I’ve been a fan of Ha Lee’s Machineries of Empire novels for several years. I think they’re a very apt SF series for the decade we are in; as on top of glorious space battles and technology they have also been an intriguing look at the concepts of tyranny and rebellion. In this concluding volume we continue the strong tradition of both novels and also have a closer look at two of the more mysterious characters’ motivations.

Jedao has been a running theme through the series. In the first instalment Ninefox Gambit we see him as a Hannibal Lector like centuries old ghost fitted into the consciousness of young Kel Charis where his tactical know-how and her sense of mission resulted in the unexpected start of a revolution guiding his host onwards for reasons that were yet to be fully explained. Following a botched assassination by the Hexarchate Cheris finds herself free of the Kel control but with the memories and tactical brilliance of Jedao which allows her to create a revolutionary act that splits the empire across and kills most of their leaders. This book asks the question what comes after a revolution and why do certain people want to become a dictator.

The reader will be surprised to find themselves in the mind of Jedao but not as we’ve seen him. Neither centuries old brimming with bile or an impersonation but actually the young student who will one day become the notorious destroyer of squadrons. He’s more relaxed and humorous than any version encountered to date but surprised to find himself in the body of a much older version of himself and about o command a squadron when he’s never been in a ship before. Only the last remaining Hexarch Kujen appears to know what is going on and has fitted Jedao with an amazingly powerful ship that could destroy fleets and worlds.

Across the gameboard on the other side is re mains of two factions the Compact; the main group that came out of Kel Charis’ rebellion that wants to promote democracy and against the Hexarch’s desire for Remembrances (where Heretics are tortured to death) and the Protectorate the last remnant of the Hexarchate wanting to try and preserve the old ways…to a point under the rule of a powerful general. Realising that Kujen is alive and is clever enough to take both sides down and fully restore the old order an uneasy truce us created and preparation for a final battle begins.

This really is the space opera the previous entries to the series have been building towards. The reader moves across planets and ships over the years since Cheris’ act of rebellion and watch how the varying sides vie for power. In keeping with the series so far; the technology that is used is rarely specifically defined but instead these ‘exotic technologies’ play with dimensions, minds and planets. Jedao’s ship has an immense doomsday weapon that can wreck either a fleet or a planet. But this time there is a larger focus than before on the AI that sits behind the power. The basis of the Moths (the various types of starships used by all parties) and servitors (the small robots who perform myriad tasks to keep the world going). There is a theme that they have reached their own level of consciousness from becoming addicted to soap operas to aiding Cheris in her rebellion. But how much longer can such a force be subservient to humanity?

For me the highlight of the series is that it isn’t primarily focused on the big battles (which again are when they arrive immense, tactical and portray the horror of battle) but how people react to power. Four primary characters are used to explore this; Brezan the de facto leader of the Compact didn’t seek power but his unique ability not to fall in line within Kel leaderships marks him as independent but now he has to start considering the consequences of his own decisions and the need for the ‘greater good’ may lead to casualties. Cheris from the first novel shows how far she has come to continue her determined battle to save her own people using all the ruthlessness and guile that Jedao’s memories taught her. A worrying thought that in all revolutions the heroic leaders may eventually harden their principles to save the world.

This is neatly mirrored in the scenes focusing on Jedao and Kujen. Kujen is explored through the people who have encountered him over the centuries and the question is asked how could a man who wanted to save the starving become the tactical monster who thrives on the Remembrances? Jedao here being the young man without the baggage of the having to learn to live and comply is given an opportunity to try and reconcile these two men he was aware of as well as his own growing horror of the monster he is accused of being of. That discussion on choices and that they can take you down paths that while may achieve your original objective but at the cost of your humanity I think has been a running theme in the series and this time the focus on the four and arguably the two antagonists within the tale asks some unsettling questions. How can empires that feed all the poor, are socially liberal, highly advanced willingly fall into dictatorship?

There are few final answers, but this is a series I have been thinking about where it was going and what it had to say about our times for several years. Ha-Lee deserves to be recognised as creating some of the most interesting science fiction out there and I’m intrigued to read future stories and if this universe will ever be returned to.

