Member Reviews

I received a kindle format version of this book at no cost, in return for promising to write an honest review. I have previously read Yoon Ha Lee’s exciting debut novel Ninefox Gambit, but was disappointed with sequel Raven Stratagem. Together, these three books make up a space opera trilogy called Machineries of Empire. If you have not read the first two, stop now and go read them, before continuing with my review, as they are sequential, and tightly connected. I also recommend that they be read without large gaps of intervening time, as the characters and concepts carry over, without re-explanation.

As excited as I was about the creativity of Ninefox Gambit, I was disappointed with Raven Stratagem. It was a story of imperial intrigue and of a new battle, in the same highly segregated society, and without any puzzle about the nature of reality. Raven Stratagem ends with the consolidation of power from six Hexarchs to one, but no true change. Revenant Gun opens nine years later, likewise in the same setting. But the central conflict, once it is finally exposed, is potentially transformative. In my evaluation, that brings it back from the realm of witty characters in an endless space opera franchise, to a work that might possibly be trying to say something.

Revenant Gun opens with a new POV character, a new version of Jedao, made up of the memories left behind when his infallible military skills were grafted into general Cheris in the last book. Those memories are very incomplete, and the storyline where Jedao learns what is the situation into which he has been created, and relies on memories he does not actually have, is the most compelling. There is also a storyline set nine years earlier, when Brezan is appointed head of state of The Compact – a successor state that has been attempting to impose its new calendrical system, and is armed with a faction of the Kel military. The Compact is a rival to The Protectorate, a rump of the former Empire, which is attempting to preserve the old calendrical system, and is armed with a different faction of the same Kel military. The third thread involves Cheris/Jedao, who is researching the origins of the key technologies and social constructs with which the entire trilogy is populated. Pay close attention, as I feel there were inadequate markers for the narrative switches between time frames and storylines – especially with more than one Jedao. But it all does come together at about half-way.

One of my complaints about Raven Stratagem, was the sheer volume of meaningless word-candy pretending to be concepts. That is not a problem here. While still overly magical, the effects of the calendrical systems and the formations are well explained. The weapon systems are explained well enough. The diverse gender relationships are explained well enough. I wish Lee could go back and fix Raven Stratagem, but Revenant Gun has pulled the trilogy as a whole back from the abyss.

I enjoy a challenging read. Just being able to recall enough of the earlier books, and to comprehend the fairly complex and artifact-laden story, made me happy. But beyond the joy of comprehending a difficult puzzle, is there anything more? The young and inexperienced Jedao is still able to be shocked by the immorality of the culture that has developed, and to choose actions within his very limited range of freedom. While those who are deeply invested, including the more mature Jedao within Cheris, accept it all as inevitable, optimizing their own gain within the corrupt system. Ah, the wisdom of age.

So, read this book. I even recommend wading through Raven Stratagem to get here.

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The Revenant Gun is the third and final entry in Yoon Ha Lee’s “Machineries of Empire” series. The first two books were imaginative work with cunningly crafted characters, desperately eldritch technologies, high stakes plot and some top-notch world building; to get it out of the way, this finale does not, in any of those categories, disappoint.

The world…well, the world has changed. The Hexarchate, that sprawling empire, ruled by elite castes, with exotic technologies that persist based on calendrical observances, is over. Politically, what was once the Hexarchate is split – between those holding to the old calendar, their technologies powered by pain and torture of dissidents and heretics, and those who say that observance is now a matter of choice. The external factors are still there – other political entities which are either alien, or have different enough views to be considered so – creeping around the edges of the Hexarchate borders, looking for an excuse to pull chunks off it. This is what keeps the factions from all out war – but space is an imbroglio of barely suppressed tensions, one swift trigger pull away from devastation.

There’s a lot of really clever social structures work here; the different castes – the militaristic Kel, constrained by their ingrained need to follow the orders of those above them, the fey Shuos, artists and intelligencers limited by their own need to scheme against each other…and all the others – feel distinct, and ever so slightly strange. They’re human enough to be sympathetic, with edges which feel strange and unfamiliar. That strangeness is backed by the exotic technologies which tie the galaxy together. There’s weapons which work in non-Euclidean space, with descriptions which hint that detail might drive the reader mad, the servitors – near human creatures whose society and culture is limited by the perception of those who see them and there’s the Moths, ships with internals which rearrange themselves dependent on who is inside, the ability to leap distances and some seriously terrifying firepower.

