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mburnamfink 's review for:
Raven Stratagem
by Yoon Ha Lee
Ninefox Gambit blew me away with its relentless purity of vision, and the very alien realism of the Hexarchate empire and their exotic technologies and politics run on a half-mathematical, half-magical High Calendar powered by mass atrocity. Themes of games, redemption, and identity ran through that book.
The sequel pulls back the focus a little bit, and sets the setting up for a crisis much bigger than the collapse of a major border fort. Revenant General Shous Jedao has seized command of an entire swarm of combat starships, which he is inexplicably using to fight the Hafn invaders, another human stellar empire somehow even more horrifying in their use of human lives as weapons than the hexarchate. Khiruev is the former commander of the swarm, a devoted officer who finds herself following the cause of the person who usurped her command. Brezan is a crashhawk, a Kel soldier who lacks the dictates of formation instinct and so chooses to follow orders rather obey them instinctively. And Shous Mikodez is a faction leader, wryly commenting on events as he manipulates grand strategy and politics towards a complete collapse of the Hexarchate. The goal here is nothing less than successful heresy on the grandest scale, and the end of the immoral High Calendar system.
Raven Strategem is very good, but it lacks the razorwire tautness of Lee's other work. A lot of pieces are being revealed and set in motion, but the pattern how they'll fall out is still unclear. A first scan says the big theme is if redemption is possible for any of these people, or if their active participation in the crimes of power forever dooms them. A level below is a question of cosmic nihilism: can anyone be saved? Is there such a thing as a good act in this world, or just varying shades of evil? Second books are hard, and I'm worried that the answers to these questions are less interesting than asking them.
***
On a reread of the whole series, and Raven Strategem is a lot less interesting. The Hafn invasion that takes up most of the book is in retrospect a feint. The real story is the assassination of the hexarchs and breaking up of the empire. But neither Brezan or Mikodez have the essential quality of a protagonist--making a character defining choice, and the story coasts on momentum from the last book.
The sequel pulls back the focus a little bit, and sets the setting up for a crisis much bigger than the collapse of a major border fort. Revenant General Shous Jedao has seized command of an entire swarm of combat starships, which he is inexplicably using to fight the Hafn invaders, another human stellar empire somehow even more horrifying in their use of human lives as weapons than the hexarchate. Khiruev is the former commander of the swarm, a devoted officer who finds herself following the cause of the person who usurped her command. Brezan is a crashhawk, a Kel soldier who lacks the dictates of formation instinct and so chooses to follow orders rather obey them instinctively. And Shous Mikodez is a faction leader, wryly commenting on events as he manipulates grand strategy and politics towards a complete collapse of the Hexarchate. The goal here is nothing less than successful heresy on the grandest scale, and the end of the immoral High Calendar system.
Raven Strategem is very good, but it lacks the razorwire tautness of Lee's other work. A lot of pieces are being revealed and set in motion, but the pattern how they'll fall out is still unclear. A first scan says the big theme is if redemption is possible for any of these people, or if their active participation in the crimes of power forever dooms them. A level below is a question of cosmic nihilism: can anyone be saved? Is there such a thing as a good act in this world, or just varying shades of evil? Second books are hard, and I'm worried that the answers to these questions are less interesting than asking them.
***
On a reread of the whole series, and Raven Strategem is a lot less interesting. The Hafn invasion that takes up most of the book is in retrospect a feint. The real story is the assassination of the hexarchs and breaking up of the empire. But neither Brezan or Mikodez have the essential quality of a protagonist--making a character defining choice, and the story coasts on momentum from the last book.