‪Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2018/7/10/revenant-gun-by-yoon-ha-lee‬

I am reading several books at the moment and finding that I am spending less and less time reading. Not for the lack of ambition or for the lack of reading but for the lack of time (yes, I have developed other more immediate responsibilities since April) but I do wish I could have more time to read.

Anyhow for some strange reason Yoon Ha Lee's Revenant Gun always found itself at the top of the feel-like-reading-this-now stack. I frankly find the universe and the characters quite interesting to read about. From servitors right up to Brezan and his dysfunctional family to the millennia's old incarnation of a protagonist.

(view spoiler)

I think what got to me the most were the little details and idiosyncrasies of each character. Knitting, tv-dramas, candies, card playing, kittens! It reminded me of what I loved during that time I used to peruse fanfic and the like - having my characters do ordinary things and having ordinary thoughts and considerations. Quite helped in "humanising" them (if that is the correct term).

Anyhow - I will probably look into her two short story collections somewhere down the line.

Source: Netgalley eArc, GooglePlay
Finished: 6jul2018

You know those series that make you kind of reluctant to read the final book because you don't quite trust the author not to break your heart into a million pieces? This was one of those ones. I've had the ARC of this for a good 4 months, and it's only now, a full three weeks after its release, that I've finished it. And you know what? Yoon Ha Lee broke my heart into a million pieces.

Revenant Gun picks the story up around 9 years after the end of Raven Strategem. The high calendar has been destabilised by Cheris, who has subsequently gone missing, leaving Brezan to assume the mantle in her stead, opposed by self-proclaimed Protector-General Inesser. More sinisterly, Nirai Kujen, the only hexarch besides Mikodez to avoid the assassination, is eager to restore the high calendar, for reasons known only to himself.

To be perfectly honest, reading the blurb for the first time had me incredibly confused. Thankfully, that clears up within the first few chapters. Kujen has resurrected Shuos Jedao, based on the remaining memories he has stored away, from Jedao before he joined the Shuos Academy. This kind of brings me to my first point (or not point as such, but first comment). Kujen and Jedao's relationship is definitely unhealthy and just reading the chapters they shared made me pretty uncomfortable. There's a really unhealthy power dynamic in there - Kujen can basically control Jedao because he can return him to the black cradle and shut him away if he wants to, so how is Jedao going to be able to refuse Kujen anything. You can see why I didn't really like reading those chapters. Not to mention it gets even more skeevy when the big reveal comes. (Although it's not outright condemned as a relationship in the text, Jedao's POV makes it clear he does know it's not healthy.)

There is also another unhealthy relationship between Jedao and Dhanneth (also with some unbalanced power dynamics - Jedao is Dhanneth's commander, and Kel formation instinct means he pretty much can't disobey him. Not to mention Kujen (again) did some shit to Dhanneth to break him). This one made me sad more than disgusted though - it is definitely not presented as being good, just fyi - because it's exactly what happened to Jedao in the Academy. But he doesn't have those memories because of Kujen, so he's just perpetuating the abuse and he doesn't even realise it.

Despite having parts where I felt fairly uncomfortable, I loved this book. This series as a whole has just got better and better as I read it. I can't believe now that I was considering DNF-ing the first book because I didn't like the characters or the writing. Past me was obviously delusional. I think if I went back and reread Ninefox Gambit now I would like it a lot more, because I know what's coming. I would also probably spend the whole time spotting parallels or foreshadowing and start crying or something too - that's how thinking about this series is going to be for me from now on.

So now all that's left is to avoid the inevitable book slump caused by this book.

I heard of this series for the first time in a pride reads recommendations video at the start of the month and hearing that the author is both a trans man and a mathematician made me want to start reading it that instant. So I did. The trilogy kicks off with Ninefox Gambit, where Kel Cheris awakens Jedao, a traitor general infamous for not only winning every single battle he fought (which were all considered un-winnable) but also killing his own soldiers. The world it’s set in is incredibly complex and you’re thrown into it without much handholding, which I found to be overwhelming, but I started feeling like I was on stable ground a bit under halfway through the book. My favourite book by far was Ninefox Gambit, because I loved seeing both Jedao and Cheris interacting and their character development, my second favourite was Revenant Gun for similar reasons. I’d definitely love to see more stories set in this world, I am especially curious to have more Mikodez development because it feels like we only scratched the surface of his character and to me it feels like we got a lot of puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together, but I’m definitely going to read any other books the author publishes. And having lots of LGBT rep (including a trans man) was definitely a nice added bonus.

