Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

I think it's safe to say that I'm a fanboy of this writer. I was blown away by the flashy greatness of the first novel, the quantum-perception nature of a whole society versus other whole societies, and especially the absolute craziness of having an undead general in your brain to help you fight impossible battles in space.

This one continues in that same vein, but it does so with a heavy dose of mystery and sadness and three other viewpoints while all eyes are focused on the resurrected General who's dead set on taking on absolutely everyone.

Continue the campaign? No problem. Do it over your dead bodies? No problem. Do it even when the people who thought they had him on a leash now just want him dead at all costs except for the one that says he's taking care of their enemies for them so why not let him continue on for just a bit longer? No problem.

Of course, the novel becomes a long exercise in truly scary mind-control loyalty games and the introduction of a long-term strategy to accompany the most brilliant tactician anyone has ever seen.

And perhaps the overthrow of the Calendar. Oohhhhh!!! THE HERESY!

Honestly, this one doesn't require as much effort to learn new things as the first one does. It does, however, suffer a little bit with the middle-book-syndrome. I'm also not quite sure I like the direction the end took, but the middle reveals were freaking fantastic.

And best of all... relieved.

There was a bit of difficult tension I had to go through while reading this, and it's all story and character. It had me almost in tears.

Now how in the world am I going to wait for the third book?

I must admit I was shocked and a little disappointed when I got through the first chapter of Raven Stratagem. Not because it was bad, mind you; it was just that my memory of the first chapter of Ninefox Gambit – which unceremoniously barrel kicks you into a huge flaming pit of WHAT-THE-F***-IS-THIS – was still fresh in my mind nearly a year later. Compared to that, the kickoff for Raven Stratagem is just so damned conventional: setup and action clearly explained! Characters and their place in the story established! Wall-to-wall info-dumping! Yoon Ha Lee – WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?!
Before long though, this second dip into the world of the Hexarchate gives the people what they want –the exotic weaponry, the surreal settings and space battles, the impossibly perfect prose. The story follows three characters on a collision course with the dangerously insane and freshly unleashed General Jedao and his plans for upending the “perfect” order of the Hexarchate’s empire. The primer that the first chapter provides turns out to be a wise choice: while Ninefox Gambit was a “storm the castle” narrative that boiled over with madcap action and biting humor, Raven Stratagem is more tightly focused on its main players and the toll that the broadcast of the high calendar exacts on their daily lives. A clear understanding of the concepts and contexts introduced in Ninefox Gambit is essential to any reading of Raven Stratagem.
A sequel – especially one for such an unconventional and original work like Ninefox Gambit – necessarily loses the ability to knock you out of your chair like the first one did. But that doesn’t mean it can’t still catch you off guard. With Raven Stratagem, Yoon Ha Lee continued to hold this reader in sway with his perfect balance of heady ideas and pulpy space opera thrills.

A terrific space opera from an emerging talent who is already in the running in this year’s Hugo Awards for the first entry in this trilogy, [book:Ninefox Gambit|26118426]. I will have to go back and read that, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity of supping on this one through Netgalley. I had to catch up fast on the setting here, a large interstellar system of planets with faster-than-light travel and governed by six factions, the Hexarchate. Each group of the ruling confederate has areas of specialty in the power politics at large, which relates to divergences in their biology, religion, technological innovation, and military among their various star systems. It was a bit hard to keep track of, but the challenge was eased by the book’s focus on characters from two of the six, the Kel and the Shuos, with the former masters of military warfare and the latter of industry, espionage, and cut-throat political maneuvering. The political intrigue and military action, as well as the creative adaptations of technology that Lee pulls off, should satisfy many fans of space opera. A caveat is that a lot of the action is at the leader and general level, missing out on the realism and edge of the grunt soldier’s perspective. Also, the workings of the exotic technology put into play (such as weapons the warp the laws of physics and relative rates of time or ones that “winnow” a massive field of space to bits or atoms perhaps) is usually quite sketchy in terms of justification, leaving it close to magic. Instead of information dumps about technology, we get diversions into the quirky habits and hobbies of the four main characters. More than anything, this book is concerned with the psychology and intersections of a set of four likeable characters with big significance for the fate of humanity is under external threat from aliens and internal threat from within the Hexarchate.

