(no subject)

[skygiants]

I'd been putting off reading Yoon Ha Lee's Ninefox Gambit for a fair bit now because I wasn't at all sure it would be my cup of tea -- I'm not a military sf person and I'm not a math person, and one of the main things I knew about this book was that it centered on a space military campaign involving a lot of underlying math.

However, it turned out that even though I still do not understand math OR tactics very well, and if you asked me to describe the underlying science fictional technology I would wave my hands in despair, the central dynamic of the book was more than enough to keep me SUPER INVESTED even as factions and double-crosses and important tactical decisions whizzed past me into the ether.

The premise: our heroine, Captain Kel Chris, is part of an intergalactic empire that bases most of its technology on ... a complicated calendar and the number six? People all over the empire appear to be constantly rebelling and setting up rebel calendar systems and have to be put down, because if the calendar goes wrong then nothing works, and also because, you know, empire.

Because Cheris is a.) good with numbers and b.) disposable, she gets tapped to put down a major rebellion, with the 'help' of a tactical genius who won a bunch of unwinnable battles centuries ago, then for unknown reasons turned around and slaughtered a bunch of his own troops, then was executed and had his brain/ghost/something kept on ice to be resuscitated whenever an unwinnable battle scenario showed up.

It turns out that this 'help' takes the form of having the tactical genius installed in her own head as a weird undead tagalong who can give her unwelcome advice all the time!

CUE THE WACKY BUDDY COMEDY MUSIC.

I ... love it? I'm very invested in Cheris doing her damnedest to maintain some level of Lawful Good while constantly fielding diabolically brilliant suggestions from Undead General Chaotic [Alignment Unknown]. I don't remember anybody else's names, but, also, I don't really care, the personality tug-of-war between Cheris-Jedao is blazingly compelling all by itself and I am super excited for the next one.

(Also, the prose is lovely and the worldbuilding is neat and unusual, and clearly well thought-out even though I still don't fully understand it.)

...lest I give the wrong impression, it is also for the record, a very grim book and many many MANY people die, but life has been somewhat unexpectedly stressful of late and I have been finding it weirdly soothing to read about people who were always, very definitely, having a worse day than I was.

Comments

[sophia_sol]

...okay this is the first review I've seen that has made me think I might actually enjoy reading this book, I guess it's finally going on my tbr list now

[skygiants]

I think it took about a years' worth of seeing memes go by on Tumblr to convince me that I might enjoy reading it!

[lemon_badgeress]

I am glad you enjoyed the book! I wanted to let you know, however, that you may not enjoy the second one. It has many many (awesome) points of view, but very very very few of them are Jedao and/or Cheris. It sounds like you were not actually interested in the parts of the book that the series as a whole is more into? So you know it's still just as well written and we get SERVITOR POV, but. Heads up.

[vass]

I think skygiants will probably enjoy the second one. Agreed that Jedao and Cheris do not get any POV time, but I think she'd enjoy the new POV characters.

[lemon_badgeress]

I would hope so, I think they’re fabulous! I just think it’s kinda mean to let anyone THAT HAPPY about the fabulous Cheris and Jedao show to go into it without a heads up. Books are always better when they don’t start off disappointing!

[vass]

Yeah, agreed, it was a fair warning. I just didn't want her to give up before she gets to meet Mikodez and Istradez and Zehun. (I mean, Mikodez and Zehun both appear in the first book, but it's not the same.)

[lemon_badgeress]

Mikodez *__*

[skygiants]

I am extremely entertained by this debate on whether or not I will enjoy the second book! I'm definitely going to read it either way, so we'll see what happens. :D

[lemon_badgeress]

I definitely support reading the book over not reading the book, as a personal choice to be made! I just didn't want the not Cheris or Jedao POV open to be a disappoint.

[julian]

I basically treated the various number systems (and their heresies) as weird magic and it worked just fine from that perspective. And yes, the Charis-and-Jedao dynamic was all that and a bag of chips.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I kept trying to think of it as science but I definitely ended up just filing it away as magic in my head. And that's Numberwang!

[davidgillon]

I do think the idea that the books are full of maths is slightly misleading. They're full of maths in just the same way that the Star Trek universe is full of warp drive, or Star Wars is full of the Force. It's technically true, but you don't ever need to understand it, and the details are hidden behind the scenery.

The second one has had a slightly mixed reception, because, as Lemon_Badgeress mentions, it isn't from the PoV of Cheris/Jedao. However Cheris/Jedao is on screen for a lot of it, and the plot is a brilliant twist that just wouldn't work any other way. It fully deserves its Hugo nomination.

Machineries of Empire (the overall series) really isn't MilSF anymore than Star Trek or Star Wars are MilSF, but it's a series that looks at a civilization in the middle of a military option and asks some hard questions about what is justifiable in the name of good.

(I'm slightly biased towards the series as I was a beta-reader for the third book).

[skygiants]

If only I knew enough math to differentiate between real sf math and magic sf math!

Hmm, I'd think of it more as military SF the way that Battlestar Galactica is military SF -- being part of a military is definitely integral to the mindset and worldview of all the characters in a way that I don't think it is in, say, Star Wars. (Well, with the exception of the clone episodes of Clone Wars, I guess. Formation instinct!)

[schneefink]

Is it hopeless-grim or grim but hopeful?

[sovay]

Is it hopeless-grim or grim but hopeful?

The latter.