**Disclaimer: I received a copy of Revenant Gun through netgalley in exchange for an honest review

4ish stars.

Each of the books in the series have gotten progressively better. Or at least less confusing. Maybe just having more exposure to the universe has made each of them easier for me to process, but if nothing else, I've enjoyed this one the most out of the trilogy. Great characters, unique world, fascinating concepts. A big achievement.

Revenant Gun manages to continue everything I loved about the previous two books in the trilogy—brilliant character arcs wrapped in tense military action, a cutting sense of humour, and a care for individual passions and nerdery that brings a whole universe to life—while still bringing new things to the table and offering a totally different book from the other three. Besides, it hasn’t escaped me how elements of Revenant Gun mirror or echo Ninefox Gambit, and how much the series as a whole has to say about how experiences and memories shape who we are.

One of my favourite things about the Machineries of Empire series is how everyone is, well, super queer. Revenant Gun is no exception, and it's incredibly refreshing to have a deadly, high-stakes space opera full of us, even if I no longer count the number of times I thought “boy i sure am glad I'm not allosexual”.

All in all, this is an impeccable conclusion to the trilogy, which switched effortlessly between robots that make AMVs of their favourite drama, intense space battles and politics, and disturbing moments of existential crisis. Everything is there, and this story promises to stay with me a long, long time.

Book contains tw for violence, death, dubious consent, mild body horror, mind control

It is a rare thing when the third book in a trilogy has a truly satisfying conclusion, let alone is the best book in the series. With Revenant Gun, I believe Yoon Ha Lee has accomplished this and then some! The novel tells the continuing story of Jedao and Cheris as they rebel against the Hexarchate and the action takes place nine years after the conclusion of Raven Stratagem. What I loved about this instalment was the pitting of Jedao against himself in another carnation. It was a genius move on Lee's part and the dual narratives are fascinating, full of depth and nuance without ever moving away from the plot. The world building is flawless and we see more of the servitors, more of the moths and get a true sense of just what the Remembrances entail. The political machinations are still present, as are the awesome battles, but this book is a character study in many ways. The personal conflict of Jedao in both incarnations serves as a microcosm for the war as a whole and the action left me breathless. This has been a truly astounding trilogy in its originality and intelligence and this conclusion is pretty much perfect. I highly recommend this to anyone with a love for military sci-fi or those who like their brains melted, just a little.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2380165766

Each of these books is an interesting POV shift from the others. The new Jedeo POV provided an interesting shift in perspective, though I wish we had spent a bit more time with Cheris. I still find her the most compelling part of the series, and she got a bit lost after book 1. Now that the world is much better established, it's nice to be able to focus more on the characters and less on the mechanics of the world.

I think this book provided a satisfying end to the series, and I think the diversity of the different books in the series shows that the author has room to grow. This book is not perfect, and I could nit pick on small things, but in general, I'd definitely recommend the series and look forward to seeing what the author produces in the future!

Revenant Gun is the stunning end to Yoon Ha Lee’s incredible Machineries of Empire trilogy.

Just as in the first two books, we’re kept guessing until the end. How is Jedao going to pull this off? What is Cheris up to? Who is the real villain in all of this?

I love that even after two books, I didn’t see half of the twists coming! So many moving parts, so many opportunities for betrayal and backstabbing! So many Jedaos! I was biting my nails throughout the story, unable to stop turning the pages.

Not only does the plot continue to be amazing, the characters are so incredibly fleshed out. Jedao continues to be a really conflicting and conflicted character with a lot of nuances. He’s a mass murderer, among other things, but I couldn’t help but hope for redemption and happiness for him. He’s a fascinating character.

Cheris is equally fascinating, balancing her own personality with remnants of Jedao in her head. I’d have liked to spend more time with her throughout the story.

We also get POV sections from other characters, Inneser, Brezan, Kujen, Hemiola and Mikodez, all of which have rich inner landscapes and backstories. None of the characters ever felt thin. I love that the servitor Hemiola remixes dramas when it is bored.

