MINDBLOWING!

I’d read this back when it was released, purchasing the book, and have come back to it recently.

This was much better than book two in the Machinery of Empires trilogy. I’ve not read another science fiction series as imaginative as this in a long while. Taking a ‘show - don’t tell’ approach to details, Yoon Ha Lee’s story is not one to rush through- it’s best to take your time and savor the details.

My favorite aspect of this volume is the background of the villainous Kujen. Typically, learning about the childhood of a character like Kujen does not work for me, as the less you know about your monsters, the more effective they are. That was not the case in this story, as the details given only adds to this character and this world Lee has wonderfully created.

Ultimately, these are characters I’m going to miss. Fortunately, they’re there to return to at any point.

Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee concludes the Machineries of Empire trilogy in ways both unexpected and satisfactory. I will avoid spoiling the plot!

I got an early copy of this book from Netgalley, which is why I can review it before it’s officially published. All opinions are my own, though.

It’s hard not to have mixed feelings about what is almost certainly the last time I’ll see characters I’ve gotten tremendously attached to, at least in full-length novel format. It’s especially hard when the ending is on the bitter side of bittersweet on the personal level, even if not on the societal one. That aside, Revenant Gun delivers in the same style as Ninefox Gambit and Raven Strategem, providing a conclusion that fits the tone of the rest of the series while still pushing in different directions. We still don’t get to look directly in Jedao’s head, but Revenant Gun gets us as close as we can be to the inner thoughts of Jedao and Kujen. Their love-hate, same-but-different relationship is really at the heart of Revenant Gun in the same way Cheris-Jedao and Jedao-Khiruev were for the previous two. The dynamic between them provides the emotional high points on the novel, while the backdrop of Kujen fighting to retake the hexarchate offers the opportunity for more space battles, intrigue, and plot twists. Speaking of plot twists…they’ve been a defining feature of this series, though they are definitely more well-foreshadowed than you might realize the first time through. I’ve been happy to see that I can be surprised over and over without the author having to resort to deus ex machina, and despite some of the twistiest plot twists yet, Revenant Gun feels consistent with the rest of the world it exists in. It’s hard to say goodbye to Cheris, Jedao, Mikodez (maybe not to Kujen as a person, but probably as a character), but this is the best goodbye they could have asked for.

Thanks NetGalley for this ARC, in exchange for an honest review. This series is an absolute must for true sci-fi fans. It’s an insanely wild ride, with an almost overwhelming amount of twists and turns. I enjoyed this so much, I went back and read the first two and Dragon Pearl. Yoon Ha Lee is definitely a new favorite of mine, and the diversity of the characters, um yes please! It’s the perfect series, and after this I still want more!

I don't know how to review this book! The first thing to say is that it's a beautiful conclusion to some of the character arcs and questions, while leaving a big wide universe full of questions, and a history full of things to unpick as well. I'm sure I won't understand everything until I read it again, and I could probably benefit from reading it again right away. So many things answered, so many new questions... gah!

It's hard to give a precis of this book since it's so strongly following the first two, so I won't try. I definitely don't recommend it as any kind of starting point: I think that would be a miserable idea, and unnecessarily annoying to anyone who could just pick up Ninefox Gambit and start there. It continues to make me feel in ways I don't expect, to surprise me in how things work out while making them feel perfectly in tune, and it continues to have dozens of small moments that delight me -- witness my expression when it mentions that Mikodez crochets, for instance.

It's also delightfully queer, both in gender roles and in sexual roles, and it's a delight that it's so brazen about that. There are no apologies.

I enjoyed it greatly, and if it isn't my vote for Best Novel in the Hugos I'll be surprised; I will also give this my vote for Best Series. It's not that it has no flaws, but if I tried to name them I couldn't right now; I enjoyed it fully, and am glad I read it.