It’s a strange, sharp edged, bloody world, once ensconced in systems which are often uncaring or broken. But it’s a fascinating universe, filled with the odd and the unknowable, a place where the liminal becomes the real, often painfully. It’s an often disturbing space, with a razor edge. But that’s counterbalanced by hope, in the form of its meticulously crafted characters.

Jedao, who we’ve seen a lot of in one way or another, is probably the most obvious of these. Jedao is whip smart, ready with a swift analysis and a smart mouth, letting his intelligence run the game for him. But here he’s also damaged, unsure of himself, trying to anchor to a sense of identity in a swirling morass of contradictions, some of which might end lethally. The mind behind the eyes is always three steps ahead, but always struggling against a lack of understanding. In contrast to the older, more focused Jedao, this is an individual with a sense of optimism. Often thwarted, often backed by a sarcastic remark or the odd bout of gunfire, but this Jedao isn’t ground down. That said, he carries a certain amount of baggage, both clear and subtextual. There are meditations on authority and consent here, as in previous novels, as Jedao struggles with to square his personal feelings with duty, and both with larger concerns of ethics. His is a love story, of a sort – just one which delves into the more occluded corners of the soul, and is unflinching in its exploration of those.

If those aren’t big enough issues, framed in personal relationships, there’s others. Brezan, for example, the Kel staffer-turned-general-turned-reluctant-revolutionary, shows his face again, trying to construct a political entity which will weather the storms of battle and time. I’ve always loved Brezan, for their combination of exhausted running-out-of-craps-to-give, and barely visible idealism. They’re determined to both look at the big picture and try to understand at least some of the minutiae, and are also smart enough to know that this may be impossible. Fortunately, they have Mikodez to help out; once a Hexarch one of the great powers in the universe, Mikodez now helps guide this universe toward a hopefully better future – but is rather fey about it. Clearly horrifiyingly intelligent, and a giver of small gifts to others, Mikodez’s backchat with other key players always makes me smile, and his emotional undercurrents in discussions with Brezan are enough to make one weep.

There’s also a lot more time spent with Kujen, the arch-mastermind of the Hexarchate. Kujen is, to put it mildly, odd. They seem to have an affection for Jedao, but it slithers gently around the borders of the acceptable. They also seem capable of all sorts of atrocities to achieve their goals. But there are hints of a different person there, one not yet dragged through the hedges of life, one who made the wrong choices for the right reasons. In my reading – and it’s a mark of how impressive the prose is that yours may differ – Kujen is an old, old monster. But also an indicator that any of the characters could become such a thing, given time and motivations. The abyss has looked back into Kujen, and it’s possible that all that separates them from the other characters is time, and appalling decisions.
It's a subtle book, one which approaches complex questions. There’s the politics of empire, to be sure.

There’s an examination of authority, of love, and of trust and what that means. There’s love, and the different forms it takes. There’s duty, and what it drives us to do. There’s more time with the servitors, that minority group whose agenda is debatable, but whose segregation and marginalisation is not. All of this is wrapped in a story filled with laser fire, with pistols, ticking timers and bloodbaths. There’s some wonderfully esoteric space battles which also have all the immediacy of a punch in the face, and some emotionally fraught scenes which felt like I was being torn apart.

It’s thoughtful, character driven sci-fi in a highly original, terrifying universe, with a plot that kept me turning pages until far too early in the morning. If you’re not reading the series yet, go and give Ninefox Gambit a try. If you’re all caught up, then yes, this is storming conclusion to an excellent sci-fi series.

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Yoon Ha Lee wraps up his stunning Machineries of Empire trilogy much in the way he has preceded it. Both the eye-opening Ninefox Gambit and its satisfying sequel Raven Stratagem were shortlisted for the Hugo Award (Lee’s debut was shortlisted for pretty much every award going). And it will be no surprise if Revenant Gun joins them. The third book of the trilogy takes the universe and characters that Lee created in these earlier books and once again twists them into new shapes, like the mathematician that he is, Lee seems to be constantly finding new answers to the same equation.

