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    Ninefox Gambit
    Ninefox Gambit
    Ninefox Gambit
    Audiobook10 hours

    Ninefox Gambit

    Written by Yoon Ha Lee

    Narrated by Emily Woo Zeller

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The first installment of the trilogy, Ninefox Gambit, centers on disgraced captain Kel Cheris, who must recapture the formidable Fortress of Scattered Needles in order to redeem herself in front of the Hexarchate. To win an impossible war Captain Kel Cheris must awaken an ancient weapon and a despised traitor general. 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. Cheris's best hope is to ally with the undead tactician Shuos Jedao. The good news is that Jedao has never lost a battle, and he may be the only one who can figure out how to successfully besiege the fortress. 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJun 14, 2016
    ISBN9781501919381
    Ninefox Gambit

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    Reviews for Ninefox Gambit

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Hard Sci-Fi with an almost video game appeal that draws you into a difficult and unfamiliar world.

      Yoon Ha Lee has created an expansive universe of political houses where religion, math, and technology have merged horrifically.

      This book was the rise of a potential savior.

      I’ll be your gun.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      It was great but had more adult content than I thought it would.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant. This is one of the best science fiction novels I've read in a very long time, with a glorious (but never dry or boring) overlay of futuristic military strategy in a world where even the fundamental laws of physics aren't quite what you thought they were. Don't be put off by the mentions in reviews of the zombie general, he's more of an uploaded consciousness - no hunting brains or hitting with shovels required.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant. This is one of the best science fiction novels I've read in a very long time, with a glorious (but never dry or boring) overlay of futuristic military strategy in a world where even the fundamental laws of physics aren't quite what you thought they were. Don't be put off by the mentions in reviews of the zombie general, he's more of an uploaded consciousness - no hunting brains or hitting with shovels required.
    • 4/5
      Entry for entire trilogy.The first book of this is quite good. It has a neat arc, fleshed out characters, and does what it sets out to. The ending is ambiguous and open, but satisfying enough. The next two books just sort of...ramble. I feel like the publisher said 'that did well, can you turn it into a trilogy?' and the author was like 'uh, sure, I can write more about that stuff'' and, indeed, there is more, there are more words, and more characters and more worldbuilding and backstory, even plot for the most part, and none of it is *bad*, but it doesn't feel like it has a thrust, purpose, thesis, whatever. It feels like fleshed out set of notes, or an interminable 'middle section' of a book that never really has a payoff. (yes, there is a plot conclusion, but it feels a bit emotionally bare, and not in a good way)So, that aside, what is this? Despite all the references to 'math' you may see in the summaries, this is a strong case of 'sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'. It is totally about space wizards, except it is far to serious and crunchy to admit that it is about space wizards. Which, sure, it pulls this off pretty well as long as you aren't actually expecting to relate it back to reality as we know it.But, really, what is it? Military? Sort of. Contrary to the opening scene, it's not mostly about the 'front line' military. It's generals and politicians, and choosing objectives and strategy with a decent side of what sort of sacrifices are morally justifiable, and which people are trustworthy.Now that we've got genre out of the way, what makes it any *good*? for one, I'm very partial to dark, gritty worlds which still have legitimately good protagonist who make actual progress against that darkness despite human failings, and this fits that quite well. Second It's very character focused, and pulls off an excellent charismatic anti-hero in one of the main roles. (this applies mostly to the first book, in the subsequent ones, the 'good protagonists' grow a little predictable, with unrealistically few flaws, and the characters never pique the same interest and attachment)
    • 3/5
      I liked the characters and dialog but didn't care much for the plot nor the obfuscated descriptions. This would likely be a 3.5-star book for me had the author provided just a little bit more background for all the jargon that was thrown in haphazardly. The book is not badly written - the characterization and dialog are both quite good - but the lack of definition in the world-building made for a tough read. I was fairly well invested in finding out where things were headed but, at the end of the day, the plot was a fairly standard set of action sequences culminating in a typical final showdown with the 'bad guy'. It's possible I will give the 2nd book a try at some point but I'm not highly motivated after finishing this first one.
    • 5/5
      I had only a vague idea of what was going on through most of this book, but I really enjoyed the experience!

      I guess this kinda started in medias res, but it wasn't the stupid version like Malazan, instead we see an introductory battle scene, another scene introducing the hexarchs, and then we're off! The fact that it was so bonkers helped make all of the tacticians actually seem intelligent, which was nice.