An excellent conclusion to a thoroughly gripping trilogy. Unique and fascinating worldbuilding, characters you can't help but root for, and a delightfully readable energy.

suffice it to say this is a fittingly mind-blowing conclusion to an epically mind-blowing trilogy. Calendrical warfare is still both a brilliant concept and a difficult one for me to hold in my mind without spontaneously self-combusting, but I keep hoping that it will catch on as a new science fantasy concept.

Something to keep in mind while reading this book: It includes gadzooks of triggers. It's of a piece with the rest of the series, meaning that there's a lot of people who have received personality modifications making them prone to self-destructive or sociopathic tendencies, depending. This is a major plot point of the book, and it leads to a shit-ton of "collateral damage" casualties, which ... the main characters are sensitive to the human cost, and it's a distinguishing mark between the main point of view characters and the various villains of the piece that they are sensitive in this way, but as a reader I'm more or less over mass casualties even when they make sense in a plot and character development context. There is one specific relationship arc which renders this broad-brush-stroke violence intimate and personal, with incredible efficacy, but as it involves the primary mlm romance in the book, it also feels as though it conforms to the Bury Your Gays™ trope. Yoon Ha Lee's decisions always feel purposeful and well-reasoned, but this is another case where I disengaged.

That said, I really appreciated that this installment of the series saw the introduction of two servitors as part of the main cast of characters. Their self-emancipation is something that has been often hinted at in the previous two books, without much follow-through, but here Hemiola especially comes into its own. Aside: Hemiola, in loving human telenovelas, reminds me greatly of Martha Wells' Murderbot, although Hemiola's story is always woven into a greater tapestry of points of view and stories, whereas Murderbot stands alone. There's a lot to like about "Revenant Gun," although the density of certain conversations about the series' central novum (the calendrical warfare) makes it the kind of slow going that may indeed make it a perfect candidate for re-reads. There will always be more to catch and discover in future visits.

Yoon Ha Lee is masterful. The final installment in this series was engaging and at times very unexpected. This was pretty stellar. I eagerly await their next novel.

What a wonderful finale to a really incredibly diverse and interesting Space Opera. I had never read a Space Opera before I picked up Ninefox Gambit and at first, I wasn't sure. However, as I perused, the books just got better and better. The whole series deserves a re-read now that I understand what is going on in Lee's world, and have fallen in love with Jedao and his crazy ways. His character is so heartbreakingly tragic and he just deserves someone to love and be loved.

Revenant Gun takes place nine years after Raven Stratagem where the world is trying to keep its new regime away from the ones who want the old. However, Kujan is still alive and has resurrected a 17-year-old Jedao who I loved. His chapters were by far my favourite. I adore how queer these books are and made me actually want to read a Space Opera which wouldn't normally be my book of choice. Yet, Lee's writing moves fast and is so easily captivating that I could put these books down. Thank goodness I found them.

Overall I think that Revenant Gun is by far my favourite out of these books in this series as Lee has done well to create a splendid end to this diverse space opera.

Yoon Ha Lee finishes off his Machineries of Empire trilogy in triumphant style with Revenant Gun (review copy from Rebellion Publishing). Picking up shortly after the events of Raven Strategem, the novel plays out the endgame of Kel Cheris (carrying the memories and skills of maverick outcast General Shuos Jedao) and her rebellion against the Hexarchate as she uncovers the secrets at the heart of the Hexarchate. But Nirai Kujen has a plan up his sleeve - reviving another instance of Shuos Jedao in a clone body to take on Kel Cheris. Except this Shuos Jedao has the memories of only 17 years - and no recollection of the atrocities he committed in later life.

For those of you jumping onto this trilogy for the first time, it's a brilliant piece of space opera, full of plotting, space battles and exotic weapons. The Hexarchate is a galaxy-spanning Empire ruled by six houses, each built around a set of skills or professions, such as spying, mathematics and technology, diplomacy and the military. The Hexarchate provides stability and prosperity for its citizens, but the exotic technologies that underpin society depend on a particular set of exotic physics (known as the 'high calendar') that are maintained by strict observance of ritual, including the ritualised torture and murder of Hexarchate citizens. For the Hexarchate, this is a price worth paying to avoid the poverty and instability of the past.