At the end of Raven Stratagem the status quo of Lee's universe has been seriously upended. The calendar-based system which powered the universe had been overthrown, many of its architects (the hexarchs) were dead and chaos was threatening to flow into their wake. Revenant Gun jumps forward nine years from that point – the empire is split in two, and an ancient enemy is rising keen to see the status quo re-estbalished and the universe go back to the way it was.

Saying too much more about the plot would invite more spoilers. Suffice to say that Lee uses the book to once again reset his two main characters Shuos Jedao and Kel Cheris. Each book of the series has dug into a these two characters in a different way. In Revenant Gun there are two Jedaos, working for opposite sides. The Jedao working for Hexarch Nirai Kujen , an ancient, seemingly unkillable force with no respect for other lives, has been given the body of the grown man but only has the memories of the seventeen year old original Jedao. While the other Jedao, out of favour with the new regime that he helped establish, is on a mission to stop Kujen. But Lee also has plenty of time for a number of other point of view characters including Kel Brezan, introduced in Raven Stratagem, and a robot servitor character called Hemiola who goes on her own journey of discovery.

Revenant Gun, like its predecessors has war at its heart. The main characters are soldiers and the narrative revolves around the political and tactical manoeuvring around a couple of major campaigns. The Kel are soldiers, bred to serve and strictly follow command in order to keep formation. Those under the young Jedao's command hate him for crimes that he committed but that he has no memory of but are bound to serve him. Despite its military styling, Lee never shies away from the human cost of battle, and the consequences of being forced to blindly follow orders.

Revenant Gun has all of the trappings of modern space opera that have been wielded so effectively recently by exponents like Iain M Banks and Ann Leckie – including complex politics, a reconfigured society, snarky independent robots and sentient space ships. And like these authors, despite all the strangeness of the setting, there is a deep humanity to the characters and their concerns. And Lee’s mathematics-driven universe combined with the way he tells these tales has its own uniqueness which sets him both apart from these and other authors.

So that once again, on top of all of the verbal and descriptive flourishes and the military science fiction styling Lee has delivered a deeply humanistic tale that furthers the concerns of the previous volumes of the series but does not feel repetitive. Revenant Gun wraps the up Machineries of Empire series well. While there are possibly more permutations Lee can put his main characters through it is probably time to let them settle even if the future of this universe remains ambiguous. Because life, even in a mathematics driven universe, does not always have easy answers.

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This wasn't the finale I expected - not least for shifting the focus from the grand stage to the personal stage even as it depicted what is effectively a civil war - but it was a satisfying conclusion to a fascinating trilogy. As with Ninefox Gambit and Raven Strategem, Revenant Gun is political / social / personal space opera masquerading as military SF, because in the end it's really not that interested in the battles it is structured around - they're the pivots, not the point.

If the sequences off the Revenant felt a bit more like filler than necessary context (sorry Brezan, there was a _really_ interesting storyline about setting up a new government / rule of reality, and you didn't get to show us much of it), Jedao was riveting, as ever. Seeing him young and idealistic was a bit of a shock - and watching him grown up through exposure to Kujen and the consequences of his own actions was heart-breaking. The unerring and merciless take on his interactions with Dhanneth were particularly shattering, and excellently played out.

I was utterly delighted to get a servitor protagonist, and I will never cease to be amused by the mileage to be had out of the proposal to give any incarnation of Jedao access to threshold winnowers. Add in a nod to the most outrageous aspect of Extracurricular Activities and Revenant Gun neatly makes relevant everything that has gone before.

Good stuff.

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If you love Leckie's Ancillary Justice books, you should read Lee's Machineries of Empire trilogy. But don't read Revenant Gun until you've read the first two books; it will make zero sense. To be honest, I *have* read the first two and while I (mostly) always understood *what* was going on in Revenant Gun, I sometimes had no idea *why*. (For example: why was there a nine-year time jump? If the reason was in there, it went over my head.) Sometimes I suspected the reason was simply "because it makes for a fun story." And...you know what, I'm okay with that. I love these books for the characters and the way Lee makes them suffer. And for things like this:

"Don't be crass," Mikodez said. "I already have enough public relations problems without being seen to be assassinating *more* people. As it stands, I'm getting blamed for all sorts of petty theft my agents had nothing to do with. Which is a crying shame, because my budget could use any revenue streams that happen to be lying about."

