Raven Stratagem

Raven Strategem is a bit more space-operatic than Ninefox Gambit: broader in scope, with more focus on political intrigue rather than military tactics. For the most part, all the stuff I liked about Ninefox Gambit (super nifty worldbuilding, beautiful prose, thorough characterisation) is still there. And I liked it a lot! But I did like it slightly less than Ninefox Gambit, and that's mainly down to the shift in perspective.

The high-stakes story is continued seamlessly. The low-stakes, personal story of Cheris and Jedao feels more repeated than continued, and repeated in a way I like less: rather than continuing from Cheris' perspective as in Ninefox Gambit, we once again see Jedao from the outside, from a number of other perspectives, and the whole manipulation/loyalty/&c. thing plays out again in a slightly different way. There's something frustrating in it, too, since the reader-who-has-Ninefox-Gambit-fresh-in-their-mind has important information which literally none of the perspective characters do for the majority of the book. Dramatic irony! (Probably do not take a long break between reading Ninefox Gambit and Raven Strategem.)

And the characterisation is great, as always, and many of the characters are likeable in their ways (I took a particular liking to Shuos Mikodez, this time) - but none of them is Cheris, and, well, I got pretty attached to her. I was more interested in seeing her story continue than the larger story of the Hexarchate. And her story does continue; just, not from within.

Which is all to say: the book is fine, the book is great, I enjoyed it a lot, but I couldn't help feeling slightly disappointed by it anyways. The problem here is more on my end than the book's.

I think it's worth making an extra note of the treatment of disability. I don't recall any instances of physical disability being shown, but neurodivergence is: in-universe things like crashhawks for whom formation instinct doesn't work, and less speculatively Jedao's dyscalculia and whatever's going on with Mikodez (I'm leaning heavily towards ADHD; it's not named in the book). It's enough to say that when disability is actually shown, it's shown well. Mikodez is dependent on his medication and support systems, brilliant at his job, and a complex character in all sorts of ways; his disability neither defines him, nor is it minimised; it's simply a part of him. Jedao's disability is severe in the context of his world and career, but he gets by with hard work and computer accommodations. Crashhawks have a harder time, but can get by on actual obedience. And so on - actual depictions of disability are nuanced and excellent.

Less great is the way various ableist slurs and actual-medical-terminology-but-used-as-slurs are casually thrown around by just about every character. Poorly defined madness/insanity/craziness; the word "psychotic" used interchangeably with this poorly defined madness/insanity/craziness; the word "sociopath" used as a character trait, admiringly by some and dispassionately by others, treated as common among certain demographics, and generally... just used so casually that I actually can't tell if they mean "this person has ASPD or DPD or an in-universe equivalent" or "this person is good at compartmentalising and will not allow personal feelings to get in the way of doing their job", or even if a given character uses the word consistently; the word "paranoid" used essentially to describe a lifestyle, in fact a very sensible lifestyle if assassinations are a serious risk associated with one's career, with no relation whatsoever to psychosis. These are all that I remember (I wasn't keeping a list or anything), but these sorts of terms are used with such frequency that if you're really sensitive to this sort of misuse of words, you might honestly want to skip these books even though they are great.

(I do realise that this sort of language used by characters can be a worldbuilding/characterisation thing, especially when it's accompanied by actually really good depictions of disability outside of the language used; it also didn't even disrupt my own enjoyment of the book very much; still, the warning stands.)

Anyway! The book was really good, though, and I'm looking forwards to reading the next one.

Selling points: super cool worldbuilding; magic space battles; cute robots; wide variety of queer representation, notably including a trans man as a major perspective character and an ace character who has correctly-nuanced ace sex (!); very nice characterisation.

Warning points: genocide; physical torture (slightly abstracted but essentially on-screen); fraternal incest (consensual); psychological torture; spaceships powered by sacrificed children; general disregard for life and autonomy and whatnot (by characters and society, not the narrative).

"You've got to get over that Kel thing where you offer to commit suicide just to prove a point."

I'm going to hide some of my review behind spoiler tags, but the tl;dr up front is that I enjoyed this book just as much as or maybe even more than the first. I know. I'm shocked too. Middle books of trilogies are usually so mediocre.

The author buries the lede in this book from the very beginning, with the vast majority of things taking place from the points of view of everyone else except Cheris/Jedao. Is she Cheris? Is she Jedao? Who knows? The author certainly isn't telling, and I appreciated being pulled along through the story and trying to figure it out alongside the other main(?) characters aboard the bannermoth of their fleet. Cheris/Jedao has a sneaky plan to get back at the hexarchate, but goes through the motions of investigating a Hafn invasion while doing so. We also get other points of view from people removed from the fleet, chief among them the Shuos hexarchate, Mikodez, who also harbors no great love for the system he works within. The ending, while no great space battle, was still satisfying (and a bit sad).

