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Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
Jun. 28th, 2019 12:03 pmThis is the most confusing straightforward book I think I have read. I enjoyed it and want the sequels, but I am not even a little sure I understood everything.
The plot is a near straight line barring the last couple of chapters. If I described the plot point by point it would sound surprisingly lacking in twists and turns. Cheris and Jedao are assigned to capture a fortress. They capture the fortress. It's almost that simple. Even the betrayal at the end is by one of the groups one expects from early chapters to commit betrayal, and the revelation and changes at the end are ones we've been waiting for, though some of the substance in the revelations is still genuinely startling.
And yet... like the calendrical weapons they are using, the thing which looks straightforward from one angle turns out to be a maddening, destructive corkscrew full of foxes with peacock tails, and shadows which think for themselves. And an underclass underestimated, and motives and explanations that range from deeply personal to empire-spanning. I spent large parts of the book feeling anchored only because I could find the plot points under the everything-else, the explorations of tech, the debates over strategies, the brief downtime relaxation with servitors, and the wanderings through human thoughts and emotions.
The tech they are using is the first point of weirdness. It's described almost more like magic, though I find myself believing Lee has at least some grasp of the maths behind it, and of its powers and limitations. It has to be so far in the future that some of the familiar words used to describe it seem to have shifted meaning, and the things people see and experience may be partly a virtual overlay, or may be literally true but beyond our technological comprehension. The easiest way to cope with it is to accept that it is not all comprehensible to use, but that Cheris understands what she is applying and when, and that the result is as stated.
This extends to the whole Hexarchate... though it comes clear early on that there are some horrendous implications to how the empire is structured, and some of what it does is inhuman, in that it is alien, and some is simply inhumane, period. (The calendar that powers their tech includes human sacrifice and torture on set days, for instance). The rebels in this case have some implications they aren't much better, though part of that is how they simply created a different calendar, rather than rejecting the idea of the calendar.
Cheris is a personable character, and Jedao is at least surface friendly, though a reader is left wondering until near the end what is going on underneath his exterior. Their interplay is complex and in some cases horrifying, and in some cases supportive.
The plot is a near straight line barring the last couple of chapters. If I described the plot point by point it would sound surprisingly lacking in twists and turns. Cheris and Jedao are assigned to capture a fortress. They capture the fortress. It's almost that simple. Even the betrayal at the end is by one of the groups one expects from early chapters to commit betrayal, and the revelation and changes at the end are ones we've been waiting for, though some of the substance in the revelations is still genuinely startling.
And yet... like the calendrical weapons they are using, the thing which looks straightforward from one angle turns out to be a maddening, destructive corkscrew full of foxes with peacock tails, and shadows which think for themselves. And an underclass underestimated, and motives and explanations that range from deeply personal to empire-spanning. I spent large parts of the book feeling anchored only because I could find the plot points under the everything-else, the explorations of tech, the debates over strategies, the brief downtime relaxation with servitors, and the wanderings through human thoughts and emotions.
The tech they are using is the first point of weirdness. It's described almost more like magic, though I find myself believing Lee has at least some grasp of the maths behind it, and of its powers and limitations. It has to be so far in the future that some of the familiar words used to describe it seem to have shifted meaning, and the things people see and experience may be partly a virtual overlay, or may be literally true but beyond our technological comprehension. The easiest way to cope with it is to accept that it is not all comprehensible to use, but that Cheris understands what she is applying and when, and that the result is as stated.
This extends to the whole Hexarchate... though it comes clear early on that there are some horrendous implications to how the empire is structured, and some of what it does is inhuman, in that it is alien, and some is simply inhumane, period. (The calendar that powers their tech includes human sacrifice and torture on set days, for instance). The rebels in this case have some implications they aren't much better, though part of that is how they simply created a different calendar, rather than rejecting the idea of the calendar.
Cheris is a personable character, and Jedao is at least surface friendly, though a reader is left wondering until near the end what is going on underneath his exterior. Their interplay is complex and in some cases horrifying, and in some cases supportive.
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