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When Shuos Jedao wakes up for the first time in Revenant Gun, several things go wrong. His few memories tell him that he's a seventeen-year-old cadet-- but his body belongs to a man decades older. Hexarch Nirai Kujen orders Jedao to reconquer the fractured hexarchate on his behalf even though Jedao has no memory of ever being a soldier, let alone a general. Surely a knack for video games doesn't qualify you to take charge of an army?

SOON JEDAO LEARNS THE SITUATION IS EVEN WORSE. THE KEL SOLDIERS UNDER HIS COMMAND MAY BE COMPELLED TO OBEY HIM, BUT THEY HATE HIM THANKS TO A MASSACRE HE CAN'T REMEMBER COMMITTING. KUJEN'S FRIENDLINESS CAN'T HIDE THE FACT THAT HE'S A TYRANT. AND WHAT'S WORSE, JEDAO AND KUJEN ARE BEING HUNTED BY AN ENEMY WHO KNOWS MORE ABOUT JEDAO AND HIS CRIMES THAN HE DOES HIMSELF... (VIA GOODREADS)
I RECEIVED AN EARC OF REVENANT GUN VIA NETGALLEY IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.
Revenant Gun is the final book in a trilogy that has quite frankly blown my mind. I have been a fan of science fiction since before I can remember. The entire series has kept me on the edge of my seat. I reviewed Raven Stratagem last year. Even expecting all of that, Revenant Gun was a constant surprise.

Like both of the other books, Revenant Gun needs some really heavy content warnings for death of main character, suicide of important side character, death of many side characters, body horror, mind control, removal of memories, violence, broken limbs, suicidal ideation by MC, clones, dubious consent relating to mind control, mentions of genocide, mentions of sensory deprivation, sentient spaceships, sterility, and probably some more things that I'm missing. This is a very, very heavy read. Please take that into account when looking into this series.

One thing I love about Yoon Ha Lee's writing is this. No matter which character he's focusing on, they are all morally grey and they are all intensely human. In Revenant Gun, we get to see the world through several different perspectives including Cheris, Jedao 2, a servitor named Hemiola, and General Brezan. Each perspective offers an important piece of the puzzle that is this story and its background. So much happens in Revenant Gun, but I came out of it feeling like I know each and every one of the characters and their hobbies. It's really astonishing.

The next thing I would like to talk about is Kujen. You will hate him with every fiber of your being AND you'll probably want to borrow some fibers to hate him some more. If you're looking, Mikodez probably has plenty you could borrow in his yarn stash. Kujen is The Worst™. And yet, you can almost understand why he is the way he is, from the history we learn through his archives and what he reveals to each character. While he was a monster, he was also entirely, horribly human.

Revenant Gun was a great finale to the trilogy. It was solid, it was blazing, and it was real. And most of all, it was satisfying for both Cheris and Jedao in their own way. If you loved the first two books in the series, Revenant Gun won't let you down. Pick up a copy on Amazon or Indiebound!



DISCLAIMER: ALL LINKS TO INDIEBOUND AND AMAZON ARE AFFILIATE LINKS. IF YOU BUY THROUGH THOSE LINKS, I WILL MAKE A SMALL AMOUNT OF MONEY OFF OF THE SALE.

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Yoon Ha Lee's "The Machineries of Empire" trilogy offers something truly unique: dense world building in terms of which society and technology are based on the strength of the shared belief in the calendrical mathematical system.

As Jedao postulated in Ninefox Gambit: "all calendrical war is a game between competing sets of rules, fuelled by the coherence of our beliefs. To win a calendrical war, you have to understand how game systems work."

It has been said before, but to truly enjoy this series, you are going to have to let go of trying to understand the science and just accept its function as the operation of magic - a mystical, incomprehensible power - utilised in a military sci-fi setting.

While Ninefox Gambit may have offered the purest form of mathematical military sci-fi in the series and Raven Stratagem expanded upon this unique blend of mathematical mysticism and socio-political systems, both previous novels are, inescapably, the ultimately set up for the concluding Revenant Gun novel.

The question is: "Does Yoon Ha Lee deliver in his maiden full length series?"

The answer is a nebulous yes and no. The unique characters and character building is exceptional and in this regard the finale does not disappoint. However, a resounding epic "Saving Private Ryan" battle is simply not on the cards, despite a 300 page setup for the ultimate faceoff.

