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Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for using unconventional methods in a battle against heretics. Kel Command gives her the opportunity to redeem herself by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a star fortress that has recently been captured by heretics. Cheris's career isn't the only thing at stake. If the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next. Cheris's best hope is to ally with the undead tactician Shuos Jedao. The good news is that Jedao has never lost a battle, and he may be the only one who can figure out how to successfully besiege the fortress. The bad news is that Jedao went mad in his first life and massacred two armies, one of them his own. As the siege wears on, Cheris must decide how far she can trust Jedao--because she might be his next victim.… (more)
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Lee is a fantastic writer. The ideas are unique and the prose is beautiful in spots. His words draw from his Korean background and his characters are engaging and real, and informed by his experiences as a multicultural transgendered man. But in lesser hands this would have been a disaster of a book. I could easily see another 100 pages or so of "explaining" this universe and how it works. Instead, Lee lets the story unfold and the reader easily figures it out. He doesn't beat us up with his ideas about reality and experience, but instead lets us experience our own thinking about things.
In the end, what really struck me is that in this era of "alternative facts" and "truth" defined by Twitter feeds and false news on Facebook, maybe what we need is discussion on the idea of consensus reality and the dangers of reality bubbles we live in.
Captain Kel Cheris can’t be disloyal if she tries – but her talent for mathematics enables her to calculate new – if heretical – equations on the fly to win battles, blackening the reputation of her entire unit. Disgraced by her unorthodox tactics, she is teamed up with disembodied traitor General Shuos Jedao to put down a heretical rebellion or die trying. But the traitor's strategy is to pretend to betray the Hexarchate. Can Cheris trust the man who has never lost a battle - but once slaughtered his entire command?
This is military SF, not usually one of my favourite categories, but I rapidly found it difficult to put down. I love stories where I don’t know who to trust. I love stories that encourage me to support monsters, and subvert my morality until their perspective seems reasonable. I love that Ninefox Gambit sets itself up along these lines, then subverts even those goals.
There’s so much imagination on display here, scintillating and elusive. It’s a natural heir to the Culture novels – black humour, ruthless action, spiky politics, and a deep concern for the human cost.
Welcome to the Machineries of Empire. If Ninefox Gambit is anything to go by, it’s going to be one hell of a ride.
Full review
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
In long: I've heard a lot of good things about this series, but none of them prepared me for how much I was going to love this story, how invested I was going to be in how the complex strands of politics and warfare across time and space are
While the plot is good, and the characterisation is impressive, what held me in this story was the world-building, and the way that the writing slowly exposes it. Yoon Ha Lee has developed a mathematics and a magic that are one and the same, and that influence everything that happens in the story.
Difficult parts of the story: The sheer numbers of sacrificial deaths, and the fact that just to maintain the government system, torture is a necessity. Fortunately the torture is only referenced, but the sheer numbers of senseless deaths do happen as necessary parts of the story.
If you are someone who usually doesn't like complex political shenanigans and the logistics of war, it may still be worth reading this.
content warnings for death, war, and body horror.
Under the current Empire, obscure symmetry formations of soldiers produce shielding results from incoming weapons that generate especially disruptive effects. But it requires absolute disciple from the soldiers to maintain position, which in turn requires a dedicated military class with it's own unique culture and symbolisms. A captain who can adjust her units' symmetry on the fly has particularly good results - our heroine Captain Cheris. After winning a minor insurrection battle through the use of innovative tactics and quick maths, she's asked to participate in a strategy call to re-take a corrupted Fortress of the Empire. Deciding this is too far above her ability, her plan involves resurrecting the long stored General Jedao. He's a renowned traitor of 500 years, but hasn't yet lost any battle, under any mathematical system, even against appalling odds. But the casualty cost is frequently very high. Cheris quickly learns that Jedao likes to play games.
It is a somewhat confusing concept, but more or less works. However it does mean that there's little predictability about what tactics or stratagems are viable, and little explanation (as with any high powered magic) why they can't just use that to destroy the enemy. Initially tightly focused, the POV meanders around a few characters which becomes distracting, especially when they're killed off still in 1st person. A little more explanation of the politics and motivations would probably have been useful, but the hook is well set for the fairly obvious sequel.
Enjoyably different.