It is this system that Kel Cheris is seeking to overthrow. It is responsible for the obliteration of her planetary culture as the expanding Hexarchate assimilated her home and obscured its customs and language. A soldier with a strong talent for the mathematics that the Hexarchate is founded upon - as well as being possessed by the greatest general of all time - Cheris has the skills, creativity and vision to imagine an alternative future and put it in place. She is consistently underestimated by the Hexarchate, yet exploits their prejudices and weaknesses, particularly the way that an entire sub-culture of robot servitors with its own priorities lives among and supports the human Hexarchate.

Lee is a transgender man, and the whole trilogy is notable for its strong inclusion of transgender, agender, non-binary and genderfluid characters. The dysphoria Shuos Jedao and Kel Cheris feel from sharing a body must come from Lee's own experience.

But most of all this is an extremely cleverly plotted trilogy of books stuffed full of ideas. Fresh, exciting and an utter joy to read.

Goodreads rating: 5*

This is the third and last volume of the trilogy, “Machineries of Empire,” that began with Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem. I absolutely loved the first two books with the concept of a spacefaring empire based on a mathematically derived calendar. It tickled my geeky self that to see mathematicians highly valued in a society. It struck me as weird and wonderful that a revolution could happen through the means of instituting a new calendar. In this universe exotic effects make space flight and many other things — including immortality — possible, and these effects are in turn the result of the way human beings conceptualize time. (Of course everyone is not on the same page about which calendar is the correct one.) I loved the way this creative intersection of mathematics and physics and culture interacted with the tendency of humans to form armies on opposing sides. I was intrigued, if sometimes a bit appalled, by the Immolation Fox, Shuos Jedao, a brilliant general who committed unspeakable atrocities many hundreds of years ago and whose physical remains are incarcerated in something called a black cradle but whose mind now occupies the body of a fairly ordinary woman in the soldier caste.

“Which one are you?” it asked Jedao-Cheris-whoever.
“Whoever I need to be,” Jedao-Cheris-whoever said. Their eyes were sad. “I used to be one person. I was a Kel. Now I have fragments of a dead man in my head.”

Revenant Gun begins with Jedao awakening in a body much older than his self-perceived age and quite ignorant of recent history, as well as all the things that he supposedly knows about military strategy. To my disappointment I found that the magic had gone out of the story arc. The gimmick of space flight by via calendrical manipulation had lost its luster, and the characters and their interactions seemed artificial and forced. There is one extremely nifty revelation about halfway through the book, which I won't say reveal because it’s a major spoiler. Suffice it to say that even though I found this on a par with the wacky and delightful inventiveness of the world-building in the first two books, it was not enough to sustain my interest through this climactic volume. I really wanted to see the revelation played out in all its consequences and implications, and was sadly disappointed.

Alas, long sections of the book were tedious to the point of being boring, and it felt like slogging through far too many pages to get to an unsatisfying ending. It's hard to put my finger on exactly why I felt this. Certainly there are interesting characters, particularly the servitors, mechanical servants who have their own culture. I think the world-building was imaginative enough to carry a single stand-alone volume, but when stretched out to a trilogy it could not sustain the length. Lee is a highly competent writer whose prose ranges from proficient to soaring. I know as a writer myself how easy it is to become so enchanted with a world of my own devising that I want to spend many, many pages exploring it. The result is a static travelogue, unless there are compelling characters and ever-rising dramatic tension. I especially enjoy writing and reading stories in which inner conflict parallels external struggle, and where the protagonist must grow and change in order to overcome both. It may have been the author’s deliberate portrayal of ambivalence, which is in general a good thing because then the reader is free to make up his own mind about moral issues, but it seems to me that the interpersonal and galactic-level conflicts belonged in different stories. I didn’t experience any resonance between the layers of conflict. Not only that, there was a loss of dramatic shape, of escalating tension and heightened stakes. At least, I think that's what's what was going on that made it so easy for me to put put the book down even during the climactic scenes.

