Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Ninefox Gambit

This book took a bit of getting into - the first chapter is set in a battle scene in which horrible things that are both gory and confusing happen to the soldiers. It took quite a while to figure out what the deal was with this book (when people say it is ancillary justice crossed with divergent they are certainly right!). This combination sounds improbable and when I first saw it did not fill me with joy but it is more like Ancillary Justice (in that the setting is a massive evil space empire and everyone is queer) with the faction system being a little more complex than that of Divergent and there is a bunch of stuff a bit like astrology? I'm not a fan of astrology so those elements took a bit of getting used to. Lee also has a somewhat disorienting way of progressing a story which was the only thing that stopped me from giving this book five stars. Sometimes scenes or joins between scenes were a little disorienting or I found it difficult to visualise what was happening with the tactics.

However, despite these obstacles in the way of my enjoyment I still had a great time reading this book. Something about Lee's characters made me get very attached to them in very short amounts of time - even minor side characters - so when they inevitably met a nasty end I was like :( . Cheris and Jedao are the main characters and I liked both of them (for very different reasons!). Jedao is terrifying! From the beginning we know his reputation while his motivations are very much unknown and this combined with him basically being a ghost make him a little scary already. Then Lee wrote a couple of terrifying scenes and the I was feeling just as scared as Cheris! Jedao is the kind of person MCU Loki wishes he was! I think Lee does a good job explaining why Jedao went on his murder spree without forcing the reader to sympathise.

I would advise anyone who doesn't like reading about genocide, weapons of mass destruction (and their gory effects on squishy humans) to maybe skip this one as although the way people are killed is very abstract it is still quite disturbing.

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cinnamonandpancakes's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This book!!! The only reason I didn't give it a full 5 stars is that some points I found were unnecessarily slow, but for the most part this book was brilliant in worldbuilding and character work.

This is very much a 'first of a trilogy' plot, with an overarching plot laid wide across the end but in such a satisfying way I can't help but adore it.

Cheris and Jedao are tricky characters but they were very compelling all the way through, even when I thought one or both of them were evil!

This is not a book to read for a simple story of good and evil, many awful things are caused by protagonist and antagonist aligned characters, but it is excellently constructed and a joy to watch all the moving parts fall into place.

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ellisdex's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Really good, once you get past the unexplained worldbuilding jargon at the very beginning. Ignore what you don't understand and move on. It's worth it.

The calendar- and mathematics-based magic system is incredibly cool once you figure out how it works, particularly as the book is from the viewpoint of someone who gets it more than most. The servitors are fantastic. The characters all feel very real within the parameters set by the world. Everyone is human - everyone has a family, hobbies, tiny details about their lives that the book explicitly says is sad to lose in war. Honestly I wasn't sure what to expect with the theming, but it's about the cost of war, whether the ends justify the means, and how governments keep themselves functioning at the expense of their own. It's incredibly interesting and very poignant. Super excited to read the rest of the series.

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rorikae's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

'Ninefox Gambit' by Yoon Ha Lee is an engaging military sci-fi story that delves into a unique world.
The story centers around disgraced Captain Kel Cheris, who is given the opportunity to redeem herself by retaking a star fortress. To do this, Cheris allies herself with the undead Shuos Jedao, whose ghost is paired with her so that she can hear his voice in her head. As they work to retake the Fortress of Scattered Needles, Cheris learns more about Jedao's past and the truth behind what has long made others consider him mad.
Yoon Ya Lee creates an engaging and unique world in 'Ninefox Gambit.' The political machinations that are going on behind the scenes, paired with Cheris' story interweave to create an engaging plot. I think one of the really strong points of the story is how we slowly learn more about Jedao through his memories. Lee slowly peels away at Jedao's madness to learn more about what drove him to do what he has become infamous for.
I would recommend reading this story instead of listening to it as I often found myself confused while listening. The complexity of the world, including a lot of really specific vocabulary, means that you have to pay close attention to follow along with what is happening, especially as we move between Cheris' story and Jedao's past. If you like military science fiction and complex worlds, I highly recommend 'Ninefox Gambit.' I'm interested to see what happens next, especially as we learn more about the world and Jedao.

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booksthatburn's review against another edition

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adventurous dark reflective sad tense

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

The worldbuilding in NINEFOX GAMBIT is deep and immersive and very detailed in a way that sometimes was a little overwhelming, but the dynamic between the MC and her shadowy guide help to make sure that the importance of something was explained even if the details or dizzying and arcane and fantastic, the characters weren’t worried about making sure I would know what was going on, but the structure of the book itself and the setup for the main characters combined to make sure that even if I didn’t know what a word or detail meant in this world, I knew why it mattered. “Hard sci-fi“ is a phrase that almost feels appropriate here, but is wholly inadequate to summarize the way the little details makes this book shine. It’s hard sci-fi from a different universe, with all the precision and technical jargon from a world where the way someone stands in a formation aligns with their calendar to create devastating beauty and destruction in a battle, where manipulating holy days can change everything.

My favorite thing in this book is I now get to add “calendrical rot” to my vocabulary, I don’t know how I will use it after this but I’m very glad to have it now. My second favorite thing is the way that behavioral manipulation and mind games are shown in such a subtle and empathetic way. I was so immersed in the MC‘s perspective that while I trusted her as a narrator, my understanding of what was going on was very tied to how much she did or did not figure out about what her shadowy companion was doing, since we never get his perspective. Their conversations are fascinating, the way they jointly and separately have to navigate the MC’s ability to have conversations with other people led to some great moments, and it meant that wow there were times that had pretty straightforward delivery of a lot of information, they only technically fell in the category of info dump because they were things that naturally needed to be explained. Even the little moments where the companion comments on the way something has changed was used artfully so that the reader could care more about what it Is even though the MC needed to learn what it Was.

I’m a big fan of interstitial chapters and the ones here are fantastic examples of world-building and subtle character development. They’re funny and add up to be very informative but the story will still make sense if you don’t pay attention to them. They’re a window into a perspective that’s very different from the MC, and this is used in a combination of explicit and implicit world-building to show literally what someone says about their actions and to demonstrate other ways of thinking about events shown in the main chapters.

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therainbowshelf's review against another edition

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challenging dark medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I'm not a huge fan of sci-fi with dystopian worlds or of books focused on war tactics (especially sci-fi), so most of this book was so-so for me. However, the last fifth of the book was highly captivating. I went from not planning to read book 2 to looking up where I could get ahold of it. Throughout, I loved that the author's background in math became an integral part of how the war tactics worked. Very fun!

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trazac's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I had a particularly difficult time reading this book. It is outright confusing and meant to be. There is borderline zero exposition, so all details are scrapped from conversation and narration, precious though they be. Also borderline zero descriptions of what anything looks like. Perhaps that won't be an issue with some readers, but I had a hard time picturing anything that was happening which only lead to more confusion. The middle 60% of the book is outrageously boring, with interspersed sections of brand new POVs of characters who are spun up with a lot of detail only to die immediately.

Otherwise well written. Good character dynamic and somewhat compelling theater of war style writing that I just personally cannot find interest in. Character growth somewhat limited and complicated. World is built somewhat well but utterly confusing. For a relatively short book, a ton of information is introduced and never explained. Perhaps that makes the world more true-to-life but it also means many people will walk away with a totally different idea of what happened.

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