The central conceit of the novel is a brand of mathematics exists called "calendrical math", and by using it one can determine which collection of variables need to be controlled in order to change the way physics works, allowing for a variety of "exotic" technologies that are dependent upon this shared belief system. The government under which the various characters in the book live is the "Hexarchate" and it enforces a rigid calendrical orthodoxy of festivals, remembrances, and torture sessions to power the technologies that underpin the authority of the ruling Hexarchs. Deviations from the calendrical observances are treated as heresies and ruthlessly stamped out. Technology that does not depend upon calendrical math is called "invariant" technology, and is represented as generally being less effective than the calendrically powered "exotic" technologies - and with one notable exception none of the "invariant" technologies are ever really described. The "exotic" technologies are only described in slightly more detail than that: We get names like "Amputation Gun", and "Threshold Winnower", and "Carrion Gun", and a couple of dozen descriptions of various battle formations, but with the exception of the obvious effects some of them have, the technology is never really given any substantial definition.
Some have said that Ninefox Gambit is about calendrical math, but that does not seem to be entirely accurate. There are lots of references to calendrical math in the book, with discussions of people doing computations and the effects of maintaining or not maintaining the calendar, but there is no actual math in the book. To a certain extent this is to be expected - after all, if Lee knew how to do calculations that would reshape the laws of physics, he would be publishing ground-breaking academic papers, not writing fiction. On the other hand, when science fiction authors introduce heretofore unknown technologies into their stories, they usually try to give the reader some general idea of the parameters under which those technologies operate. Calendrical math, however, seems to have no limitation at all, which I suppose might be the point, because once you posit a particular technology that can alter the very fundamental elements of reality, all bets would seem to be off. This gives the book a pervasive sense of unreality, as the central conflict involves putting down a heretical faction that has cropped up and instituted their own calendar with an associated competing set of technologies. Since what is possible with calendrical math is never really explained, the reader really has no grounding in what is possible in this conflict, and as a result, must be content with simply gliding along as the various interested parties explain what is happening as it happens and satisfied with never really understanding exactly why.
One thing that is certain is that the political structure that makes up the Hexarchate are both instrumental to and supported by the maintenance of the orthodox calendrical arrangements. The nation is divided into six factions, each with a defined role within society. The Kel are the soldiers, and are imbued with "formation instinct", which causes them to reflexively follow orders. The Shuos are spies, assassins, and information brokers. The Nirai are mathematicians and creators of the exotic technologies that flow from the caldendrical math used by the Hexarchate. The Rahal are the magistrates and judges, charged with enforcing civil order. And so on. Each faction has its place in society, and each member of a faction has a defined role to play. The incomprehensibility of the technology is almost entirely irrelevant to the book. While it is weird to read a book that is basically military science fiction in which none of the actions taken by the various forces involved make any sense because the technology they are using relied upon odd patterns of behavior and geometrical configurations that are never given any more detail than a fanciful name, the simple fact is that all of this exotic technology is just a way to explain the existence of a society that is so rigid that the deadliest heresy is allowing people to have choices.
The core story involves Captain Kel Cheris, a member of the Kel faction of the Hexarchate, whose use of unorthodox formations in response to having heretical weapons deployed against her unit has called attention to herself, leading to the Shuos Hexarch selecting her for a team to evaluate the best way to suppress a heresy that is causing calendrical rot at the heart of one of the most important regions of the Hexarchate in the key position of the Fortress of Scattered Needles. Cheris' proposal is to revive the dead and insane Shuos General Jedao and have him plan the attack that will allow the Hexarchate to retake the fortress intact and reimpose the proper calendrical order. This is a daring and dangerous idea: Daring because when he was alive, Jedao never lost a battle, and dangerous because in his final engagement he killed off the enemy and then turned on his own troops, slaughtering them to a man. The part of the plan that Cheris was not really prepared for is that to revive Jedao, he has to be attached to someone living, and that someone turns out to be her, creating a dialogue between the long-dead General and the living Captain (who is pretty quickly breveted to General for the operation).
[More forthcoming]
(Struggled a bit over whether to give a full five stars but, that last half star is reserved for the rare "forcibly reorganized my brain" read, whereas Ninefox is merely the best thing ever.)
The world is also amazing, a universe that operates under a set of rules requiring human observance on certain calendar days. Change the calendar, and change the
The characters themselves are well written, but fairly standard. The plucky commander with a knack for math being plucked to be the "body" of a once a great general who is now forever a prisoner. The people in charge are written fairly generically, each having a personality to fit their faction, but otherwise fairly standard.
Where the book shines is the world it is set in. Highly recommended.
I'm sure I didn't understand everything in this novel, but I was happy to try. Looking forward to the next installment.
The
The characters were great. I loved Cheris and Jedao and their dynamic together. It was really cool seeing how their thoughts worked together and how they interacted. I also really liked the servitors. They were so cute and I liked how they were portrayed. I also enjoyed the side characters. Even though we didn't get much from them, they still each had something about them that made them seem real.