Instead of adrenaline filled blood, sweat and tears with a magical blend of math, we have certain pacing issues and obscure mathematical stratagems that fail to fully ignite the imagination.

Don't get me wrong - this is still a truly unique series that is worth pursuing, with incredible characters and a fair share of revelations that add to the mythology and methodology of the series as a whole, but Revenant Gun could have taken it past Einstein and defined a new gold standard.

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Revenant Gun takes place ten years later and follows a few characters. One is a young Jedao with a fractured memory who is working alongside Kujen. Another character is Cheris who is helped by a servitor Hemiola. Initially I wasn’t sure where the novel was going with Kujen but he quickly became a favorite character of mine. He is such a fun addition to the novel was he is the perfect portrayal of a brilliant mad scientist.

Out of all three novels in the series I found this one the easiest to read. Most of the background information such as formation theory, calendars and their importance, moths and the different factions was already explained. This novel did go into more details about the moth ships and their origin. Although the name hints at their origin I was still a little surprised.

What I really love about this novel is how many non-straight relationships there are. Most of the characters are either gay or in a relationship with multiple wives. Sex isn’t viewed as a taboo thing and everyone engages in it at will (except between grunts and their commanders which is punishable by death). This was a nice change from most books where most/all characters are in a straight relationship with a boring traditional sex life.

In conclusion, this was a good conclusion to a fun series. This novel was the best out of the three however as I found it the easiest and less confusing of all of them.

Thanks to Solaris and Netgalley for this ARC.

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I received this book as an e-arc from Rebellion Publishing in exchange for an honest review, for which they and Yoon Ha Lee have my undying gratitude.

Revenant Gun, or, as I like to call it, Ninefox’s Eleven, is the third in Yoon Ha Lee’s Machineries of Empire trilogy, which began with Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem. If you haven’t read those books, be warned that what follows is going to spoil them pretty thoroughly, although I’m going to avoid spoilers for Revenant Gun itself. I highly recommend putting down this review and picking up Ninefox if you haven’t already. Even if you have read the first two books, Revenant Gun launches straight back into the plot with very little recap, so it would benefit from being read straight after a reread – although my distinctly average memory for plot caught up within a few chapters, so it’s not a necessity.

In-universe, the book actually picks up nine years after the events of Raven Stratagem, with the remains of the Hexarchate divided between the Compact, running on the revised and distinctly more liberal calendar set up by renegade soldier Cheris, and the Protectorate, which aims to uphold the old system. Each of these factions is effectively being led by one of the Kel soldier faction: the Compact has our old friend and rebellious “crashhawk” Brezan (with the leader of the Shuos faction, Mikodez, in the background); while the Protectorate is being run by a senior general. Cheris herself, having revealed that her “takeover” by disgraced genius general Shuos Jedao’s personality was not as complete as everyone assumed in Raven Strategem, has disappeared, leaving the Compact effectively alone in defending her new calendar. Also in the mix is the functionally immortal secret-Hexarch Nirai Kujen, the architect of basically every awful technology in the galaxy, who is about to unleash his secret weapon: another iteration of everyone’s favourite disgraced genius general…

New Shuos Jedao is, on the surface, a rather odd introduction, because this version has no memories beyond being seventeen, despite being born into a body with the age and alleged capabilities of his much older self. Turning the enigmatic, all-knowing general of the last two books into a naïve POV character in the third act (indeed, he’s the most used POV for what I believe is the first time in the novels) feels like a big risk from a narrative standpoint, but it ends up working on multiple levels. It fits in thematically with the other ways the trilogy has played with personal identity as well as leting the book explore the weight of Jedao’s actions from a new, heartbreaking angle (although thankfully it doesn’t spend too long going over Candle Arc), and the mechanics of his resurrection also fit neatly with the foregrounding of some of Kujen’s other technological horrors, particularly the creation of the Moth spaceships.