Revenant Gun wouldn’t be the amazing space opera that it is without incredible battles and high stakes, and oh did Yoon Ha Lee deliver. The stakes are so very high and the battles are so very tense. Revenant Gun is a delightfully balanced story with a satisfying end.

Revenant Gun is on sale now at all your favorite retailers.

Thank you to Rebellion Publishing for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Revenant Gun, the final book in Yoon Ha Lee’s Machineries of Empire trilogy, opens with its most infamous character displaced in time. Garach Jedao Shkan’s most recent memory is as a first year Shuos cadet serving the Heptarchate – yet here he is 400 years later, with the now-Hexarchate in complete disarray, and Nirai Kujen, the sole remaining Hexarch, explaining to him that he is suddenly a general tasked with leading a fleet against two different successor states: the rebellious Compact, and the presumptuous Protectorate. Kujen’s ultimate goal is to restore the Hexarchate to its pre-rebellion state and stabilize the high calendar, and while this young resurrected Jedao construct has no memory of the battles he later won or the genocide his older self is famous for, Kujen is betting that enough of Jedao the brilliant strategist had been formed by this point, while he also hopes to capitalize on the terror struck by the very mention of Jedao’s name.
Of course, all the scary bits of Jedao’s memory and personality are housed in the mind of the rebel instigator Kel Cheris. To wipe out the Hexarchate once and for all, Cheris must find a way to kill the unkillable Kujen, while her ally, Compact High General Kel Brezen jockeys for strategic territory against his counterpart, Protector General Kel Inesser. At this point in the overall narrative of the trilogy, Lee has already untethered the wrecking ball and smashed this world into powdery fragments. The structure of Revenant Gun, especially in the early chapters, reflects both the time displaced nature and splintered personalities of its major players – the young, incomplete Jedao, the split psyche of what has become of Cheris, the immortal, sociopathic Kujen, the crashhawk Brezen – by toggling through a wider roster of perspectives than the previous two books, and through different points in the nine years since the events of Raven Stratagem.
The upstart, democratically inclined Compact is nothing like Ninefox Gambit’s exuberantly doomed calendrical heretics from The Fortress of Scattered Needles; when following Cheris or Kujen or young Jedao, Revenant Gun pulls off the chess-like dynamism of a spy thriller, while Brezen – perpetually pushed to the brink of exhaustion, enduring chaos for the dubious hope of future stability – lends the narrative a sobering counterpoint. The surprising addition of a servitor, the snakeform Hemiola, among the ever-shifting perspectives is also a canny choice: one of Ninefox’s most humane moments came from a servitor’s point of view, and here, Lee puts Hemiola in a position to make one of the novel’s most ethically consequential choices, with clear-sighted effect.
Like its predecessors, Revenant Gun doesn’t shy away from serious themes or intimate observations, while its author has the good taste to recognize that space opera is, above all, meant to be fun. Lee’s adroit prose always strives for balance, even when reveling in pandemonium. His shrewd humor and sense of irony are perfectly suited for a story largely concerned with military ethics, where service doesn’t end with death if one is deemed useful enough. As the concluding volume to this phenomenal and unconventional sci-fi series, Revenant Gun is both riotous and perfectly controlled.

As unique a series as you can get, Revenant Gun is the sequel to trilogy of military space opera that masquerades as hard scifi, while actually being a soft scifi genre bender that postulates that since time is a construct, and a social belief, a system based on the mathematics of calendars and beliefs on a large scale actually give you space magic powers. And if that's not enough, the culture is Korean based, there are non binary,gender queer and trans characters all over the place (own voice) AND it relates a discussion on empire and colonialism through personal point of view characters at both high and ground level. Plus, robots and spaceships.
Sadly Revenant Gun let me down a little - I thought the complexity level for Raven Strategem was perfect, and this book seemed relatively straight forward compared to that. Aside from this, I love this world and characters, and really enjoyed this unique series.

My brain is yelling with pleasure at such an elaborate world-building, intricate schemes and superbly complex whole trilogy. The Machineries of Empire is a work of art, a masterfully written military science-fiction trilogy, so good that I get a state of glassy eyes when I start thinking about the awesomeness of it all.