While the first book started us off in the middle of things and I had to figure things out as we went along, this book took a much slower pace and felt more character-driven. I appreciated that. I also didn't feel nearly as beaten over the head by crazy terminology as I did from reading the first book, which helped me keep pace with what was going on and really develop feelings for some of these non-MCs. I had some real feels near the end.

If you've read the first book and are here to see if you'd enjoy the second, I highly recommend giving it a try. It's clear the author cleaned things up a bit here, and things feel tighter, more cohesive, and incredibly satisfying. I'm absolutely going to move onto the third.

RAVEN STRATAGEM is an excellent continuation of the story begun in NINEFOX GAMBIT, shown through new eyes and exploring more of the people within the pervasive and all-consuming empire via fantastic space battles and subtle political machinations.

The prose is idea-dense in a way that makes it difficult to describe what happened, but each moment is fascinating. I didn't ever feel lost, just like I knew what all the pieces were but not how they fit together until towards the end. 

This series in general and this book in particular are relentlessly queer, it's so great. There's consistent in-universe terminology which separates physical form from gender identity, and several pronoun changes are effortlessly handled. I use the term "casually queer" to describe books where characters are queer and it's no big deal and this feels this the epitome of what I mean when I use that term. I couldn't even tell you for certain that anyone was allocishet, it's just not that kind of setting. Some of this was in the first book, but it's very obvious in this one and I loved it.

The characterization is really good, both for individuals and for the various factions, especially since the factions have such an outside roll in everyone’s personalities. There was this nice synergy where just by learning someone’s faction I could know a little bit about them, and if they were more than a minor character I would get even more as the text spent time with them. It was a very graceful way to handle such a large cast, and the faction naming conventions were very helpful in this regard. The faction politics were a perfect mix between unwieldly grandiose (as befits a centuries-old empire) and understandable in their details. It explores how people fit in, why they don't, and what happens when they have to choose between breaking for the system and breaking it.

On to the sequel check! It wraps up several things left hanging from the previous book. The main storyline starts in this book and wasn't present in the first one. Several major things are introduced and resolved within this book. It doesn't leave many very specific things to be picked up in the next book, but it leaves many grand things not yet accomplished because they're too big for one volume, and the ending makes it clear that they will be the topic of the final book. The MC changed, almost all of the narrators were new this time around and they all had distinctive voices, it was pretty easy to keep track of who was who and remember their relevant motivations. I think this would almost entirely make sense if you picked it up at random and didn't know about the series. By changing narrators it naturally incorporates a lot of exposition from different angles than the ones in the first book, which does some very cool things: new information is available, old information feels new because it's filtered through different minds, and exposition felt like just part of the story. I definitely recommend starting with the first book, its whole point is to immerse you in Jedaro's backstory so that the events in this book have emotional weight behind them, but the actual plot is very understandable, even without the first book. 

This keeps much of the style I liked from the first book, we're given even more ways to understand this system. I love this series and I’m definitely going to read the next book. If you liked the first one you'll love this piece of the saga.

I am sad I read this a month too late to include it in my Hugo noms. My bad. It was out there for over half a year and I loved [b: Ninefox Gambit|26118426|Ninefox Gambit (The Machineries of Empire #1)|Yoon Ha Lee|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1446557461s/26118426.jpg|46065520].

So. My recommendation: Read. This. Series. The math based calendar magic, the fascinating social structure of the Empire with its factions (Kel, Vidona, Andan, Shuos, Nirai and Rahal), the characters and the intricate plot make for a fast-paced read.

It took me book 1 to figure out the High Calendar and the faction system but knowing this--and I struggled with it in book 1--made this one easier to understand and so I could focus more on the characters and plot.

There is only one thing I dislike, due to understandable reasons (see end of book 1), we lose Cheris as a POV character and Jedao is not replacing her either.

Quick plot (for me to re-read instead of re-reading before next book):
At the end of book one, Jedao's ship is destroyed by a so-called Carrion bomb and Cheris barely survives while Jedao is "shattered" into pieces which somehow Cheris ingests.

Book 2 starts with Cheris arriving at General Khiruev's swarm posing as a "special envoy" from the Kel. Since everyone assumed she is dead, there is no general warning out about her and she is received on Khiruev's flag ship the "Hierarchy of Feasts" where she reveals that she is Jedao and pulls rank on everyone thanks for formation instinct.

Brazen one of Khiruev's staff resists Jedao and is revealed to be a crash-hawk and thus kicked out of the swarm along with all other non-Kel. Jedao takes over the swarm. Khiruev--despite formation instinct--tries to assassinate Jedao but instead kills two of her own officers.

Brazen becomes a new POV character who is imprisoned for being a crash-hawk. The first half of his story-arc he spends as prisoner of a variety of people. First the Nirai, then the Shuos and finally the Kel. The moment Jedao kicked him off the flagship his fate was sealed. But he finally manages to get his information on Jedao to Kel Command.

Khiruev is another major POV. She struggles to accept Jedao's command at first but he seems much more reasonable than she expected even following through on her original mission fighting an incursion by the Hafn who have been attacking the empire with strange new exotics even inside the empire's terrain which they should not have been able to. While Jedao is slowly gaining Khiruev's loyalty, he is also starting a propaganda campaign in the empire to make it more difficult for the factions to go after him.

