Review: Ninefox Gambit

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Disclosure: I received a free e-galley copy of this book through NetGalley.

Ninefox Gambit is certainly one of the most original and daring books I've read in a while. The premise of the story - a galactic empire that uses a kind of magic based on math and patterns - is fascinating. The core relationship between Kel and Jedao provides a solid emotional trajectory. Overall, though, I left the book feeling vaguely disappointed, both because the the premise didn't pull off as well as I'd hoped and because the character-driven story was a bit predictable.

The way the magic works is essentially confluence based on patterns of movement of either ships or soldiers that produce larger effects - like explosions, or camouflage. The scope extends beyond the military and throughout their society, as everyone in the Hexarchate follows the same calendrical patterns/schedules. It's a thoughtful metaphor for traditionalist societies where every person has their place and best serves the universe by performing their role dutifully. The main problems for me were that the patterns/formations that are used to create magical effects are abstract enough that they were usually weren't visualizable, and because the effects are magical and arbitrary, it was hard to build tension; the reader can't possible know that X formation will lead to Y effect, so when all the soldiers are getting into formation X, we don't know what that means for the next scene.

The story is driven by this magic. A rogue faction is enforcing a different calendar, and it's disrupting the very carefully woven fabric of magic that pervades the galaxy. Kel is chosen to fight this rogue faction for two reasons: first, she is a soldier who is unusually good at math; second, she suggests resurrecting the person of Jedao, a commander who went insane and killed his own troops many decades earlier. Resurrecting Jedao means incorporating him into her own mind and body, for reasons that are still unclear to me.

While the larger story of the Hexarchate is the 'pitch' story, the one that shapes the book, the core of the story is the relationship between Kel and Jedao. Kel starts remembering things that Jedao has done as if she had done them herself, and while she sees his many atrocities, she also starts to learn that the history she has been taught isn't quite right. As I mentioned above, this part of the story feels almost too familiar - an upstanding citizen must pair up with a supposedly evil traitor to defeat a common enemy, and along the way they begin to understand each other, and it's revealed that the bad guy had some good motivations all along.

It's been a while since I read the book now and I honestly can't quite remember the ending, but I would certainly read a sequel. It was a pretty enjoyable read and the most difficult part for me was that there are very few physical descriptions of anything, and it felt like I was blind while reading.

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Review: Too Like the Lightning

Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Disclosure: I received a free e-galley of this book via NetGalley.

How many books do you get in your life that make you sit in a stunned daze then cry softly because they are such a beautiful, moving piece of art that's now over, and to which you will constantly compare every book you read until you come across another book that moves you so strongly?

Well, add one more to my pile.

This is a book I've been waiting for since the cover reveal months ago. I put its release date in my calendar, I was so intrigued by the gorgeous cover art and the wonderfully strange synopsis. I was lucky enough to get an ARC from NetGalley but I'm probably going to go out and buy it anyway, because this is something I want to own and lend and proselytize, I need to spread the word of this Good Book.

So what makes this so good? So many things. The worldbuilding is phenomenal. This is Earth 400 years from now, recognizable but foreign in the same way that Earth 400 years ago is to us. Our history - both the history we are familiar with now and the history we're writing for people 400 years from now - is woven into the fabric of the world. Some threads are predictable, and some aren't. We finally get flying cars and it changes the world in a surprising, sensible, fundamental way: no two locations on Earth are more than a few hours from each other. It's a change that seems obvious - yes, that's exactly how that would happen! - now that it's pointed out (a feeling I got about so many things in this story). The effects of these changes are much more subtle, and it was a joy discovering the fascinating ripple effects that turn up in unexpected places (the flying cars change the shape of the family unit and government) and interact so cleverly with each other.

The voice of the story, Mycroft Canner, is like a song stuck in my head. He is a criminal, but also a genius and a charmer, and his frequent eloquent, rambling asides are as confusing as they are illuminating. He is the culmination of the unreliable narrator. He is writing or maybe telling this story for posterity and he tries to explain to the reader the way things are in his time, but he is a poor example of a creature of his time. He introduces us to a fantastically large, diverse cast of power players in the economic, political, and artistic spheres.