      The "yours in calendrical heresy" asides were probably one of my favorite sections. It's just such a great phrase.
    • 3/5
      Captain Kel Cheris has been afforded an opportunity to redeem herself in the eyes of Kel Command. But the task before her, recapturing the Fortress of Scattered Needles from heretics, will not be easy. So she finds herself partnering (in a sense) with Shuos Jedeo, an undead tactician who reportedly went mad while he was alive--and on a madness-inspired murder spree. But what Jedeo brings to the mission may be exactly what Cheris needs to succeed. She just needs to figure out how much she can trust Jedeo--and how to make use of his expertise without letting him take over...

      An epic space adventure if there ever was one. And the world that Yoon Ha Lee has created here is one that is quite intriguing. There is honestly a lot to keep track of, especially at first, but I would say it's manageable for most astute readers. And it is a great examination of the question of taking risks, and determining which of those risks are necessary in order to succeed. Is it worth introducing more danger to an already dangerous situation on the chance that it may be the only way to get through to the other side?
    • 1/5
      For many years as a SF veteran, what I always found incredibly irritating was the ability of SF writers not to know any kind of science and what they wrote turned instead into technobabble like this crap of a book called “Ninefox Gambit”. If it is to be science fiction, then make the fictional part of the science at least minimally plausible. I distinctly do not want to see mountains floating in mid-air or long lost races of humans that amazingly speak perfect English - unless there is a carefully built and plausible explanation for it (not examples taken from this novel but you get the gist). The potential range of fictional scenarios is still vast, even when held to reasonable extrapolations of known physical and social science. If you don’t base your fictional universe on sound terminology and concepts it’s just technobabble. No other word for it. In other words, you’ll have no story!If magic and weird terminology is what SF consumers and producers want today, fine by me, but clearly label it as such. But, even in that genre, an effort has to be made to maintain consistent rules within the context of the story so that disbelief - for the purpose of amusement only - can be playfully suspended. Unfortunately, and all too often, fiction writers like Yoon Ha Lee are more interested in moving the story along than in being consistent with the accepted rules of knowledge or even with the rules they themselves create.Utter nonsense. Don’t bother. Another contemporary stupid SF novel. It’s more like a “New-New-Weird” than a bog standard military SF, with all the calendrical heresy and nonsensical mind sharing stuff…Unfortunately this is what passes as hip and trendy SF today… I am terribly bored with the trend of botched and careless futures we see in science fiction at the moment. Bart Simpson said it best, "Depressing [SF for] teens is like shooting fish in a barrel."
    • 4/5
      I listened to the audio version of the book and really enjoyed it. The setting is a very caste driven military setting that is fighting a war against heretics. When Captain Kel uses unusual mathematics to defeat heretics she comes to the attention of her superiors and is tapped to come up with an idea to recover a space fortress. Her idea is to bring back a dead general to take the fortress. General Shuos Jedao intelligence has been upload into a black cradle and is very occasionally brought out to solve hard battles, but he is crazy and was sent to black cradle for slaughtering his own troops. Kel has Shuos upload to her brain and he provides good advice to her for the war even though she finds herself liking him. There is more to his backstory than she was told, and the unfolding story is great.

      I think I’ll keep with this on audio for my next long car trip.
    • 4/5
      This is one of those stories that afterwards lingers and makes you rethink how you see the world. It took me a while to get into the story but then it flew.Captain Kel Cheris is disgraced by unconventional tactics; her chance to redeem herself is to host the mind of long-dead tactician Shuos Jedao normally this would subsume the original mind but together these two work on the siege and form a new alliance that will change things.It's an interesting read and I'm glad I read it, I didn't continue reading this series when reading the Hugos as I felt I needed some breathing space between me and the next book in this series..I have to admit that I found it a bit difficult to get into but compelling once I was there.
    • 3/5
      I knew there was a possibility I wouldn’t like this, but I thought that would be because it would turn out to be too dark. I wasn’t expecting the worldbuilding to be so inscrutable and confusing. When I started reading it, every time I’d open it, I’d only get through a few pages.I pushed myself to keep reading, at first because I know some books need more time before they “click” with me, and then because I was curious about what the twists and the answers would be. But there was no click. I was still somewhat confused and the story didn’t encourage me to care enough about the characters… I wouldn’t say I disliked it, I just don’t have any strong feelings.I really don’t know if I will read the sequels or not.:/ She was so tired, and she had no idea what, if anything, she had done right. In mathematics you had peer review, definite proofs and answers, but war was nothing but uncertainty multiplied by uncertainty.
    • 4/5
      I struggled to start with, not being able either to visualise this whole calendrical rot thing or even grasp any kind of correspondence between how it's described and how the universe works. What possible physical law could cause the functions of a weapon to depend on how the calendar is designed?But I managed to adjust my brain and got through this and read for Cheris and Jedao and that was fantastic: just the kind of "What is he really doing though?" twistiness I adore.
    • 4/5
      Captain Kel Cheris is disgraced, having won a battle against heretics using unconventional tactics. Her only chance at redemption is to retake the star fortress called the Fortress of Scattered Needles, recently captured by heretics.