In a thrilling kickoff for the book, we are placed in the middle of a momentous action in the fleet of military spacecraft sent out by the Kel to fight an invading alien fleet from a neighboring part of the galaxy, the Hafn. Aboard the flagship an officer comes aboard and takes charge by virtue of demonstrating himself to be the incarnated personality of infamous General Jedao in the body of female Captain Cheris. Because I didn’t know Cheris as a main character in the first book, I was easily lulled into forgetting the potential contribution of her personality to the hybrid commander. The existing female commander, General Khiruev, knows Jedao’s reputation both as a Shous who proved successful as a Kel general in tough campaigns for the confederacy and as an insane commander who sacrificed a large body of men and murdered officers hundreds of years ago in a dodgy suicidal action to win one war. Her first instinct is to shut Jedao down, but as the Kel are biological programmed somehow to follow all orders of superiors (called “formation instinct”), she must struggle hard to even consider actions of a treasonous nature. The set-up of Jedao in power of an independent fleet and Khiruev always wavering between supporting his genius and intervening to head off some disaster from his madness the latter makes for a fascinating interplay throughout the book and leads to an elegant surprise by the end.

The other two main characters are equally compelling and colorful in their own way and also critical to the future of humanity. One is the Shuos Hexarch, Mikodez, whom I love because of the vigor of his enjoyment of the perks of his decades at the top and of the management of his webs of power, all the while keeping sane by gardening and mentally jousting with his brother and his spymaster. While some of Mikodez sexual proclivities can turn anyone’s stomach, his solid insights on what’s really going on propels our little glimmers of enlightenment. He is less concerned about the invading Hafn than about the portentious disappearance of the Naija Hexarch, who not long ago accomplished immortality by some feat of bioengineering science their faction excels at. If that capability is not threat enough to the balance of power, the Naijan’s mastery of something termed calendrical mathematics and temporal physics that allows them to dominate in the setting of the Hexarchate’s adherence to a mysterious system that, if changed, could affect the special powers of the various Hexarch factions. The fourth character, Brexan, is a former executive officer of Khireuv who gets tapped by Kel Command to assist in the takeover of the fleet from Jedao. He is refreshing because of his balance of no-nonsense pragmatism, sardonic humor, and audacious bravery somewhat in the vein of Bruce Willis in the “Die Hard” movies. Like all good soldiers he knows when to take his pleasures now, for tomorrow we may die. In this case the pleasures being the bed of his assigned partner on the quest, an elegant tiger of a woman of the Anadan faction skilled at diplomacy, seduction, and assassination.

While some books in a series leave you on a cliffhanger, this one was fair at reaching a decent plateau for the wait for the closing volume. The mystery behind the missing Naijan Hexarch and prospects of changes to the calendric physics of the galaxy and power of the other Hexarchs remain as big unresolved plot elements. I still have the first volume to happily backtrack with. Definitely a fun ride.

This book was provided for review by the publisher through the Netgalley program.

After the amazing short stories collection that was Conservation of Shadows and a brilliant first novel in Ninefox Gambit, I was highly anticipating Yoon Ha Lee’s second novel in The Machines of Empire trilogy. And it doesn’t disappoint!

Continuing immediately where Ninefox Gambit left us off, the unded General Shuos Jedao (now in Cheris’ body) arrives to the Swanknot swarm, General Kel Khiruev’s fleet, and subsequently uses his higher rank to assert formation instinct and take control over it.

The swarm was preparing to defend the Fortress of Spinshot Coins against the Hafn invasion, and Jedao promptly leaves only Kel on board of his moths (driving off the personnel belonging to the other factions, who could not be controlled through formation instict) and starts fighting the Hafn himself.

We follow a couple of different major characters throughout the story, and interestingly enough Jedao, the brilliant mass-murdering Immolation Fox, is only viewed through other character’s perspectives until the final chapters. This helps in defining his character and offers an outside perspective on his motivations and goals and character traits. We do find more about him, specifically about the time he spent in Hexarch Kujen’s black cradle. Kel Khiruev in particular is a great counterpoint to Jedao and I found her chapters quite enjoyable.