[skygiants]

I think the latter? It's certainly depressing but generally not gratuitous; it's a bad system but people are living their lives within it. But it's difficult to say of course without the trilogy being completed.

[sovay]

...lest I give the wrong impression, it is also for the record, a very grim book and many many MANY people die, but life has been somewhat unexpectedly stressful of late and I have been finding it weirdly soothing to read about people who were always, very definitely, having a worse day than I was.

You stand a very good chance of enjoying Raven Stratagem, then; it does Megan Whalen Turner-esque things with an outside perspective on Cheris-Jedao and stars Kel Brezan, who is very cranky and definitely having a worse day.

[lemon_badgeress]

Kel Brezan, who is...definitely having a worse day.

This is so true.

[skygiants]

Cranky people having bad days are the best kind of people to read about having bad days!

[lizbee]

I was also intimidated by the maths! But then I realised it's basically the Force, but with numbers. Or "numbers".

(A mathematician friend had it recced to her as mathscentric hard SF. She was ... confused.)

[skygiants]

All I've been wanting to do since I started replying to comments on this post is rewatch all of the Mitchell and Webb Numberwang skits. "Six, four, three hundred and six, twenty-three, AND THAT'S [ARCANE NUMBER MAGIC BASED WEAPONRY!]"

[ekaterinn]

I absolutely loved Ninefox Gambit, and agree that Cheris and Jadeo shine throughout "Thank you for the light". I also enjoyed the worldbuilding immensely.

[skygiants]

The worldbuilding was definitely enormous amounts of fun! And it does a good job I think of letting you piece it together without too much exposition-dump -it took me until about halfway through the book I think to put together that people had to self-select into Designated Groups rather than being born into them and I still don't quite understand it, but I get enough to let me carry through the story.

[thewickedlady]

Eee! Yoon is so cool and their writing is so awesome! I ALSO thought I would bounce off this book but really enjoyed it.

[skygiants]

POOR CHERIS IS HAVING SUCH A BAD DAY and it was so much fun to read about her having it ....

[genarti]

None of the reviews I've read have given me any certainty of whether I'd actually like Ninefox Gambit -- although they have all made me quite certain that it's very good! just not whether it's to my tastes -- but the fact that you liked it is definitely a heartening indication towards the Maybe I Might column!

[skygiants]

I think you might, but it's also difficult for me to say! I do think you would really like Cheris as a character.

[genarti]

I don't know why you think I'd like a stubborn responsible Lawful Good type. >.>

[starlady]

I'm so glad you liked it; I liked it quite a lot too. I find the fact that the book has such a reputation for math frustrating--yes, there is a lot of math language, but the actual math…doesn't work because there is no actual math. For which, given what the empire can do with maths, we should all be thankful.

I do love Cheris, and Jedao. I also really liked the follow-up, which goes interesting places.

[skygiants]

lol, yes, I too would rather nobody was actually able to build a template for whirring death machines based purely around geometric algorithms and the number six. I liked when they ruined an assault by tricking their enemies into planning a party on the wrong day!

[oracne]

What I love about this series is that the worldbuilding is possibly the most original worldbuilding I've ever encountered. But also the characters.

[skygiants]

It definitely does not resemble much else that I've seen! Though I can see why one might wish to shelve it next to the Radch books.

[frith_in_thorns]

Nobody here has talked about the AIs yet! They are so adorable! Cheris with her AI friends was my favourite thing about the book. And the AI perspective on the Kel generally. *hugs them*

[skygiants]

Aw, yes, I was glad Cheris had AI friends to count on! The one set of relatively trustworthy entities in the entire Empire.

[whimsyful]

Yayy, being one of those ppl who blogged about this book on tumblr, I'm so glad you liked this!

You can definitely treat all the math as magic and have no difficulties with this book, but I really like that you can tell Yoon has the background from how precisely he incorporates the terminology into his prose as well as the little Easter egg jokes here and there. (And his prose is soo good!) He goes more into how he came up with the mathematical calendrical warfare idea here, but while I was reading I was really reminded of number bases and how engrained they are in our society and technology. The Babylonians primarily used base 12 (the vestiges of which survives in our 12 hour clock), while we currently mainly use base 10 and binary. I've always pictured a calendrical attack as a more visibly deadly version of what would happen if all our computers which have been built around binary were suddenly force fed base 3 input instead.

He’s also said that he initially planned on putting in actual math, but was dissuaded with the argument that no one would read it. (Which is wrong, because I totally would have).

And yess the Cheris/Jedao dynamic was my favorite part of the book as well, closely followed by the Cheris/servitors dynamics. I would totally read an entire book of them just all watching trashy dramas together.

Aside from the next two books in the series, I really think you would enjoy some of Yoon's short stories! Iseult's Lexicon (from his collection Conservation of Shadows) in particular is one of my favorites.

[skygiants]

ahhh I missed this comment until now! and lol yes, your tumblr posts + others were a big part of what convinced me that I should give the book a try. >.> The bases analogy is really interesting and useful, actually, so thank you!

The third book has been frustratingly slipping through my fingers for many weeks now (it keeps coming in for me at the library right when I'm out of town >:() but SOON, and after that the short stories, I suspect!

[asakiyume]

Loved this one too, and one day I'll read the sequels.

[skygiants]

The third book keeps coming in for me at the library and then my hold expires before I have a chance to pick it up. Someday the stars will align!