      She has a plan. It's a desparate plan, involving reviving an undead tactician who has never lost a battle, General Shuos Jedao. Of course, in his original life, Jedao went mad and wiped out two armies, one of them his own, and he's a famous traitor, but if Cheris didn't believe in taking risks, she wouldn't be in this situation to begin with.

      What follows is a battle of wits not just against the enemy, but against her chosen ally, Jedao, and even against the high command of the Hexarchate she serves. Because as vital as it is to retake the Fortress of Scattered Needles, lest the Hexarchate itself fall, they are strangely reluctant to share with her vital information that could make the difference between victory and defeat. She's fighting blind, and her only real ally is Jedao.

      Jedao might be mad.

      Or Jedao might be perfectly sane, and have her own agenda.

      There's lots of action here; it's a campaign to retake a captured fortress. There's also a carefully textured unfolding of the characters of Cheris, Jedao, and the nature of the Hexarchate itself. The technology here calls to mind Clarke's Third Law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," and at the end of this first book of the trilogy, I'm not at all clear on exactly what calendrical heresy consists of. That's not really the point, though. The real questions here are whose values will prevail, and how Cheris can decide who to trust.

      The characters and the challenges completely pulled me in. Recommended.

      I bought this audiobook.
    • 3/5
      A SF story of an intergalactic empire that rules through a calendar. Yup...It is more about two people in the army, with one of them having lived for multiple generations and being crazy. There is a ton of world-building in this book. It is great to see how creative the author got. It is very confusing, especially in the beginning, as words and phrases are just thrown at you. The story is great though and very original. I'm sure this one of those series that gets great as you get deeper into the world.
    • 3/5
      I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

      This is quite possibly the strangest and most brilliant sci-fi world-building I’ve ever read. The entire premise is that a calendar is both the basis for power weapons and requires belief in the calendar to work. Throw in the fact that the calendar loses power if not every believes in it, and you have a mind-warping basis for this book.
      I’ll be the first to admit it was not an easy read, especially early on in the book. No explanations, no idea, of where we are, what is happening, and why the army has to fight in very specific formations, all based on the aforementioned calendar belief system. Wow. Just wow.

      This book is very well written, but I must say that I didn’t really like it overall. It was just too over-the-top concept-wise. It remains to be seen if I’ll read the next book.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this novel. It was definitely confusing at first because the author just throws you in and you have to figure out what's going on on your own, but I was okay with that. It was nice to challenge my brain a bit and it kept me on my toes and I think I enjoyed the book more for it.

      The world was super cool, not that I totally even understand it. In a society with different factions of people who value different things, a calendrical system of mathematics rules how things are done and how they run. Not that I even know what that means.

      The characters were great. I loved Cheris and Jedao and their dynamic together. It was really cool seeing how their thoughts worked together and how they interacted. I also really liked the servitors. They were so cute and I liked how they were portrayed. I also enjoyed the side characters. Even though we didn't get much from them, they still each had something about them that made them seem real.

      I really enjoyed this novel. 4.25/5 stars
    • 3/5
      One of the better BB bargain selections, some seemed a bit familiar like I’d encountered the calendrical heresy stuff elsewhere, but the handling of the characters was somewhat different and not distasteful.
    • 4/5
      It really took quite a bit of time to get into this book. There was a sheer wall of world-building to climb and hardly and handholds. Calendrical rot? Hexarchate? Heretical mechanics? Formation instinct? Threshold winnower? But something pulled me forward and through it. Partially curiosity, I suppose. Partially the pacing. Partially a fondness quickly born for the protagonist, Captain Kel Cheris. Put into impossible situation after impossible situation, she comes through time and again on grit, flexibility in thinking, and mathematical genius. Then, when the undead and suspicius Jedao was added, it was impossible to look away.