Hierarch Shuos Mikodez is the third major POV, the only one already known from book 1. But here his role is much larger as it is revealed in more detail how he rules the back-stabbing Shuos through cunning and allies. His younger sister, now brother, Istradez is only one of several doubles he uses to hide behind and his right hand Zehun is infamous in his own right. Together the trio spins a web of intrigue through the Hexarchate that is only rivaled by whatever Jedao is planning. Mikodez is a fun character to read, he seems to take nothing quite as serious as he should and yet is successful being the leader of the most dangerous faction.

Around the same time that Mikodez is trying to contact Jedao, Kel Command finally manages to realize what is going on with Khiruev's swarm and demotes Jedao, taking away his rank in order to break the swarm free of him when they would no longer be compelled to follow him because of formation instinct. But Khiruev invokes an old escape clause that allows a Kel to throw off formation instinct to ignore certain orders--after 100 days she will have to pay with her life. Jedao has convinced her that whatever his plans for the Hexarchate it is worth her life to make the attempt.

There are signs that Jedao is not quite only Jedao and he hasn't taken over Cheris completely. He is hiding his newly acquired skill at math (from Cheris) and he is still interacting a lot with the servitors.

In the campaign against the Hafn he is mostly letting Khiruev command the swarm only rarey interfering and giving out strategic information the others overlooked or didn't grasp.

In the meantime, Brazen has not been executed, instead Kel Command has promoted him to High General--so he outranks Khiruev and Jedao--and sent him on a mission with Andan Tsaya to take out Jedao by Andal enthrallment.

Mikodez is making plans of his own while Kujen's new immortality device will soon make all the Hexarch's immortal. As it turns out not all the Hexarch's want to be immortal. Neither Mikodez nor Kel Command. By the time this becomes clear Mikodez has finally figured out what Jedao/Cheris plan really is. Cheris is still Cheris, Jedao is dead, but she has his memories. And with her math skills and his knowledge of the Hexarchate she has devised a plan to create a so-called calendrical spike that will reset the High Calendar and cause one major change: all the faction calendrical abilities (most notably the Andan enthrallment and the Kel Formation Instinct) will from then on only work on those who submit to them voluntarily, making both effectively useless. But first she must succeed.

Brazen and Tsaya have arrived on the Hierarchy of Feasts and ... because Cheris is not Jedao the enthrallment fails. Because the ability only works against people of a lower social standing than the Andan. And Tsaya is a cast-out. Jedao would have been of lower standing than her. But Cheris is not. So Tsaya is taken to a cell while Jedao begins to convince Brazen of the necessity of his plans/ambitions by letting Brazen take over the swarm.

The intricate finale takes up about the final fifth of the book.

With feints from Mikodez, a finally convinced Brazen, Cheris' brilliant math and the servitors, they manage to pull through.

Mikodez assassinates the Niarai (not Kujen though), Andan and Rahal Hexarchs... thanks to a suicide attack executed by Istradez. At the same time--thanks to some interference from Mikodez--the servitors and Cheris take out Kel Command at their hidden Aerie. Apparently, this is enough to change the High Calendar. The Hafn had been chased from the empire through battles won a little earlier and Mikodez took out several ship-yards of the empire to prevent... - it is not quite clear to me why he did that, I think he wanted to prevent someone in the factions from gaining the ships for a brutal shut-down of the coming revolution?

The Hexarchate is in upheaval.

I read some peers reviews of this before I dove in and I agree with their assessments. Who stole our Yoon Ha Lee and replaced him with someone who explains things. XD

I fully expected this to be a mind warp of digging for understanding in a complex Hexarchate system with it's mystical calendrical exotic weapons housed within Moth swarms and political bodies of remembrances. See? See? You don't know WTH I'm talking about! hehe. You have to read and ponder!

Nah, this was a great book! Maybe Lee has a new editor and he course corrected the would-be-difficulty into something far more approachable. That or we as readers have figured out the key to the cryptography and are much easier at deciphering this text than the last.

"Never ascribe to irrational benevolence what selfishness will explain." -- Kujen

This book was just a nice read. Cheris / Jedao show up at a Swarm and take it. Are they going after the Hafn? Or are they going to give the HexA a what-for. You're going to have to read to find out. Heck if I'll spoil it.

Least to say there are a few good battles but mainly we exist within a few threads of life that move around the understanding of Jedao and the makeup of the Hexarchs along with far more subordinate understanding than prior.

The end of this book feels far more like a beginning. The galaxy is in more turmoil as things have been flipped end over end.

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

There are missing actors and a lot of explaining to do but we'll have to wait. For an ongoing "space opera" this one might just be warming up.

If you had trouble reading the first one, read on, it got a lot easier to comprehend and a lot less jargon riddled. Whether or not we enjoyed that space-pretzel or not. :D