For me, however, the most effective result of baby Jedao was the introduction of a character with the urgent and visceral knowledge that the Hexarchate’s society is unnecessary and wrong. As an audience, we are aware at this point that the Hexarchate has become progressively more brutal and oppressive since his original lifetime, to the point where an entire ruling faction – the Kel – are now brainwashed into mindless obedience and the very basis of technological progress and social cohesion is likely to fall apart if they don’t conduct regular ritual torture sacrifices. Plenty of other characters also believe this is wrong, and the older iteration of Jedao (and later Cheris) also has memories of things being different, the vast majority of time we are seeing events from the perspective of characters who have never known anything different and have no sense of what the alternative would even look like. Young Jedao embodies the shift in narrative from the hopeless fight against an awful system with no clear alternative in the first two books, to a world where of course things don’t have to be done that way, because all he knows it a reality where they weren’t. Even without the details of the new calendar system which makes this revised reality possible (details which would be meaningless to the audience anyway), young Jedao does a lot of work in making the new perspective in this time skip plausible.

In terms of action and worldbuilding, Revenant Gun builds very well on the existing work done in the previous two books: if you liked those, you’ll like this. Alongside young Jedao, we also spend significant amounts of time with Brezan and Cheris, and while I was disappointed to not have POV chapters from the latter, we instead get her story through Hemiola, a Nirai-aligned servitor who ends up following them from a space station, who is a very welcome addition. Like Raven Stratagem, there’s not as much focus on the space-magic battle mechanics as there was in Ninefox, which I still miss, but I accept that the story has grown past those scenes and the wider focus on revolutionary change, as well as the continuing glimpses of life outside the top military and political echelons, are interesting in their own right. There’s also a strong presence from the servitors – the effectively invisible robot workers of the Hexarchate – and honestly I could read a series of just soap opera-loving robots (I mean I am, thanks to Martha Wells, but I could read one written by Yoon Ha Lee as well). Disappointingly my most pressing question about Servitor Hemiola, and whether she gets to watch the last two seasons of A Rose in Three Revolutions, was left unanswered, but perhaps this is making room for a sequel.

Despite throwing me in the deep end in terms of plot recall, Lee’s style makes this a very easy and enjoyable read once you’ve recalled all of the terms and factions. I certainly wouldn’t mind a handy glossary and character list in future editions of the books, but I did well enough on my own. With the landing successfully stuck, this series has firmly entrenched its spot on my favourite space operas, and I’m very glad I stuck out those first mildly confounding chapters of Ninefox Gambit to make it this far.

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Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This series continues to be one of the most unique trilogies I've ever had the pleasure to read, and that's saying a lot.

It took me a little bit to get into the new direction this novel takes, but if any of you folk were creeped out by Kujen in the previous novel with all his psychosurgery and inventions, you're going to love this book. You might say that this last book in the trilogy is all his.

Jedao has yet another large role again, and believe me, it's not what I had expected. He's a 400-year-old immortal general who has a talent for getting things done, but in the first book, being uploaded into Cheris's mind took a rather odd turn and despite the fact he's known everywhere for being a mass murderer and a psychopath, he sacrifices himself to let Cheris have his memories. The second book has Cheris playing a long game pretending to be the general that everyone is deathly afraid of and she manages to set off a fractured calendar. (Consensual reality math-magic that can perform some super-powerful stuff.)

This book picks up after that. A decade later. And now two sets of fractured Jedao memories in two different bodies are running wild.

I love the mirroring and the way this particular novel feels like an inversion of the first. It also feels like Jedao is a puzzle piece, two halves of his soul, his memories, are fighting each other in an epic battle that reflects just how morally and ethically GRAY this entire series is. Who is right? Who is wrong? Who knows?

But the fact is, it's brilliant. I love the vast worldbuilding, the magic maths, the alien species that are subjugated by the humans, the servitors (AI robots), the sheer number of people, and the social building throughout.

I won't say this is an easy read, but it is easily one of the most rewarding. I've read the first two books two times and this one a single time, and I keep discovering new things in each. I'm also more invested. I recommend this very highly for any of you true fans of original and fearless SF. :)

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC, too!

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4.0 out of 5 stars. Yoon Ha Lee concludes his debut trilogy with a satisfying end to a series full of heart, charm, and innovation. I came because I heard about the wild, math-powered world created for this universe, I stayed because I loved the wonderfully crafted characters, characters you cared about. I genuinely look forward to what we’ll get from him next. The rough parts in his books are understandable in an author’s early works and are more than compensated for by the quality of everything else. Lee also demonstrates a clear ability to improve upon his writing which you can see in the development of the series. I’m sad to see this series end, but I’m happy with the way it did and that I didn’t have to wait a decade for the conclusion of a series.