The plot. Oh man, the plot. I don't want to get into what happens (I know I'll regret this in December when I'm prepping to read book two) because, well, a lot happens. Let me just say that every action of this story has impact, every moment has meaning, and while it starts out fairly slow (thank god, because the layers of culture and character and world needed to understand the plot can nearly drown you), it picks up quickly. It's as if I was in a giant house and just when I had explored the main building, new doors opened up. But not even like that - more like new rooms slammed from the sky, fully formed and fully compatible with what I knew but completely new and different.

Even with all of those great elements, I think what made me love this book was that it wasn't perfect. About a third of the way through I almost gave up. The world is chaotic - just familiar enough to lure you into assumptions but different enough to overturn them all, leaving you knowing less than you knew before. The international power dynamics of the world didn't add up. Gender was supposed to be fairly unmarked but so many characters supposedly luxuriated in extravagant gender performance. Many small things (for example, a tree that grows dozens of kinds of fruit in a home kitchen) feel too wonderful to ever exist, and I felt somehow wronged by their inclusion, even though I loved them. But this is an optimistic world, so those marvels can be marvelous. I pushed through, and I'm glad I did. I underestimated how deep the planning of the story runs, and everything paid off in the end.

This is magical, powerful, strange, and smart. Read it if you like well-written, well-plotted, engrossing SF.

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Review: On a Red Station, Drifting

On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This novella pairs well with two books I've read and reviewed recently - "The Traitor Baru Cormorant" and "The Winged Histories." All are focused on women (and generally women of color) in a setting with colonial or imperialist elements, and are concerned with navigating power in both interpersonal/familial and political contexts. "On a Red Station, Drifting" is more about family than diplomacy, but both threads are still there. This is one of my favorite kinds of stories to read and I'm lucky to have read three that are so delightful and so different in such a short period of time.

My only qualm with "On a Red Station, Drifting" is that it isn't longer. I've read many interviews with Aliette de Bodard, I've read some of her short stories before in various anthologies, and I've certainly heard this story in particular praised many times. But somehow I didn't retain that it's a novella, not a novel. It didn't occur to me until I was about halfway through and thought, "Hm, things are coming to a head way sooner than expected..." at which point I checked my progress on my ereader. Anyway, the story is set in what she calls her Xuya universe, and while there's no longer work set in that continuity there are a host of short stories (one of which ended "The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women," which I read last year). I'm sure I'll be reviewing one of those shortly.

De Bodard's stories focus on family, especially in the Xuya universe where many people live with neural implants containing the consciousnesses of their ancestors. In Red Station, Quyen flees her Imperial post when rebels attack and travels to Prosper Station, where she has distant relatives. She does not hit it off with Linh, the woman who runs the station. Quyen is an academic (and recently wrote a treatise denouncing the Emperor who would let her planet fall to rebels) and a privileged success story of the meritocratic system of the Empire; Linh is a home-making wife who has nothing but her family, and many of the more prestigious family members have left for war and have yet to return.

The conflict between these two women, the conflict between family and duty, the conflict between duty to family and personal dislike, are the heart of the story. Linh is alone, and while she proudly asserts herself as the one keeping the station together, we know she doubts she can keep the station going much longer by herself. She tells the sentient AI-cyborg creature that has run the station for hundreds of years that she can't do it alone; she mourns her family's absence; she resents Quyen because she assumes Quyen thinks of her as a lesser spouse. Quyen is resentful, too; she resents that Linh won't give her a position that will use her skills, that she won't accept Quyen's help with family or station matters.

It's a beautiful, elegantly written story. The characters are compelling, and the story builds to such a satisfyingly character-driven conclusion. I'm sorry it's not longer, and I'd love to read more in this universe.

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