From the first word of this novel, “Jedao”, I stopped breathing because yes YES finally we get to observe him being his own person, though, as much as he can. I had already read a short story featuring him while in the academy but it is different here because it’s in the present mess of things.

“No one shot Jedao in the back on the way out, always a plus.”

I loved to find Cheris again as well, even if she’s not really the same Cheris from Ninefox Gambit, her quest and empathy towards the servitors such a nice touch. I wish there’d been more of her, while I can find no fault to this book I do felt a little bit disappointed about the absence of her point of view, even if looking at the whole of it I understand why but still. I also wished for a team-up of some sort that didn’t happen but ha well, Revenant Gun still managed to impress and blow me away without it!

We find again most of the characters from the previous novel, nine years after Raven Strategem. It was a bit surprising at first but I got used to it pretty quickly. After all, these books are a go-with-the-flow kind of stories, where not understanding all of it at 100% is the norm. Still, by this third book I felt like I understood better the heresy, the calendar, the math and everything, which makes me excited for a re-read!

This book dealt a lot with the technology behind the ships, as well as the one behind the longevity of some characters. AND there were chapters from a servitor’s perspective, which might have been my favourites parts.
We also learn a lot more about Kujen, basically the villain in the shadows in the previous books but almost front and center this time around.

The Machineries of Empire is a masterpiece of violence, magic-math-science, devious and lovable characters. While it’s very dark and heart-wrenching at times, it’s still full of hope and characters trying to make it right, aware that the world can be changed, counting on lots of sacrifices and plotting.

This whole “the system is bad and we need to change it, also gender and bodies are seen in a whole new way in this far future galaxy and robots are good” reminded me of The Imperial Radch by Ann Leckie in a very good way as well, and Cheris and Hemiola’s love of tv drama reminded me of Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries ❤

“The girl was scrubbing at her face. Oh, no, she was crying. Crying was something it had only seen humans do in dramas, and in dramas they did it much more prettily, at dramatic moments, with swelling music in the background.”

Other stuff:
a kitten is named Jedao because of course
trippy and horrific technology
many “OMG” moments
staring in the distance when finished because this was B R I L L I A N T
many other things but I don’t want to spoil it!!
I hear there’s going to be a short fiction collection and you bet I’ll be there for it!


Content warning: suicidal ideations, suicide, death, torture, dubious consent, brainwashing, mind control, forced sterility, mention of genocide, mention of child prostitution

The third Nicefox Gambit book is out — the series is actually called Machineries of Empire, but I like Nicefox Gambit too much to resist using it. So before I get into this book, Revenant Gun, here’s a quick, spoilery recap of the story in Nicefox and Raven Stratagem. A rebellious foot soldier has the ghost of a dead traitor general installed in her head. The hexarchate — the ruling powers — intend for the general, Jedao, and the soldier, Cheris, to win a particularly challenging battle for them — they’ve used Jedao’s ghost in the past this way, to excellent effect. When Cheris and Jedao succeed, the hexarchate attempt to have them killed. Instead of dying, they meld into one person and topple the hexarchate entirely.

Revenant Gun picks up nine years after the end of Raven Stratagem, as the new government Cheris-and-Jedao founded tries to fight off efforts by the old The third Nicefox Gambit book is out — the series is actually called Machineries of Empire, but I like Nicefox Gambit too much to resist using it. So before I get into this book, Revenant Gun, here’s a quick, spoilery recap of the story in Nicefox and Raven Stratagem. A rebellious foot soldier has the ghost of a dead traitor general installed in her head. The hexarchate — the ruling powers — intend for the general, Jedao, and the soldier, Cheris, to win a particularly challenging battle for them — they’ve used Jedao’s ghost in the past this way, to excellent effect. When Cheris and Jedao succeed, the hexarchate attempt to have them killed. Instead of dying, they meld into one person and topple the hexarchate entirely.

Phew. That was a lot of words to say. If you’re able, I would advise reading all three of these books one after another. They contain a lot of names and concepts and weirdness, and it took me a little while to get back in the swing of things. (Big surprise, I know.)