      I'm sure I didn't understand everything in this novel, but I was happy to try. Looking forward to the next installment.
    • 4/5
      An amazing book - this is the first military book that I've read where the tactics are clearly explained, and I found it very interesting.The world is also amazing, a universe that operates under a set of rules requiring human observance on certain calendar days. Change the calendar, and change the rules of the universe. Its a very interesting idea, and its not magic or religion - because the ceremony/belief is created from the math, rather than the other way around.The characters themselves are well written, but fairly standard. The plucky commander with a knack for math being plucked to be the "body" of a once a great general who is now forever a prisoner. The people in charge are written fairly generically, each having a personality to fit their faction, but otherwise fairly standard.Where the book shines is the world it is set in. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Read because it was Hugo nominated. A book about the horrors of war, about people bred with formation instinct, about long planned rebellions.
    • 4/5
      This book is BANANAS in all the best possible ways. Yoon Ha Lee literally shoots his readers out of a cannon into this complex, nonstop world with no explanation or chance to catch your breath. I had to read the first several chapters multiple times just to figure out what the heck was going on. But once I found the groove - holy cow, what an amazing ride. This one takes some persistence, but is SO worth it!
    • 4/5
      Ninefox Gambit is a work of military science fiction in which the science fiction is almost incomprehensible, and the military actions are only slightly less so. That said, it is a beautiful book that is not really hampered by the weirdly exotic world that it drops the reader into, and this weirdness is handled so well that by the end, it almost feels natural. Despite the alien strangeness of the setting, the story told in the book is fundamentally almost ordinary, and that manages to root the book in such a way that even with exotic calendar based math warping reality, there is enough that is familiar to hold onto that the story doesn't dissolve into impenetrability. One of the fine lines that science fiction authors have to walk is the balance between presenting a world in which technology and culture are different enough from ours that it feels at least somewhat alien, but not so different that the fictional reality has ranged so far from the familiar that it is effectively unintelligible for the reader. In Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee flirts with this line, standing right at the border where the setting would become entirely baffling, and occasionally stepping across for just a little bit, but for the most part remaining just shy of mystifying.The central conceit of the novel is a brand of mathematics exists called "calendrical math", and by using it one can determine which collection of variables need to be controlled in order to change the way physics works, allowing for a variety of "exotic" technologies that are dependent upon this shared belief system. The government under which the various characters in the book live is the "Hexarchate" and it enforces a rigid calendrical orthodoxy of festivals, remembrances, and torture sessions to power the technologies that underpin the authority of the ruling Hexarchs. Deviations from the calendrical observances are treated as heresies and ruthlessly stamped out. Technology that does not depend upon calendrical math is called "invariant" technology, and is represented as generally being less effective than the calendrically powered "exotic" technologies - and with one notable exception none of the "invariant" technologies are ever really described. The "exotic" technologies are only described in slightly more detail than that: We get names like "Amputation Gun", and "Threshold Winnower", and "Carrion Gun", and a couple of dozen descriptions of various battle formations, but with the exception of the obvious effects some of them have, the technology is never really given any substantial definition.Some have said that Ninefox Gambit is about calendrical math, but that does not seem to be entirely accurate. There are lots of references to calendrical math in the book, with discussions of people doing computations and the effects of maintaining or not maintaining the calendar, but there is no actual math in the book. To a certain extent this is to be expected - after all, if Lee knew how to do calculations that would reshape the laws of physics, he would be publishing ground-breaking academic papers, not writing fiction. On the other hand, when science fiction authors introduce heretofore unknown technologies into their stories, they usually try to give the reader some general idea of the parameters under which those technologies operate. Calendrical math, however, seems to have no limitation at all, which I suppose might be the point, because once you posit a particular technology that can alter the very fundamental elements of reality, all bets would seem to be off. This gives the book a pervasive sense of unreality, as the central conflict involves putting down a heretical faction that has cropped up and instituted their own calendar with an associated competing set of technologies. Since what is possible with calendrical math is never really explained, the reader really has no grounding in what is possible in this conflict, and as a result, must be content with simply gliding along as the various interested parties explain what is happening as it happens and satisfied with never really understanding exactly why.One thing that is certain is that the political structure that makes up the Hexarchate are both instrumental to and supported by the maintenance of the orthodox calendrical arrangements. The nation is divided into six factions, each with a defined role within society. The Kel are the soldiers, and are imbued with "formation instinct", which causes