I really enjoyed this novel. 4.25/5 stars
This is quite possibly the strangest and most brilliant sci-fi world-building I’ve ever read. The entire premise is that a calendar is both the basis for power weapons and requires belief in the calendar to work. Throw in the
I’ll be the first to admit it was not an easy read, especially early on in the book. No explanations, no idea, of where we are, what is happening, and why the army has to fight in very specific formations, all based on the aforementioned calendar belief system. Wow. Just wow.
This book is very well written, but I must say that I didn’t really like it overall. It was just too over-the-top concept-wise. It remains to be seen if I’ll read the next book.
I pushed
I really don’t know if I will read the sequels or not.
:/
She was so tired, and she had no idea what, if anything, she had done right. In mathematics you had peer review, definite proofs and answers, but war was nothing but uncertainty multiplied by uncertainty.
She has a plan. It's a desparate plan, involving reviving an
What follows is a battle of wits not just against the enemy, but against her chosen ally, Jedao, and even against the high command of the Hexarchate she serves. Because as vital as it is to retake the Fortress of Scattered Needles, lest the Hexarchate itself fall, they are strangely reluctant to share with her vital information that could make the difference between victory and defeat. She's fighting blind, and her only real ally is Jedao.
Jedao might be mad.
Or Jedao might be perfectly sane, and have her own agenda.
There's lots of action here; it's a campaign to retake a captured fortress. There's also a carefully textured unfolding of the characters of Cheris, Jedao, and the nature of the Hexarchate itself. The technology here calls to mind Clarke's Third Law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," and at the end of this first book of the trilogy, I'm not at all clear on exactly what calendrical heresy consists of. That's not really the point, though. The real questions here are whose values will prevail, and how Cheris can decide who to trust.
The characters and the challenges completely pulled me in. Recommended.
I bought this audiobook.
An epic space adventure if there ever was one. And the world that Yoon Ha Lee has created here is one that is quite intriguing. There is honestly a lot to keep track of, especially at first, but I would say it's manageable for most astute readers. And it is a great examination of the question of taking risks, and determining which of those risks are necessary in order to succeed. Is it worth introducing more danger to an already dangerous situation on the chance that it may be the only way to get through to the other side?
I'd read a few of Yoon Ha Lee's short stories, so had every expectation of liking this debut novel - and I was not disappointed. (I'm fairly certain that at least one of the short stories is set in this universe, although I can't quite place which
Captain Kel Cheris is a respected soldier in an extremely regimented, authoritarian and militaristic society. Her talent for mathematics - part of the underpinnings of how this world works - distinguishes her. But when she achieves a stunning victory by a not-by-the-book strategy, her unconventionality may be the end of her career. However, she proposes a shockingly bold plan to her superiors: she asks them to let her try to re-take a contested fortress by letting her team up with one of her empire's greatest generals and strategists of all time. The problem? General Shuos Jedao is imprisoned, accused of treason, and is possibly insane.
On the face of it, that plot setup sounds fairly straightforward. And on one level, it is. The military tactics and action progress in an exciting manner, with good character development and a really interesting dynamic between Cheris and Jedao.
However, the setting of the book has a whole other level, which is the nature of this world's reality. Everything here is 'calendrical,' meaning in the context of this book that it works based on advanced mathematical formulae. A calendar is like a computer program that determines the rules, physics, and nature of the surrounding reality. This is why this society is so strictly regimented: violating the calendar (heresy) can have severe, fabric-of-reality-affecting repercussions. Competing 'calendars' cannot be tolerated, as they cause something like 'bit rot' at the edges...
Of course, it's quite questionable as to whether of not Kel Cheris' Hexarchate is really the necessity it presents itself as. There seem to be plenty of heretics who disagree. (Like Ann Leckie's 'Ancillary Justice,' this is very much a "from within the Evil Empire" tale.)
The nature of this universe's physics is in keeping with some of Yoon Ha Lee's short works, in which, for example, art, or language, can affect the physical reality. Here, it's mathematics. It's still undeniably challenging for the reader to wrap one's head around at first. For myself, I found that everything went a lot more smoothly after I realized that, as physical as this world seems in its depiction, the way everything works makes perfect sense (and seems entirely possible) if you think of it as happening inside a computer-generated virtual reality.
Many thanks to Solaris and Netgalley for the chance to read this excellent book. As always, my opinions are solely my own
I guess this kinda started in medias res, but it wasn't the stupid version like Malazan, instead we see an introductory battle scene, another scene introducing the hexarchs, and then we're
The "yours in calendrical heresy" asides were probably one of my favorite sections. It's just such a great phrase.