The verdict? Revenant Gun is an exciting, suspenseful conclusion to the series. Yoon Ha Lee introduces a potentially serious complication in the form of a second Jedao awakened and embodied by Kujen to win wars to sustain the existing calendar. (There’s a very funny — to me — running gag about a third Jedao, a kitten owned by a minor character.) This means, of course, two Jedao-ish characters working against each other, which could have been too much of a muchness but in fact works out to heighten the pitch of both the emotions and the suspense.

I mention the introduction of a second Jedao as a kind of synecdoche for Yoon Ha Lee’s relentless talent for inventive complication. It would have been easy (for me) for Revenant Gun to operate with the players already on the board, building to a climactic battle and a success for Cheris’s new calendar. Instead Lee continues to throw new ideas and complexities at the reader and the characters right up to the very end, requiring a constant re-sifting-through of loyalties and ideology. The result is a distinct lack of clear villainy or clear heroism. Everyone here is trying to correct wrongs they’ve perceived in the past, with the inevitable result of introducing shiny new wrongs that new people will have to launch assaults against.

Obviously, I love this series. It continues not to be for the faint of heart, and readers will probably benefit (I did) by not worrying too too much about sorting through and perfectly understanding each and every detail. But it’s superb and weird and strange and absolutely worth the effort you’ll invest.

A solid 5 Stars

Reading this series has never been facile but it has always been satisfying. While Ninefox Gambit was an often disorienting immersion experience, the fascinating world in which Jedao awakens in rewarded the reader with a novel of the scope and scale that truly defines the Space Opera genre. If the first Machineries book was Jedao's and the second, Raven Strategem, was Cheris's, Revenant Gun belongs to Nirai Hexarch Kujen. We finally learn more about this shadowy, or might I even say shady, character. Prepare yourself. If you had qualms about Jedao, Kujen is the most challenging (repellant?) character in a series in which our shifting paradigms defined the moral ambiguity of the Machineries world. I can firmly say that very reservation that I had about Kel formation instinct, or what happened to Jedao every time he reawakened since his execution, or my thoughts about the relative benefits of calendrical heresy were borne out by this final volume. Lee finally lets us see more of the backstory and the underpinnings of this world. He graciously leaves us at what will merely be the beginning of the latest iteration.

Moving almost a decade forward in time from the end of Raven Stratagem, we find that Nirai Kujen has come up with his ingenious/diabolical plan to regain control and restore the high calendar which Cheris fractured at the end of the second book. His plan involves use of that well-known mass murderer, who was executed four hundred years before. Yep, that's right. How, you ask? Well, he is a Nirai, and those STEM guys are wicked clever. Thus, in Revenant Gun we get two Jedaos. One is the early life fragment of Jedao's memories at age seventeen, a revenant reawakened in the beaten up body of a forty-four year old man who is not a man (to explain would be a spoiler but, once again, communication with servitors leads the astute reader along the path of insight into just what's going on here) while the other Jedao is the Cheris-Jedao hybrid. Cheris, holds the many memories, and especially the strategical mental database, of everything that happened (and a lot of it was no-bueno) to Jedao after age seventeen. She doesn't really make her appearance, along with a few interesting servitors, until more than halfway through the book and I had missed her voice. Cheris-Jedao still want the world to be a better place than it has been. The status quo Kujen and his Jedao are working to return to pose a powerful opposition, however. How these two Jedaos evolve over the course of this story, since both have essentially the same starting material, is absorbing reading. In occasional looks backward to the period just after Cheris creates exotic calendar chaos, we see how the rebellion struggles following the decimation of the hexarchate leaves only Nirai Kujen and Shuos Mikodez standing on opposite sides of calendrical heresy. (Cheris had disappeared at that point.) As the reader parses the two Jedaos, Nirai Kujen comes to fore in the book. Stepping much farther back in time, we begin to see the truly creepy and abusive relationship Kujen has had with Jedao. How did the world end up in this mess of cruelty, violence, rigidity, submission of self to power? Just as in our world, the seeming best of intentions for social order so often go astray. (Of course, sometimes our best intentions are also just those convenient lies we tell ourselves to get what we want.)