Another especially interesting character and one of my favourite viewpoints besides Cheris-as-Jedao is Mikodez, the Shuos hexarch. He’s witty, cunning and seemingly lacking any sort of empathy and a pleasure to read about.

All in all, all of the hexarchs are given sufficient page time, enough that we can find out more about their personalities and even motivations.

The action is very well paced, with the plot spectaculary unravelling before our eyes. Factions and calendrical warfare are given much more explanations in this novel, as well as exotic technologies and personal signifiers.
There are still mysteries left to discover about how exactly calendars influence the technologies and special abilities that factions can use, but all in all it’s great to see the world-building and pieces of information come at a regular pace throughout the course of the novel.

The greatest mystery of all are still the Hafn, and though we do discover a lot of new information about them at the same time as our main characters do, it’s still not the complete picture. Still, at the pace the world-building is achieved I have no worries that we’ll learn more about all of these points by the end of the third book in the series.

Even if the twists do not come as particularly surprising, they’re still very exciting to read about and overall the book does a great job of keeping the readers engaged straight up until the end.

I also think it’s great how the author seemlesly includes non-heteronormative genders and sexualities into the story, it’s very refreshing to see in a genre still somewhat dominated by stereotypes.

In conclusion, it was an absolutely awesome read and I am very excited about the next book in the series.

Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee- Sometimes difficult to understand but definitely rewarding is the sequel to Ninefox Gambit. If you haven't read the first book, it might be advisable to start there as the world-building is intense and the background comprehensive. This is a space opera that takes place in a realm where numbers and calendar placements rule all actions and thoughts. Doesn't make sense? It does once you get into it. Yoon Ha Lee kinda drags you into the action without much of a briefing and then dazzles you with complex terminology, but underneath is a good well thought out story with a solid protagonist. In the first book, we meet Kel Cheris, a talented leader, with must bond with an undead master tactician to recapture a fallen fortress. The dead master tactician, Jedao, is of course insane and in the second book, Raven Stratagem, has taken over Kel Cheris, and is leading a charge across the stars to destroy all heresies. But can they trust Jedao, and do they dare. This is real seat of your pants action with head spinning changes and strange twists and turns. I'd compare it to Ann Leckie's Ancillary series, or something as complex as Neal Stephenson, but with more action. Honestly I got lost a few times and had to just push on so it may not be a book for everyone.

Raven Stratagem is the second in Yoon Ha Lee’s “The Machineries of Empire” series. The first, Ninefox Gambit, was a really well done character piece, with some beautifully tense moments in an inventively imagined universe – so I was quite excited to get my hands on the sequel.

The universe will be very familiar to readers of the first book in the sequence. An interstellar polity rules what appears to be a fairly large segment of humanity. Government is shared across seven factions, including the militarised Kel and the terminally sneaky Shuos. Each of the groups fulfils a role within their society, having been engineered, to one extent or another, to fill their niche. The Shuos, for example, have a tendency to think several moves ahead, and indeed to play several games at once – whilst also having a tendency to promotion-by-assasination. The Kel, by contrast, are utterly loyal to their commanding officer, whoever that might be – and governed by a hive-mind of senior generals. This is a government which systematically oppresses its people; in fact, the existence of the polity depends upon it. This is a universe which holds exotic technologies, which seemingly defy the laws of physics – ghost terrain, cast around astral fortresses, or faster-than-light drives. Quite what some of these esoteric technologies do is difficult to say – indeed may be impossibe to describe within our vernacular. But this is a calendrical government – the technologies work because the populace keeps to a particular calendar, and there are regular rituals and observances embedded in that calendar to make sure the exotic tech keeps working. Unfortunately, these tend to involve the torture, murder or outright genocide of citizens within the polity. This is an empire which thrives on misery – and would be unable to exist without it.

This polity struggles, not only internally, but with external foes as well. There’s other coalitions out there which make one with institutionalised calendrical torture look positively benign. If we don’t empathise with the society that Lee shows us, we can certainly see the pressures that shape it, in the unknown and unknowable craft which can sweep in from borders and devour worlds. This is a society on a war footing, and on a knife edge.