them to reflexively follow orders. The Shuos are spies, assassins, and information brokers. The Nirai are mathematicians and creators of the exotic technologies that flow from the caldendrical math used by the Hexarchate. The Rahal are the magistrates and judges, charged with enforcing civil order. And so on. Each faction has its place in society, and each member of a faction has a defined role to play. The incomprehensibility of the technology is almost entirely irrelevant to the book. While it is weird to read a book that is basically military science fiction in which none of the actions taken by the various forces involved make any sense because the technology they are using relied upon odd patterns of behavior and geometrical configurations that are never given any more detail than a fanciful name, the simple fact is that all of this exotic technology is just a way to explain the existence of a society that is so rigid that the deadliest heresy is allowing people to have choices.The core story involves Captain Kel Cheris, a member of the Kel faction of the Hexarchate, whose use of unorthodox formations in response to having heretical weapons deployed against her unit has called attention to herself, leading to the Shuos Hexarch selecting her for a team to evaluate the best way to suppress a heresy that is causing calendrical rot at the heart of one of the most important regions of the Hexarchate in the key position of the Fortress of Scattered Needles. Cheris' proposal is to revive the dead and insane Shuos General Jedao and have him plan the attack that will allow the Hexarchate to retake the fortress intact and reimpose the proper calendrical order. This is a daring and dangerous idea: Daring because when he was alive, Jedao never lost a battle, and dangerous because in his final engagement he killed off the enemy and then turned on his own troops, slaughtering them to a man. The part of the plan that Cheris was not really prepared for is that to revive Jedao, he has to be attached to someone living, and that someone turns out to be her, creating a dialogue between the long-dead General and the living Captain (who is pretty quickly breveted to General for the operation).[More forthcoming]
    • 4/5
      Once I got used to the notion of a galactic empire where authority-imposed consensual reality has been taken to its logical, and quite mad, conclusion I wasn't sure what all the fuss was about. Perhaps I've just been too saturated in the sort of science fantasy prevalent in anime and manga to bat an eyebrow. That was until Lee sprung the real climax of this novel and I had to admit that yes, this was a really bizarre turn of events, as the plot turns down right psychedelic, and I'm certainly not going to give it away. Be that as it may I found this novel well worth reading and look forward to continuing with the trilogy.
    • 4/5
      Imaginative and challenging, a far different take on military SF.
    • 2/5
      Couldn't get into this enough to finish it. Gave up after a hundred pages. Felt like it was missing a setting, characters... all it has is exotic maths, nothing concrete to care about.
    • 2/5
      This has definitely confirmed that I don't care for MilSF. There's a lot of technobabble about weapons, rank and formations, and I couldn't work out who was fighting who, or why. I wouldn't have minded hearing a bit more about the servitors - small, generally animal-form sentient robots with an amused and slightly patronizing attitude to their human companions, but unfortunately they were only a sidebar to the piles of bodies.
    • 5/5
      Interestingly different premise! The concept being that as the universe seems to run on mathematical laws, how you choose to calculate effects the affects you can achieve. Given time as one of the more variable parameters in society (note this isn't actually true, absolute time is as invariate as quantum distance) by changing the calendar under which you live you can achieve remarkable discoveries. This quickly escalates to Empires viewing any other calendar as heretical - because their truth literally isn't valid there - and the opening of the book. Under the current Empire, obscure symmetry formations of soldiers produce shielding results from incoming weapons that generate especially disruptive effects. But it requires absolute disciple from the soldiers to maintain position, which in turn requires a dedicated military class with it's own unique culture and symbolisms. A captain who can adjust her units' symmetry on the fly has particularly good results - our heroine Captain Cheris. After winning a minor insurrection battle through the use of innovative tactics and quick maths, she's asked to participate in a strategy call to re-take a corrupted Fortress of the Empire. Deciding this is too far above her ability, her plan involves resurrecting the long stored General Jedao. He's a renowned traitor of 500 years, but hasn't yet lost any battle, under any mathematical system, even against appalling odds. But the casualty cost is frequently very high. Cheris quickly learns that Jedao likes to play games. It is a somewhat confusing concept, but more or less works. However it does mean that there's little predictability about what tactics or stratagems are viable, and little explanation (as with any high powered magic) why they can't just use that to destroy the enemy. Initially tightly focused, the POV meanders around a few characters which becomes distracting, especially when they're killed off still in 1st person. A little more explanation of the politics and motivations would probably have been useful, but the hook is well set for the fairly obvious sequel. Enjoyably different.
    • 4/5
      totally original, but similar in reach to Ann Leckie's work. highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      Reminiscent to the Ancillary series by Ann Leckie, but the "technology" is more like magic and without explanations, so at times it looks like anything is possible. So overall, yes there are some new ideas, but it's not as satisfying as Leckie new concepts.