Among the many things I've enjoyed in this trilogy was the diversity of gender and orientation that was threaded seamlessly, and without labor, in the Machineries universe. We see straight, gay, bi, and ace, and trans/nonbinary characters, all of which reflects the real world we live in. (The sensitivity of language and pronoun usage in this series is terrific, by the way.) The issues of abuse of power, consent, personal will and freedom presented in this book made me better understand some of the dynamics of the first two books. What an amazing finale. While I missed some of the characters from the second book (want. more. Mikodez.) the exploration of Kujen and Jedao, locked into their centuries-long morality play, was fascinating and satisfying. The vast and complex world that Yoon Ha Lee has created will be hard to leave behind. In fact, I am likely to listen to the entire trilogy, all over again, on audiobook shortly. (And the audiobook of Revenant Gun is forthcoming soon?) I hope Lee continues to give us occasional short works from this world. Whether more about Cheris and the Mwennin or once again bannering the deuce of gears in some new adventure, I'd be an eager reader.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

This was, without a doubt, one of my most anticipated books of the year, and it did not disappoint! Lee's writing remains sharp and lively, and jumping back into the world of the hexarchate was wonderful.

Revenant Gun has a main storyline, following Jedao and Cheris some nine years after the end of Raven Strategem, as the heretics try to complete their overthrowing of the hexarchate, interspersed with chapters from Jedao's backstory and some of the events from immediately after Raven Strategem. I loved jumping back and forth between the book's present day and the earlier periods, and felt that I understood the history between the different factions better by the end of the book.

In terms of characters, there are chapters from a variety of different POV characters, including a servitor! After Raven Strategem, I enjoyed spending more time with Cheris-as-Cheris (though obviously she's hugely changed from the person she was at the start of Ninefox Gambit), as well as a Jedao who's not exactly the person we remember from previous books. The newer characters were all brilliant, and I particularly enjoyed the servitor-perspective chapters and the complete different way of looking at the world.

I also felt like I had a better handle on the maths elements of the story than I did in the previous two books. I don't know whether it's just that they're more familiar to me now or what, and I should make it clear that not always getting the maths previously absolutely made no different to how much I enjoyed the other books, but it was cool to feel more into the heresy and the calendar and all that.

Revenant Gun makes some interesting comments around gender, despite the word 'gender' never actually appearing in the book (I was looking for a passage so I searched, and the word is not there). The servitors comment on people being manforms or womanforms, and that helps them identify the people they're dealing with, particularly when some of those humans inhabit different bodies. And there's a specific scene, around one specific character who is living as a manform, which includes a comment about the sexist nature of the military. Though gender and individuals' relationships to their bodies plays a big role in the previous books, it's much more explicit in Revenant Gun, and I liked how it was dealt with.

Revenant Gun is a dramatic and fitting conclusion to the Machineries of Empire trilogy. It's got twists and turns, but delivers a satisfying ending and plenty more of the characters we've grown to love over the three books. I'm looking forward to re-reading the complete trilogy now, and hope that anyone who hasn't yet started will think about picking up these amazing books. I really can't say enough good things about them, and will continue to recommend them to absolutely everyone who wants clever, super queer sci-fi.

I read this book courtesy of NetGalley in exchange for an honest review; nonetheless, I also bought a paper copy with my own money (and it's reportedly on its way to me already).

It's difficult writing the review of a next or last volume in a series! So much of what might be said is a spoiler for earlier volumes, or might make little sense for those who haven't read them; in addition, it's not as though I am attempting to convince anyone to read this particular book - it is the whole series that I am recommending.

So what I can say is that this was a great way to start my #pride reading month. Yoon Ha Lee writes a complex and fascinating world that is in itself queer; he conceives of ways of being that are both strange and familiar. This volume brings the series to a staggering and logical conclusion; it gives protagonists fitting endings and it's poignant and tragic but also hopeful.

I must confess I wish it had been longer. It gives us more clarity and explanations than volume 2 (and particularly - more than volume 1, which could be occasionally abstruse) but at the same time, its quick pacing meant we didn't linger as long as I would have loved to with some characters or plotlines. It was good, but maybe not enough of a good thing--or perhaps I'm merely being greedy. I could keep reading about some characters, including new ones, for a hundred more pages.

