Revenant Gun

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

Revenant Gun is the third and final book in the sci-fi trilogy Machineries of Empire.

It takes place 10 years after the end of Raven Stratagem, and most of it is told through the PoV of a 17-year-old amnesiac copy of Jedao (yes, that’s Kujen's doing, do not mess with the psych surgeon next time).
The other major PoVs are Hemiola, a Nirai servitor (robot) who loves dramas, Inesser, the senior Kel general, and Brezan from Raven Stratagem.
If Ninefox Gambit focused on Jedao and Cheris, and Raven Stratagem developed Mikodez, Khiruev and Brezan, Revenant Gun is Kujen’s book.

Kujen has spent the first two books being secretively horrible and has caused a lot of damage doing so, and now he’s as out in the open as he ever gets. This means Kujen is in a lot of scenes, and most of them are the perfect balance of unusually hilarious and unsettling. He’s a mad scientist who is definitely not the mad scientist archetype, which makes him one of the most interesting (and creepy) villains I’ve ever read about.
This series has brilliant worldbuilding, beautiful writing and deep, morally gray characterization, but what makes it stand out even more are the smaller details, one of them being the way scientists are written. If the first and second books gave me female main characters who loved science and were good at it, this has a mad scientist who usually doesn’t care about people but almost gets emotional about the new spaceship prototype. The Machineries of Empire series has little “real science” in it, but it’s about scientists, and you can feel how much they love what they do – even when it’s really frustrating, because sometimes that’s how it goes.

This is far from the only detail that got me – I teared up because of a potted green onion, and I never cry while reading – and the series itself acknowledges the importance of little things. The scene in which Mikodez and Brezan talk about this theme was one of my favorite parts, and so was the way in which Hemiola’s love for dramas and fan edits turned out to be plot-relevant.

Machineries of Empire is also the only trilogy I’ve found where not only there is a major aromantic asexual character who isn’t a stereotype (Mikodez), there also isn’t any romance and the series isn’t any less queer because of that. This series takes the space that is usually dedicated to develop romantic relationships and uses it to develop the non-romantic ones. In Revenant Gun there are a few not-that-explicit sex scenes, but the situation is so messed up I would never call that romance.
Also, in Revenant Gun is hinted that another minor character may be aroace (Ganazan). I’m so not used to seeing aromantic characters that even this means something to me. I love how much casual representation there is in this series (the human MCs here are a bi man, a trans man and a woman with multiple wives, and I’m only talking about the characters whose PoVs we follow for more than one chapter!)

The ending was hopeful without feeling out of place. This isn’t a “all morally questionable characters need to die or be redeemed” series, it’s truly morally gray – it makes you question who is right up to the end, and whether doing the right thing (if there is such a thing) is worth it if it could make everything even worse – and I love it, but this doesn’t mean it needs to be bleak. It’s violent and subtle, dark and beautiful.

If you want to read a military sci-fantasy book set in a dystopian space empire with a math-based magic system and an all-queer cast whose plot hinges around a 400-year-old mass murderous general and his dysfunctional alliances with mathematicians, the Machineries of Empire series exists, and Revenant Gun was a great conclusion to it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to Netgalley and Rebellion Publishing for the ARC.

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.