I will freely admit that my reaction to this third volume is highly personal and that another reader might find this to be a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Certainly, Lee’s work is much above a great deal of what is being published today, and I very much want to support and encourage the kind of world- and culture-building involved in these three books. Fortunately, the first two volumes can be read on their own, although I would not advise that for this final volume. If you’ve enjoyed the earlier ones, go for it.

The usual disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book, but no one bribed me to say anything about it.

A special thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy of this book. This did not affect my opinion in any way.

This is an odd review to write in that I’ve read all three books in the trilogy but only reviewed the first one. Oh well. Lots of spoilers here because it’s the final book in a series.

Ninefox Gambit is one of my favourite books ever (review here). Let’s just get that out of the way. It blew me away from the first page. It continues to stun me every time I reread it. It’s a heart wrenching book of military space opera that doesn’t take your hand, instead it drops you into the middle of a war and says ‘deal with it’.

Raven Stratagem is also a fantastic read although it suffers a little bit from second book syndrom. Jedao and Cheris were the characters that really made me fall in love with the world of Machineries of Empire and it was sad to only read about them from the perspectives of other characters.

In Revanent Gun, Yoon Ha Lee finally gives us a book from Jedao’s perspective.We pick up the story a number of years after the destruction of the Hexarchate. There’s a new fledgling government formed by Brezan that is politically challenged by remnants of Kel command. Cheris has dissapeared.

Hexarch Nirai Kujen is still at large and has attempted to bring Jedao back under his command. Only now Jedao is an adult man who thinks he’s a 17-year old cadet made from the left-over memories that Cheris didn’t swallow. So it’s quite a surprise to learn he’s a mass murderer and a brilliant general who lived hundreds of years ago.

Without spoiling any more major plot points, Revenant Gun takes you through an emotional ringer. Jedao was always my favourite. Heck, part of the reason I love Cheris so much is her relationship with Jedao and how she eventually becomes him. One of Yoon Ha Lee’s major strengths as a writer is characterization and this book just makes me feel even more for the characters, their pasts and choices. Yes, the technology and military culture is interesting, but I know from experience that I dislike and won’t read books that are only about the tech rather than the people who use it.

As a final book in a trilogy, Revenant Gun is bittersweet in the way that endings often are. There are always threads left open when any series ends but the main questions are answered in a way that left me happy. This is military sci-fi though, where a good ending is not necessarily a happy ending. I cried at the end and immediately wanted to start the series over. That is one of the best ways for me to tell how good an author is beyond the basics of narrative, prose and characterization, if I can cry with the need to not leave the series.

Yoon Ha Lee has now been cemented as one of my favourite authors and I will forever buy any new books he writes. I highly recommend Revenant Gun as a fantastic conclusion to The Machineries of Empire series.

I loved this book so much I want to eat it so it never leaves me.

Yes, I said this to the publisher and they're not weirded out at all. I hope.

A great finish to a solid trilogy, that kept getting better. A new central character is added, which leads to a confrontation, which couldn't happen in most other SF universes. It was unexpected, but logical in the authors' world.
Reading first two books is definitely a must - otherwise you will be lost here.

The trilogy form is not sacrosanct.

If I were Mr. Lee's editor, I would have pushed for a 4th book. There is so much material in this final book that it seems too fast-paced, too crammed full. A fourth book would have allowed the story time to breathe.

That being said, "Revenant Gun" was nominated for a Hugo, so he certainly did a great job.

I received a review copy of "Revenant Gun" by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris) through NetGalley.com.