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This world, the universe, is one of the most compelling and fascinating I've ever read. And Lee's hero(es) are just as fascinating and complex. I do wish we'd seen more of the moths in this book and I simply want more of everything here, which is the highest praise I can imagine for any series.

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Revenant Gun is a book about space battles, but it's also a book about mending things. At the end of Raven Stratagem, the ritual calendar that the hexarchate's empire depended on was smashed, and most of the hexarchs were murdered. How, then, should the empire be mended? By building something new, and better, as High General Brezan has promised? By pursuing the strategy of Protector-General Inesser and her regiments, and holding the pieces together as best one can? Or should the old system be restored, carefully timed torture and all?

One of the two surviving hexarchs, the undying scientist Kujen, favors the last option. And he has a weapon, a young copy of Shuos Jedao. This Jedao has all the charm and contagious momentum that made him the hexarchate's most effective general, and the bone-deep instincts toward commitment that made "I'm your gun" his best-known phrase. But he doesn't remember why he was also the hexarchate's most feared general, or what his loyalties were.

The first half of the book is exuberant adventure. Kujen's old enemy, Cheris, pulls off an elaborate heist by using a chocolate festival. We meet a dedicated but naive flying robot, the servitor Hemiola, who likes making fan vids. We learn that the hexarchate's spaceships are called "moths" because they're alive, and the gate space they travel through, faster than light, has an entire ecology of its own. Then Jedao wins his first battle, and learns what the modern hexarchate does to prisoners of war.

The second half of the book tracks a web of alliances. Both human and nonhuman agents seek to destroy Kujen, but that doesn't mean they trust each other, nor that they should. Meanwhile, Jedao and Hemiola both try to figure out why Kujen made the calendar in the first place. Turns out it's the old trade: stability for your soul. Kujen has lace and gems and art, and an empire where children do not starve by accident. Jedao was another of his beautiful, leashed possessions, once upon a time.

The culminating space battle has exotic weaponry and spaceships in atmosphere and desperate attempts to coordinate calendrical math. The hexarchate's soldiers call themselves suicide hawks, and in the battle's aftermath they justify that description, for good or ill.

Once the dust clears, we know the old, human calendar is dead. We don't know how the nonhumans will respond, though, or what's really going on in that ecosystem in between space and time. This isn't a universe where the arithmetic works out neatly: stuffing all the answers into a single trilogy seems like one of many vain hopes.

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This is the final book in one of my favourite extremely inventive sci-fi series. There is a time-gap between the 2nd and 3rd books but it feels like this book picks straight back up on the action. One of the things I like about this series is that it throws you into the world and doesn't overdo exposition. I did want more POV chapters from certain characters that we'd had in previous books. The ending was good and wrapped a lot up, although I would've liked more information on the impacts the events of this book had. All in all, this was a good finish to an excellent series.

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A wonderful conclusion to the series which made me want to read all three books over again. The universe is fascinating, the characters and interplay between them compelling, and I always forget just how much humor is present in books that are at face value about mathematical warfare in space. Although I did miss having the narration from some characters, such as Cheris, the new characters introduced were also interesting and this book continued to flesh out the world of the Hexarchate.

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So I actually finished this two days ago, but I’ve been thinking about it and how to gush about my favourite parts without spoilers and it’s probably impossible. I enjoyed books one and two, but this third grabbed all of the world building and characters threw on layer after layer of complexity. There is just so much depth to the core world, I could read another trilogy (or two) on it. More about the moths, mysterious enemy the Hafn, or the servitors, or the Gwa Reality – literally anything.

But what is most important is the depth of my love for these characters. The immortal manipulator, the insane undead general, the kel with some of that general in their head – there are so many similar and conflicting motivations driving them, it was a joy to watch their stories unfold.

Set nine years after Raven Stratagem saw the end of the calendrical regime, Revenant Gun shows us that it’s not quite that simple to change such a massive empire. Kel Cheris has disappeared, leaving Brezan struggling with a leadership role he never wanted, while a new, yet very familiar, face is brought into the fight when Kujen revives a younger Shous Jedao.

