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Update 5/15/17 Re-read:I got the ARC of the sequel and now that this novel has made it to the finals of the Hugos for this year, it behooves me to do a re-read since I enjoyed it so much the first time.Does it hold up after a year and a re-read?Absolutely!!!Knowing what's going to happen with all the twists I can expect does not reduce its enjoyment. Indeed, it only deepens it. This is indeed a beautiful work of the imagination, running wild and free like a raven across the universe. Yes, this i...
One of my Hugo Award nominees, novel, 2016. _____Intelligent, challenging Military SF/Space Opera.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 one.)Captain Kel Cheris is a respected soldier in an extremely regimented, authoritarian and militaristic society. Her talent for mathematics - part of th...
3 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum https://bibliosanctum.com/2016/06/12/...I’ll admit, I was somewhat torn on this one. On the one hand, there were parts in this book that gave me a real struggle, but on the other, there’s no doubt Ninefox Gambit is one of the most fascinating sci-fi novels I’ve ever read.Step into the incredible universe of Yoon Ha Lee’s Hexarchate, a civilization whose way of life is entirely dictated by an intricate calendar system. Mathematics is king, the governing force beh...
So I picked this one up after hearing so many things about it. This is a military SF book (not my usual go-to I have to admit) which really throws you straight into the action. There's a world set up already, but the story just begins right in the middle of it and it's up to you, the reader, to figure it out.As a concept this book is super cool. Some of the world is really exciting and seems very advanced and full of life. Other times I felt like we were lacking a lot of the world-building becua...
I read this book because it was billed as "Hard SF space opera" by a Barnes & Noble list of the best sci-fi of 2016. I've been reading science fiction for basically my entire life, but even for me hard SF can be pretty impenetrable, and more often than not I find that even the more ambitious and impressive works leave me cold and alienated. Take Seveneves as a recent example. But when it works, it really works. One of my favorite sci-fi books of all time is another Neal Stephenson book with a ha...
I don't think I've read an SF novel quite as inventive as this one since the last time I read Hannu Rajaniemi.The Heaxarchate is an interstellar empire that makes use of exotic physics enabled by broadcast nodes seeded throughout their empire. The exotic physics are enabled by "calendars" and are referred to as "calendrical effects", and a key part of them is that they are directly affected by the belief structures of the people living within the areas covered by the nodes. So for instance, ther...
Final Review - - Rant WarningTruly toxic in so many ways. I found the perfect word for this crap: Logorrhea https://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti...This book is a painful and completely zero-star waste of time.AHA! Big Clue! - YHL went to college at “Cornell University, majoring in mathematics” [but no degree], and earned a master's degree in secondary mathematics education [to teach High School math] from Stanford University. Perhaps YHL’s idea of math wasn’t disciplined enough in school? Lee's...
Amazing, endlessly inventive; and ruthlessly clear-eyed on the cost of waging war and quelling rebellions. The technology (based on calendrical rules and complex interactions between six different factions) keeps throwing up mindblowing moments, and Cheris, caught in the machinations of the undead general Shuos Jedao and of the Hexarchate who commands her loyalty, is a sympathetic heroine torn between impossible goals.This should be on awards lists for 2016 if there's any justice. (disclaimer: I...
After reading the Ancillary Justice series, Ninefox Gambit was a wonderful complementary read. We are dropped into an interstellar empire called the Hexarchate, where six factions with different skill sets vie for power within the system. (Think Divergent on a galactic scale.) The ultimate power in the universe is pure mathematics. An understanding of number theory has to be agreed on and followed by everyone in the society, right down to the yearly calendar and how many days in a week. Within t...
RE -READ DEC. '16 I never re-read books. I am not a fast reader and I have so many books I want to read that I simply don't have the luxury of re-reading. I was just so bugged that I couldn't figure this book out the first time I read it, I knew I needed to try again... Two months later. Well second time's a charm in this case. The trick: taking a full two weeks to read it (a little every day) to make sure I'm getting everything. My first read went quick because I basically resigned myself to be...
