Ninefox Gambit: 1 (The Machineries of Empire, 1)

Product Information

Those description of the entire society structure is confusing and never contains enough information to help the reader understand what is the purpose of it all or what the characters are even talking about. Those last 40 pages alone were enough for me to boost the rating by one star (I was tempted to rate it 4 stars actually because they even made me look back in fondness on the 270 preceding pages of tediousness) and to want to read the next book. This is one of those books that sets you up so you think you know everything for about 90% of the book and then in the last 10% is like ha lol played you. Ninefox Gambit alone, once you look past the lack of footholds and safety nets, is actually a rather tightly put together story.

As the siege wears on, Cheris must decide how far she can trust Jedao - because she might be his next victim. It’s military SciFi so plenty of action, reasonably short (in comparison to the past 3 monster size times I read) 🙄. I thought it was a brilliant way to keep the pace and the suspense up since a lot of Cheris’s story is removed from the action as the acting General, overseeing things from the ship.Don’t get me wrong, it’s violent and tragic and mysterious, but the reading experience as such can only be described as utter fun.

It is a fine line between not wanting to spoon feed the reader and giving practical information that highlights the significance of an event or action.A lot of questions, to be sure, and ones that do not exactly get definitive answers – or at least, not in the sense that a threshold winnower’s inner workings are actually explained at any point in time, or ghostlight is defined for the reader. Some of these tactics are related to battle formations, which are computed using complex mathematical calculations, and the fact that every time one was used, Yoon Ha Lee went into a lot of detail about them, the book was slowed down immeasurably. Captain Kel Cheris is part of the Kel infantry, the ground-force military branch of the hexarchate, the galaxies-spanning empire of the universe that rules via the power of the high calendar. Many readers will struggle to absorb the contours of this universe by osmosis, which is the only option Lee presents. The author applies the “sink of swim” approach to his world-building, by which I mean the author simply throws the reader into the midst of the world and leaves him or her to figure everything out on his or her own.

However, when Cheris finally spends enough time with Jedao, her assessment (and the reader’s) changes. This skill causes her disgrace when she uses non-standard, heretical battle formations on the field, and it also brings her the opportunity for redemption. These are really cool ideas, and it’s fascinating world-building, and I have nothing but respect for the vision and imagination that went into the world of Ninefox Gambit. It probably also helps that not a lot of the current generation of sci-fi fans have actually read it. This can end in three ways: rebellion against the Hexarchate, attempts to reform the system, or assimilation.One of the most commonly made comments about the first book, Ninefox Gambit, is that it can be very difficult to understand the first time around, because the author, Yoon Ha Lee, just refuses to hold your hand. First there is the introduction of a named character, who may or may not be the novel’s protagonist, but since said character is named, then he or she must be important, and therefore the reader must focus on him or her. I have the give the narrator credit, she did a good job and if not for her, I might not have bothered to finish the book at all. It’s not how I prefer to read, and it affected my ability to build positive feelings for the book beyond intellectual appreciation and respect for the craft that went into its writing. It's essentially all battle scenes, both in space and on the ground, interspersed with scenes of Cheris/Jedao making tactical decisions.

So she is given a partner in the form of Shuos Jedao: a brilliant tactician famous for never having lost a battle, but notorious as a madman who massacred an opposing army – and his own. What I loved about this, in addition to the crazy new world and complex societal structure, was the characters. I do know what the calendars mean NOW, several hours after finishing the book, but only because I read someone else’s review and it was explained there. And that’s true for a lot of science fiction that verges on science fantasy, especially when you start throwing around nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. The world-building is the envelope-pushing aspects of the book, and it is also responsible for my irreconcilable frustration.The pornography sampler had moved onto something less athletic… and what on earth where they doing with all those candles? Cheris is a military woman through and through, trained to view through the world around her, particularly the battlefield, through the lens of numbers. Such things are small in the face of achieving and ensuring unity, and no one knows this more than a Kel. To win an impossible war, Captain Kel Cheris must awaken an ancient weapon and a despised traitor general.