Reviews tagging 'Death'

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

29 reviews

pedanther's review against another edition

adventurous dark 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, War, Violence, Suicide attempt, and Rape

Moderate: Body horror, Colonisation, Blood, Confinement, Grief, Mental illness, Sexual content, Torture, and Xenophobia

Minor: Ableism, Drug use, Gun violence, Slavery, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Alcohol, Bullying, Child death, Classism, and Cursing

m3lwar3's review

adventurous challenging dark tense fast-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Violence, War, and Murder

Moderate: Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Violence, Torture, Suicidal thoughts, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicide, Grief, Genocide, Suicide attempt, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, Murder, Mental illness, Gun violence, Death, and Colonisation

Minor: Gaslighting, Cursing, and Blood

bea_evans's review

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Very confusing book. Strange world, hard to know what was going on. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Suicidal thoughts, Gore, Rape, Blood, Death, Violence, War, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, and Gun violence

Moderate: Torture, Suicide, and Murder

hexillith's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Suicidal thoughts, Death, and War

Moderate: Rape and Genocide

grandiose_r's review against another edition

challenging dark 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Death, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Gaslighting, Murder, Gore, Gun violence, War, and Genocide

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts and Torture

Minor: Rape, Sexual assault, Animal death, Suicide attempt, Panic attacks/disorders, Child death, and Suicide

ducktective's review

adventurous emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, War, and Death

Moderate: Sexual harassment

Minor: Drug use

danielles_reads's review

adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

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

4.5

It was important to acknowledge numbers, especially when the dead were dead by your doing.

I am kicking myself for not reading this book sooner!!! This is military epic space opera at its finest: truly alien with immersive world building, complicated and nuanced characters, and a tense story. The scope is so huge and intricate and the writing is so smooth that I can’t believe this was Lee’s debut!!!

Honestly, this is the sci-fi version of what I expected The Traitor Baru Cormorant to be like 😅 It’s also got political intrigue, morally grey characters, and overthrow of a government, but it was sooo much more intriguing with characters that were still sympathetic, even though at times it was just as confusing.

The first two chapters took me a few tries to read and understand. This book really just throws you into the deep end without any info dumping. The info that is directly provided is done seamlessly within the text, and is only what you need. Everything else is mostly implied, but the major concepts started to make more sense to me in chapter 3. I’m still a little confused on the whole calendar as math keeping society together thing lol, but I read an interview of Lee’s where he mentioned past real world civilizations starting wars over changing calendar systems, which helped me appreciate the concept more. I see a lot of reviewers say this book has too much math, but I don’t think that’s accurate. There wasn’t much direct math—it’s just that the world building starts out so confusing and happens to be based on math. This world is also subtly more Eastern-inspired than Western, which is very refreshing in a space opera. It also includes references to assimilation and language / cultural differences between different peoples of the empire. Despite the oppression, the society is queernormative and equal between genders, and both main MCs are queer!

The layers in this though!! I did not expect what ended up happening in the end, and I loved how it was done. Such a novel concept to show

flashbacks from Jedao’s past directly from Cheris’ eyes, as if she was Jedao. It really humanized both characters. I didn’t expect Jedao to be rebelling against the heptarchate but it makes perfect sense. Now I’m also thinking Hexarch Mikodez is in on it too? Somehow. And Kujen is an interesting character… wonder what he’s going to do next.

I am really excited for the next book—what a cliffhanger!

I really liked Cheris as a character, and to see her wrangle with the effects of her commands was so good. Oh yeah, and her caring for the servitors when no one else even noticed them!! I’m a sucker for characters like that. I am really looking forward to learning more about her character separate from Kel Command and even Jedao. Lee also included short POVs of regular soldiers that really made me care for each person so quickly (must be from his practice of writing short stories). It was the same kind of thing Tasha Suri did in The Burning Kingdoms books, but frankly I think Lee did it better, as it flowed in the narrative better and didn’t take up as much space as hers did.

I considered giving this 5 stars, but ultimately it lost some points for essentially being one long battle scene until the last 10% or so. There were a lot of moving pieces, yes, but I think some of the middle portion could have been cut. It wasn’t clear where the book was going until the very end, and the constant battle speak and deaths started to get exhausting (which I think was intentional to prove a point but still).  Regardless, I read half of this book while waiting in line for Anime Expo, and it was definitely a great book to keep me company.

I can’t wait to continue on in the series! I am so impressed by Lee already.

~Yours in calendrical heresy~

“Be more assertive. You tend to defer to Nerevor. The problem with authority is that if you leave it lying around, others will take it away from you. You have to act like a general or people won’t respect you as one.”

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, and War

Moderate: Suicide, Rape, and Suicidal thoughts

talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark medium-paced

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

2.0

can't tell if I just have no brain power at the moment or if the worldbuilding and plot legitimately are never explained in a way that makes sense. want to maybe give it another shot in the future to see if my feelings change, but for now, just kind of impenetrable

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Gun violence, Death, Murder, Gore, and War

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Genocide, Sexual assault, Religious bigotry, Xenophobia, Body horror, Emotional abuse, and Rape

Minor: Child death, Torture, Sexual content, Suicide, Ableism, Transphobia, and Dysphoria

ofbooksandechos's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional 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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Death, and War

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Sexual assault, and Rape

Minor: Torture and Suicide

anna_hepworth's review

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

5.0

In short: I loved it, and I want more people to read it. 

In long: I've heard a lot of good things about this series, but none of them prepared me for how much I was going to love this story, how invested I was going to be in how the complex strands of politics and warfare across time and space are woven together. 

While the plot is good, and the characterisation is impressive, what held me in this story was the world-building, and the way that the writing slowly exposes it. Yoon Ha Lee has developed a mathematics and a magic that are one and the same, and that influence everything that happens in the story. 

Difficult parts of the story: The sheer numbers of sacrificial deaths, and the fact that just to maintain the government system, torture is a necessity. Fortunately the torture is only referenced, but the sheer numbers of senseless deaths do happen as necessary parts of the story. 

If you are someone who usually doesn't like complex political shenanigans and the logistics of war, it may still be worth reading this. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, War, and Body horror

Minor: Torture

Details on the body horror:

The soldier class have 'formation instinct', which reads as a brainwashing mechanism that means that the person no longer has control of their own body. There is also possession of one character by the consciousness of another as an important part of the plot