Into this whirling maelstrom steps Shuos Jedao. He featured heavily in the first book, and is back again as one of the protagonists for the sequel. Jedao is saturnine, charming, and obviously ferociously intelligent. He is also rather dead. Fortunately, as a result of events in the last book, he has a body to roam around in – or perhaps less fortunately, depending on how you look at it. The Shuos are typically several moves ahead of everyone else, with their penchant for intrigue and politicking. Jedao is talented, even for a Shuos, and has something of a military mind as well. Jedao scintillates on the page, and even if you don’t know what he’s doing, or exactly why, the force of personality is likely to keep you turning pages. Jedao is something of an inscrutable snake for those around him – talented, amiable, perhaps the best hope for defeating an incursion from another government – but also dangerous, irreverent, and known for a psychotic break which ended with everyone around him dead. Where all of these parts meet is a complex character, occluded from both the reader and the external audience. Perhaps even Jedao doesn’t know who he is. But the hints we get, the visible edges in the narrative, make for a fascinating read.

Jedao is the centrepiece of the narrative, I think – but ably backed by others. There’s Genera; Khiruev, for example. A Kel, she is fiercely loyal to her commanding officer – indeed, is genetically incapable of being otherwise. She’s also clearly an intelligent woman, able to read signs and portents, to decide what she wants from the situations in which she finds herself – and decide fi she’s willing to pay the price. Khiruev, with her own fierce sense of ethics and fiery cleverness, is an excellent foil to Jedao; more brusque, but feeling at least as real.

There’s others here as well – the leaders of the Empire make an appearance, as do some entities from outside of the Empire. There’s enforcers of doctrine, and Kel deciding where to strike, and where to abandon. There’s a sense here of an Empire, of a thriving, bustling society, even where I is caught up in atrocities. The people within it are similar – constrained by their systems, but recognisable as human, even beneath their layers of cultural and social change. This is an imaginative piece, and one where every facet has been polished beautifully to keep the reader engaged.

The plot – well, no spoilers, as ever. But lets say that whatever Jedao is planning it’s likely to be big. There’s grand space battles here, wrapped in the obfuscated language of the calendar, the exotic weaponry made even more so with its less than explicit uses. But the struggle is no less affecting for that. There’s political manoeuvring at the heart of the Empire, and some genuinely crackling dialogue. There’s personal instants, characters bearing their souls in genuinely moving moments. With the Empire on a knife edge, Jedao is willing to give it a shove, one way or the other – and it makes for an absolutely cracking read.

If you’ve not read the first in the series, I’d suggest going back and starting there. If you’ve been waiting on this sequel though – it’s definitely one to pick up.

The long-dead General Jedao, ostensibly a member of the Kel, warrior caste, but also a Shuos assassin, has now entirely taken over the body of the gifted, but unconventional Captain Kel Cheris.
He has also gained control of General Kel Khiruev’s fleet and appears to want to defend the ruling hexarchate. Will one man be able to save their civilization against the heretics, or is Jedao, the mass murderer, pursuing is own apocalyptic agenda?
How do you encapsulate the second novel of a series that has once again blown you away, but made you work like hell to keep up, because you get the feeling it’s been written by someone with an IQ you can only dream of?
Raven Stratagem is the second book in the Machineries of Empire trilogy and is as dark as Ninefox Gambit. This new volume comes packed to the gunnels with characters of such devious complexity, they are themselves intricate plots within the convoluted weave of the main story arc, as well as waypoints where you want to stop and soak up every nuance of their lives.
There are some terrific personalities allowed to come to the fore now Kel Charis has given herself over to Jedao and we can no longer experience the mesmerising dialogue between the two of them. But this dance of razor-sharp minds continues in the interplay of wits between Jedao and General Khiruev, the commander of the Hierarchy of Feasts.
There is also Hexarch Shuos Mikodez, the astute politician, sitting like a spider at the centre of his extensive web. Yoon Ha Lee also loads the narrative with humour, albeit dark and dry, through the medium of Colonel Brezan’s (initially Khiruev’s right-hand man) observations, particularly when his life is in peril. Such detail to character building neither slows the plot because of the balance of exposition through dialogue (revealing the psyche, and actions), nor distracts from it because each character dovetails into the overall arc. To lose one of them would be to remove a piece of the puzzle.
The world of the hexarchate is a bleak one, although one described by making the assumption that the reader will pick it all up as they go along, which in my view only added to the sense of entering a galactic chess game. But this way of world building manages to create terrific atmosphere through dialogue and concise observations of the third person, omniscient narrator. For example, the description of one of Brezan's parents, "his youngest father was a children's illustrator with a chronic inability to look at art work without vivisecting it", pretty much sums up the state of mind of the people of this unforgiving world, where everyone and everything is a means to an end.
There is the ideal blend of politics and space battles in this scifi novel, which leaves you feeling you need to re-read everything that has gone before in Ninefox Gambit and relate it to what is happening in Raven Stratagem, then marvel at how the seemingly disparate bits all fall into place.
I suspect this will become the type of cult series which will be analysed for years to come in terms of the military and political tactics which run through the books like arteries.
Although I was lucky enough to get a e-book ARC of Ninefox Gambit, I still rushed to my local bookstore the minute it came out to grab a hardcopy for my “you can only have this book if you rip it from my dead fingers” collection. I will certainly be doing the same for Raven Stratagem.
The downside is waiting a whole year for the final instalment of the trilogy.

