, a minor but significant victory, Ooioians accept the Radch’s detestable staple food.

If we accept Ooioian culture as altered, the immediate question follows: was it justified? Once again, a firm no. The narrator paints local authorities in a poor light, backwards even: The sects are profit-seeking, with the Chath ignoring the will of the Star to gain money and gorging themselves amid a famine; the Consorority of the Temporal Location (which I have neglected) is an abusive institution that literally sells children and hoards food; the wealthiest Ooioians exploit their poorer neighbors. Yet, a people’s sovereignty must be maintained. It’s not the place of an outside force to “civilize” an “uncivilized” place, effectively conducting a total societal change. It’s the duty of the Ooioians to establish and run a government that benefits them, an empire shouldn’t “guide” them to being “civilized”—a word which, in the Radch language, is the word Radch.