This book was very much like the first book in this series; interesting and with a well constructed world, but for some reason not really for me.

The conclusion to a truly brilliant series only slightly disappoints. Before starting this series, I was not a fan of high-concept science fiction - Yoon Ha Lee changed that in the first two chapters, with his superb character development, a smooth entrée into his elaborate, flawlessly constructed world. My single complaint is that I expected a deeper reckoning between two of the main characters at the conclusion, and I was disappointed not to find it. But this is the kind of book that has hidden layers of richness, which emerge with each re-reading.

A great conclusion to a great series. I definitely look forward to reading more by Yoon Ha Lee in the future.

Als dritter und letzter Teil einer Serie, von der ich nicht genau wusste, ob ich sie tatsächlich verstanden habe, musste das Buch ein paar einfache Erwartungen erfüllen. Es musste im Weltraum stattfinden, weiterhin so vielfältige und tolle Charaktere beherbergen und ebenso umsichtig sein wie die vorherigen. Ich kann ohne Vorbehalt bestätigen, dass alle drei Punkte erfolgreich abgehakt wurden.

Worum geht es? Jedao wacht in einem neuen Körper auf, er verspürt immense Zuneigung und Treue zu Kujen, einem Tyrann, der den ehemaligen meisterhaften General Jedao für seine finsteren Zwecke nutzt. Dann ist da Cheris, auf der Jagd nach den Beiden. Und Brezan, der sich in seiner neuen Rolle als Herrscher über eine blutjunge Gesellschaft zurechtfinden muss. Alle haben sie in den vorangegangenen Büchern miteinander zu tun gehabt. Kujen ist als Bösewicht etabliert, Jedao hat mal im Kopf von Cheris gewohnt und tut es zum Teil immer noch. Nur gibt es jetzt zwei davon. Am Anfang war ich etwas verwirrt.

Keines der drei Bücher von Yoon Ha Lee ist einfach. Zum Glück passt das Zitat von dort oben hier. Ich weiß vielleicht nicht genau wer oder was hier gerade von statten geht, aber ich weiß es ist wichtig. Und ich habe das Vokabular, um mich in dieser Welt zu bewegen. Yoon Ha Lee hat ein faszinierende und sonderbare Welt voller Tiefe geschaffen. Hier gibt es Servitoren, also "Hilfsroboter", die unbemerkt von den meisten Menschen ihre eigenen Gesetze und Ziele haben. Raumschiffe haben variables Design, das heißt ihre Gänge sind ein wenig wie die von Hogwarts, wer an den richtigen Ort denkt, kommt sofort dort an. Brezan beschwert sich am Anfang der Geschichte über den Druck den sein Binder auslöst. Menschen sind in, ohne es besser übersetzen oder beschreiben zu können, "Womenform", "Menform" oder dazwischen. Personen haben mehrere Parter*innen. Hier ist so viel zu bewundern, zu entdecken. Und es kommt so anstrengungslos, so locker herüber.

_Revenant Gun_ dreht sich viel um Persönlichkeit. Wer darf eine eigene haben? Wie viel eigene Agenda ist möglich und erlaubt, wenn alle ein festes Bild von dir haben, du dieses aber nicht kennst? Es geht um Abhängigkeit, um Manipulation, um Altlasten und um einen Versuch es besser zu machen. Lee geht diese Themen mit angemessenem Respekt an und schafft es Sympathien auf- und abebben zu lassen. Er dreht Erwartungen um und landet auch das Ende mit Leichtigkeit.

Ich möchte _Revenant Gun_, und die vorangegangenen _Ninefox Gambit_ und _Raven Strategem_ stark empfehlen. Es ist harte Sci-Fi, absurd wirkende Konzepte und Ideen reihen sich so aneinander, dass Andy Weir (_The Martian, Artemis_) Kopfschmerzen bekommen würde. Dennoch passt alles wundervoll zusammen, wie ein Puzzle mit 150 Teilen. Wer sich darauf einlassen kann, wen Formationen, Mathematik und eine grobe Dosis Gewalt nicht abschrecken, wird mit einer Reihe von abgefahrenen, sehr guten und tiefgründigen Büchern belohnt.