It feels like all I've done since Ninefox Gambit came out is try and convince people to read it, and now I have another weapon to use in my battle against those who resist my will. Read Ninefox Gambit because then you get to read the sequel. And trust me, you want to read the sequel.

In what has already been a year of fantastic books for me Raven Stratagem is the best one yet. It takes everything I loved about Ninefox Gambit and just makes it even better. It also does what the very best sequels do; it makes me want to reread Ninefox Gambit with all the new information I've learned in mind.

The Raven Stratagem picks up just a short while after Ninefox Gambit leaves off, and by the end of the first chapter Jedao has captured for himself an entire swarm. Because, like, of course he has. What he plans to do with them, is not so clear. Unlike Ninefox Gambit, which stuck pretty close to Cheris/Jedao, Raven Stratagem follows three other main characters; two senior ranking Kel and, awesomely, the leader of the Shuos. I say awesomely because Mikodez, big boss Shuos dude, is just the best character ever and in a weird way probably the most likeable character in these books so far. Which is just hilarious considering who he is and the faction he's head of.

The three main pov characters are each interesting in their own ways (obviously Mikodez is the most interesting but there can only be one Mikodez) and it also meant that the reader was kept in the dark as to what Jedao's motivations were, and, more pressingly at least for me, how much if any of Cheris had survived the previous book. The book kept me guessing about this and I loved it.

The plot was fantastic and there were some really epic and awesome space battles, if space battles are your thing, and of course they are because, hello, space battles. Overall things weren't as bewildering as in Ninefox Gambit, which took real joy in confusing the reader. Part of this is probably because I was a bit more familiar with the universe, but the author also seemed a bit more willing to actually explain somethings. Very grudgingly, true, but I'll take it. I feel like I actually kind of understand calandrical warfare now, just so long as no one asks me to explain it.

I also enjoyed the book's approach to gender, which as opposed to say Anne Leckie's much discussed pronoun trickery in the Ancillery books which ultimately was little more than plot dressing, feels much more radical in Raven Stratagem. And it's sad that I can describe it like that, as radical, when really it boils down to, oh that's your gender? Cool. I'm not sure of your gender so I won't assume until I'm sure, ok? Cool. I see you prefer to be referred to as they and not a specific gender, so, cool. It's all cool. The connect/disconnect because who we are on the inside verses what we are on the outside wasn't the biggest part of this book, but it was something that really made me think.

Raven Stratagem, when it wasn't making me think about stuff, also made me snicker a lot and then also decided to break my heart. All the best books break your heart just a little, and Raven Stratagem definitely didn't do a half arsed job of it. So many tears from me, I'm surprised I didn't fry my kindle.

So yes. Thrilling, thought provoking, wickedly funny and absolutely heartbreaking. That's Raven Stratagem, it's all those things, often at the same time. If you haven't read it yet I envy you the ride you have in store.