Ninefox Gambit is my favorite book.It's the kind of novel I could reread over and over and still get something new from - this was the sixth reread in two years for me, and I'm still discovering things about this world.But let's get to what Ninefox Gambit is. This is a story about sieges: Cheris' siege of a space fortress, and Jedao's siege of (view spoiler)[Cheris' values, beliefs and mind (hide spoiler)]. And it is, in fact, a very twisty book, without needing that many shocking plot twists -
4.5 StarsThis was easily one of the most complicated and confusing science fiction books that I have read to date. Yet, despite that, I realllt liked it. I am not always a fan of military science fiction, so I was admittedly nervous how I would get along with those aspects of the story. However, I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed reading about the military tactics. I probably did not fully understand all the details, but I was still fascinated by the strategies used. The military tech...
If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.Shooting Fish in a Barrel: "Ninefox Gambit” by Yoon Ha LeeFor many years as a SF veteran, what I always found incredibly irritating was the ability of SF writers not to know any kind of science and what they wrote turned instead into technobabble like this crap of a book called “Ninefox Gambit”. If it is to be science fiction, then make the fictional part of the science at least minimally plausible.
Year of the SlothMonth of the Candied YamDay of the Engorged MarsupialHour of the Mollusc Dear Mr Yoon Ha Lee,I was particularly excited to read your story “Ninefox Gambit” as it has outstanding reviews from many smart people who's opinions I respect. It is clear from your prose and concepts that you are a very good writer and had a clear idea of what you wanted to do, then you went out and did exactly that.I have respect for the giant middle finger you waved at the “show don’t tell” school of w...
This was some dense, hard sci-fi. Dense like I remember Dune being dense, when it had taken me 200 pages to get a grip on it. Same thing with Ninefox Gambit, and frankly I’d be lying if I said I knew what the whole calendar thing was all about. So I simply accepted it as something people fought over and moved on to the story. Which is essentially a Star Wars scenario with intergalactic battles and political schemes. All of this though was made interesting by the main characters. A young rising m...
2017 Hugo nominee for Best Novel -- and sigh, I have a lot of words. I know this book has gotten a lot of gushing 5-stars, so fair warning that I am not going to be as positive!I already knew that I was on rocky terms with Lee's writing, having read a couple of his short stories and been ambivalent about one, and outright hated the other ("Combustion Hour" was literally the only story I wound up skipping in the 2014 Tor anthology). But I was hoping that with a longer pagecount and thus more spac...
Young, ambitious Cheris will do anything to succeed - including waking up a centuries old general who went mad and massacred his own army. General Shuos Jedao has never lost a battle and currently exists as a consciousness that is weaponized and placed in the bodies of soldiers whenever it is convenient for the empire. He is then sent back into the dark when his purpose has been served. Jedao is cryptic, commanding, influential, and seven types of brilliant. However, his mind works very much at
Ninefox Gambit: Careful or You’ll Catch Calendrical RotOriginally posted at Fantasy LiteratureI’m just going to add my two cents here, as a heretic who refuses to conform to the calendrical hierarchy that forms the basis of this mathematical military hard SF space opera with some gender-bending thrown in for extra flavoring. Ninefox Gambit has drawn favorable comparisons to Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lighting, because this book not only throws you off the deep end, but chains you up in neologisms...
This book is a wild, hallucinogenic space adventure set in a far-future society that manages to be alien while retaining the memory of how fragile and beautiful individualistic humanity can be. There are Brave Robot Pals and a complicated friendship (...can you call it a friendship? well, I would, after everything) between a dude and a lady at the center of the story that manages to be one of the most horrifying/fascinating partnerships I've ever read. SIGN ME UP FOR THE SEQUEL even though I'm s...
This book is awesome. And I mean that in the formal sense of the word: my mind is officially blown.There is so much to Ninefox Gambit that it's hard to figure out where to start. The story takes place in a world governed by calendrical systems: in effect, the beliefs, calendar, and observances of society create topologies that in turn affect the laws of physics and allow the use of "exotic effects," which are almost always utilized as weapons. Cheris lives within the hexarchate, which is run by