_Ich habe meine physische Kopie des Buches selbst gekauft und ein digitales Leseexemplar via NetGalley erhalten._

If you have been following me for any length of time, you know about my love for the Machineries of Empire trilogy. I have been reading (and re-reading!) and absolutely loving each installment, so, of course, I was excited for Revenant Gun. It was, without a doubt, my most anticipated release this year.

However, with this amount of expectations, it’s impossible not be slightly afraid that the ending might not be on par with them. However, I shouldn’t have worried, Revenant Gun was a great conclusion!

The book opens up almost a decade after the events of Raven Stratagem, Cheris is missing and General Brezan is now the Head of the Protectorate and tries his best to protect the reforms put in place during the events of the second book. What he doesn’t know is that, while Nirai Kujen was away, he was busy building a new Jedao from scratch to help him maintain the old system. This new version of Jedao is missing almost 400 years of memories and has to figure out everything including why everyone is so afraid of him and what’s his role in this new conflict opposing the old Hexarchate and the new Protectorate.

The structure of the book is quite different from the other books as we get more POVs and more timelines. We follow events from hundreds of years ago, but we also follow events that took place just after Raven Stratagem and and the current situation of the Hexarchate. I am not usually the biggest fan of multi-POVs books because it can be a bit confusing but, in Revenant, it was a necesseray tool to follow all the events happening in the Hexarchate. My favorite new perspective definitely was Hemiola, a servitor (a robot-AI) who had a fondness for dramas and very much reminded me of Murderbot from Martha Wells’ series! I also enjoyed finally meeting High General Inesser since this character was mentionned repeatedly in the first two books and she didn’t disappoint, she is definitely interesting and she brings a lot to the book.

This installment was action-packed but we also learn a lot more about central characters: Jedao is again at the heart of this story since we follow two versions of him: Jedeao as a part of Cheris and the Kujen-reconstructed younger version of him that has to learn everything that he did previously and who has to deal with the consequences of an act he didn’t even remember doing. Kujen also plays a bigger role in Revenant, I always found his character fascinating and, in this book, we learn a lot more about him, his motivations and his odd relationship with Jedao. We even have the opportunity to read a a couple of diaries entries he wrote when he was younger and see who he was before detaching himself completely from humanity.

Most of the characters in this world are morally gray and that’s especially the case of Jedao since, even with the best intentions in the world, has made an habit of killing millions of people to prove his point. However, even with all his flaws, I couldn’t help but to root for him during the entire trilogy! Jedeao is extreme case of very flawed character but all the characters that we encounter in those books are flawed, and that makes them even more relatable.

The themes explored in the first two books are still present in Revenant such as the discussion on gender identity. Since Cheris has most of Jedao memories and mannerisms, most people identify her as Jedao in a woman’s body when in reality, she is much more than just a vessel for Jedao since she has her own memories and motivations. This book also features sentient robots and other sentient creatures that I won’t reveal here (it’s way more surprising to discover it by yourself!) and it was fun to see how almost every single human in the system is oblivious of the other form of consciousness living in their world. As for the servitors, they themselves are happy to hide that fact to be left alone by the Hexarchate!



The ending was pretty bittersweet but that was to be expected after everything that happened during the trilogy. An happy ending wouldn’t have been possible after all those deaths and conflicts. When your reality is based on propaganda and tortures, the fight to built something better where choice and freedom is possible isn’t going to be an easy one. I think this series is going to be a classic, it is clever, with complex characters and all of that set in a mindblowing world. I’m amazed with by Yoon Ha Lee worldbuilding, he managed to built a world so ruthless, so epic and so alien from our own and yet, so human.

Highly, highly recommended.