The characters are amazing, but in all honesty Jedao really made this . From his confused resurrection through to his thoughts on the current empire, he is the heart of the novel. It’s through him we finally see the depths of the rituals and torture and slavery of this world Kujen created with every good intention. His relationship with his aid, the Kel Dhanneth, and how it plays out is an incredible exploration of love and sex and power in such a socially confined society.

I did miss Cheris, whose POV was split with a servitor named Hemiola. I was interested in the servitor life, but Hemiola was dragged into Cheris’ adventures so quickly it wasn’t established as well as I might have liked. But those are my only minor quibbles.

Revenant Gun is a wonderful conclusion to the trilogy. I could have gushed much more but it’s so hard not to spoiler everything. I even wondered about mentioning young Jedao. For a story built upon mathematical warfare, there is plenty of action with assassinations, space battles, political alliances and betrayals. This is a wonderful universe and I can only hope for more.

Thanks to Netgalley and Rebellion Publishing for the ARC.

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Yoon Ha Lee wraps up the intricate, vicious dance of intergalactic politics set in motion in <i>Ninefox Gambit</i>, opening nine years after the events of <i>Raven Stratagem</i> upended the Hexarchate. Kel Cheris, who set off that revolution, was the protagonist of the first book, and the focus of the second, but has now vanished, leaving allies and enemies alike scrambling to make the best of the new world she wrought. And it's important here that all of them, even the ones who seem - and are - most monstrous, have fully detailed backstories and motivations which make clear that somewhere back there, even if selfishness has since come to play a bigger role, they first got into these positions because they wanted to make the world a safer place. It can be a tricky thing to remember, trying not to assume the worst of an ideological opponent's motives, but here there's one deftly done family row in particular which serves to remind us how seldom that gets anywhere near the truth of the matter. Lee's keenly aware of the terrible choice which must always be made when weighing the blood spilled in revolution against the blood spilled by maintaining the status quo, the awful mortgage paid against a brighter tomorrow which might never come, and the cost that exacts upon the generals as much as on the poor bastards slaughtered on the front line.

In a note reminiscent of the third Takeshi Kovacs book, one of the story's strands follows a newly-resurrected younger version of undead general Shuos Jedao, pulled out of storage to take on the echo of his older self - though of course the very notion of 'self' is even more complicated in this case than it was in the world of <i>Altered Carbon</i>. Another follows Brezan, struggling to come to terms with the leadership role he's attained almost by accident, and the third...well, the third is the servitor's eye view of the story. Both the previous books relied at crucial moments on the fact that most of the Hexarchate's people ignore the robots performing menial tasks around them; it was a smart SF take on 'the butler did it' before that became cliche. So it makes perfect sense that we now see their interior life, and at first it works very well, especially given our viewpoint droid is one who's lived a rather odd and secluded existence, and as such has a slightly off understanding of humans. But if I have a criticism of the book, it's that the servitor gradually comes to seem a little too human. Politically, I understand the importance of showing a slave class as people too, but especially given the authentic strangeness of one other character here (of whom no more, because spoilers), not to mention the fractured or otherwise altered inner life of several of the nominally human cast, I wonder whether Lee couldn't have given the servitors an interiority that wasn't quite so interchangeable with our own. Robots hatewatching shitty dramas is one thing - but robots worrying irrationally about being overheard felt to me like an organic foible too far.

Still, one of the benefits of these new perspectives is that there's now an excuse to unobtrusively tell us a little more about this exotic world. One of the things I've enjoyed in the series is the reluctance to tell us more than the characters would naturally be thinking about the architecture of their world, the bizarre weapons, or why the spaceships are called moths. Indeed, part of me disliked the cover art for being a little too conventionally SF, trying to picture at all these things I would have preferred left entirely mysterious. Well, now there's reason and excuse to tell us a little more, and the beauty of how it's done is that we don't just get answers to mysteries we knew were mysteries - we also get revelations which make us realise how much was hiding in plain sight.

All in all, then, an entirely satisfying conclusion to a very good trilogy. And lest what I've written above seems a little bloodless - in part through avoiding spoilers, in part just because that's my mood at present - then I should really also note that as well as all the philosophical and world-building stuff, there are also plenty of space battles, daring commando actions, tense alliances and desperate last-ditch gambits too. It's the fun sort of harrowing read, not one of the earnest ones.

(Netgalley ARC)

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