Ninefox Gambit: 1 (The Machineries of Empire, 1)

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Action Girl: Despite being in charge of a cindermoth, she's a good duelist and jumps at the chance to duel with Cheris.

Complete Immortality: Jedao Two, because moths don't age and have a Healing Factor. Kujen speculates that jumping into a star might kill him. Once Done, Never Forgotten: After he supposedly assassinated two of his own cadets after being promoted to Hexarch, just to keep his hand in and to keep the others sharp. Actually, they were part of a heretical plot, but he thought that letting people think he did it for fun would be better for his reputation - among both followers and outsiders - than admitting to having had heresy within his faction. Ninefox Gambit is a hell of a story. Like, push aside all this discussion of mathematics and exposition and focus on the action. Lee wastes little time throwing Cheris into the deep end, and there is plenty of everything you want from an action story: sacrifice, conflict both internal and external, people questioning their most basic beliefs. The hexarchate is bad, y’all. It’s terrifyingly rigid, and while we don’t really learn much about the lives of ordinary, faction-less citizens like Cheris’ family, we learn enough that I know I wouldn’t want to live under hexarchate rule. It’s kind of a “are we the baddies?” situation, where you wonder if maybe the heretics are on to something….

However, I also mentioned feeling conflicted about the novel, and this is in large part due to its inconsistent pacing. In the beginning, the reader is dropped into this strange universe and left to flounder, and it’s easy to become confused and overwhelmed if you’re not paying close attention. It makes this one a rather challenging read, especially since the story goes nowhere fast. After all, we are talking about a siege here, and the fact that it happens in space doesn’t change the basis of this long and drawn out process. Still, bursts of action occur do here and there, probably just enough to keep me going, so that in the end I found myself in the awkward position of alternating between not wanting to put the book down and wanting it to be over already. Ninefox Gambit won the 2017 Locus Award for First Novel, [2] and the 2016 Stabby Award for Best Debut Novel. [3] It was nominated for the 2016 Nebula Award [4] and 2017 Hugo Award [5] for Best Novel, as well as the 2017 Clarke Award. [6] Development [ ] Many reviewers say “the last 10% is so good” and we’ve been rewarded so well for our word-masochism for 90% of the book. And they then have some kind of orgasmic epiphany and suddenly award it 5 stars. Feels so good to stop bashing your head in with an iron bar, eh! Lee is reflective and no-holds-barredin the way he examines the coalescing of Cheris and Jedao’s personalities. It’s impossible for them to share responsibilities and, literally, a body, without bleeding into one another. It’s a keen examination of the way personalities can warp around the people surrounding you. Cheris is the ying to Jedao’s yang, but together they are something wholly more.So much of Ninefox Gambit is about exploring truth, what you believe about yourself, what you believe about the world around you, and this leads to some fascinating moments between Jedao and Cheris, who see the world very differently from one another. They both have something to offer the other, though, which together makes them stronger, or, at the very least, more driven. Although formation instinct was instituted after Shuos Jedao's execution, [12] Brigadier General Kel Marish mentions it as "before [his] time". [13]

de Bodard, Aliette (2014-01-06). "Awards eligibility and awards recommendations". aliettedebodard.com . Retrieved 2014-01-08. I Did What I Had to Do: His attitude after he realizes what being in charge of the Compact means, after he uses a biological weapon to deny a disputed system to the Protectorate, possibly killing civilians if they weren't evacuated in time, and then an idealistic university student commits an imaginative form of Seppuku in front of him. Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for using unconventional methods in a battle against heretics. Kel Command gives her the opportunity to redeem herself by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a star fortress that has recently been captured by heretics. Cheris’s career isn’t the only thing at stake. If the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next.I am grateful to my beta readers: Sam Kabo Ashwell, Peter Berman, Joseph Betzwieser, Daedala, Helen Keeble, Yune Kyung Lee, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Nancy Sauer, and Sonya Taaffe. Three hundred ninety-nine years ago, General Shuos Jedao was in the service of the Kel. Because he had a reputation for winning unwinnable fights, they assigned him to deal with the Lanterner rebellion. Since his first sale in 1999, Lee has published short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed magazine and elsewhere. Three of his stories have been reprinted in Gardner Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies. Dozois wrote that Lee is "one of those helping to move science fiction into the twenty-first century". [6] In five battles, Jedao shattered the rebels. In the first battle, at Candle Arc, he was outnumbered eight to one. In the second, that was no longer true. The rebels’ leader escaped to Hellspin Fortress, which was guarded by predatory masses and corrosive dust, but the heptarchs expected that Jedao would capture the fortress without undue difficulty.

This is indeed a beautiful work of the imagination, running wild and free like a raven across the universe.

Shuos Mikodez

Kid with the Leash: To Jedao. Whether she can hold onto that leash is pretty much the conflict of Ninefox Gambit.

Kel Cheris, a disgraced captain of the hexarchate, is given the opportunity to redeem herself by recapturing the formidable Fortress of Scattered Needles from heretics. Cheris requests—and receives—a single devastating weapon to aid her in her task: the revived, near-immortal traitor, General Shuos Jedao. Feared throughout the stars and undefeated in battle, he is the perfect weapon. But Jedao is gripped by a madness that saw him massacre two armies in his first life—one of them his own. Preserved for his brilliance and tamed by his handlers, no one knows how long his good behaviour will last. Cheris must work with the mass murderer to destroy the heresy and save the hexarchate—before he destroys her…

I thought it was a little odd that for a book with this much buzz that could use all the help it can get in conversion to audiobook they went for maybe the the 400th best available narrator. You don’t sleep,” Cheris said, remembering. “You don’t sleep at all. What do you do in all that time? Count ravens?” The bad news is that Jedao went mad in his first life and massacred two armies, one of them his own. As the siege wears on, Cheris must decide how far she can trust Jedao–because she might be his next victim. The author thanks beta readers Sam Kabo Ashwell, Peter Berman, Joseph Betzwieser, Daedala, Helen Keeble, Yune Kyung Lee, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Nancy Sauer, and Sonya Taaffe. [11] Though Ninefox Gambit was written first, The Battle of Candle Arc was the first published story in the Machineries of Empire universe. [7] A rough prequel to Ninefox Gambit was also published as the short story Calendrical Rot. [8]