I think this was a powerful conclusion to a great trilogy of novels; I expect it will lend itself well to re-reading. Take this as a strong recommendation - even if this genre doesn't seem like your thing, Yoon Ha Lee's posthumanist military sf novels are full of heart, soul and humanity.

I have received an advanced e-copy of the book from the publisher via NetGalley

... BUT I also bought myself a paper copy of it (pre-ordered back in December and waiting for it to arrive) because I just love these books so much.



What an amazing read. It's an engrossing book, from page one until the very end. The one caveat: it must not be read without the knowledge of the previous two volumes, because it just won't make too much sense. For this reason, it is also impossible to provide a summary of the plot -- too much hinges on the events from the preceding volumes. What I can say, though, is that there are so many amazing characters in this book, both human and non-human. In fact, the robot servitors take center stage here and are the source of much readerly joy.

In some ways (although not all) Revenant Gun actually worked better for me than the previous books. I found the worldbuilding more cohesive this time: the pieces of the puzzle are all on the table and coming together in this novel.

And aside from being such a joy to read (and utterly gripping), the book also does some very clever things with regards to the construction of characters, the human and the non-human. As in the previous volumes, we have here the "transplanted" personalities (which I started to regard as uploading a (partial) save of a personality), and their presence can be, at times, as confusing (in a thought-provoking way) as it is fascinating. And in addition to the humans and the servitors, there is a new, previously non-speaking species, ready to claim their subjectivity.

And the humans are (almost) all so queer!

Much recommended. A great conclusion to one of my favourite cycles.

Very much enjoying the great writing of Yoon Ha Lee. An extraordinary universe with anew take on the science fiction intrigue.

Charming military space opera not too far afield from David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, which was a guilty pleasure for me over decade ago. In this conclusion of the trilogy, the stable domination of the galaxy by human factions has been upset by the assassination of most of the six overlords known as the hexarchate. Again, the personality of the brilliant and long-ago dead general Jedao is a main character, here put in place in a fresh body as the military commander for the most nefarious surviving hexarch, Narai Kujen. He makes for a colorful bad guy of the highest order, given skills in manipulating people from his 900 years in power, fiendishly inventive in developing new weapons, and is effectively unkillable from his ability to jump into the control of any available human. Jedao, who we followed in service to the reform faction in his last incarnation, is here tasked with assuming the role of military commander for Kujen. Unfortunately, he only has access of his memories up to his cadet days and doesn’t recall committing the mass murders of his own men that now inspire loathing and fear in his current subordinates. Yet the identity left him is human enough to despise Kujen and to look for ways to somehow betray him.

One of the masterminds of the downfall of most of the hexarchate, Cheris, disappeared, leaving her partner Brezan to a carry their mission of reform of the Kel faction and recovery of the hexarchate. They objected to the tyranny, enslavement, and ritual torture employed by the past regime, all empowered by their use of a “calendar” system which affects physics in favor of special weapons, certain stardrive advances, and an adaptation of the military to “formation instinct”, which compels obedience to orders rather than the usual dependence on rank hierarchy. Cheris undermined all that by broadcasting a new calendar. Brezan hopes to forge a new alliance with the remaining Kel and get them to renounce the “high calendar”, but he must act fast before Kujen wipes them both out. A key to subverting and defeating Kujen may lie with factions among the lowly servitor AI robots, which provide a delightful set of characters to the mix.

One of the main pleasures of this epic lies in all the personality quirks and interactions of its byzantine cast of characters. As with the Game of Thrones, there are a lot of nasty power-mongers and substantial play with twisted sexuality. On the other hand, some might wish for less jockeying for power and more action. The technology of the calendrical system is odd and interesting, but it’s divorced from anything but handwaving with respect to physics, and thus on the order of magical systems. We do have exotic weapons like the gravity cannon and the “threshold winnower”, but they don’t get much play. The main technology used for the core plot is the technique of personality preservation and implantation in another brain, which has been used a lot by other writers (such as in recent years by Richard Morgan). The art lies in the whole symphony Lee directs among the various factions with their power plays and treacherous plots, rendering plenty enough fun and excitement to keep me turning the pages and neglecting sleep..

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

A great end to a great space opera trilogy! Although the ending was not what I expected, the more I thought about it, the more I liked how Lee tied up the character arcs. I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.