Scan barcode
A review by pilebythebed
Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee
5.0
Yoon Ha Lee wraps up his stunning Machineries of Empire trilogy much in the way he has preceded it. Both the eye-opening Ninefox Gambit and its satisfying sequel Raven Stratagem were shortlisted for the Hugo Award (Lee’s debut was shortlisted for pretty much every award going). And it will be no surprise if Revenant Gun joins them. The third book of the trilogy takes the universe and characters that Lee created in these earlier books and once again twists them into new shapes, like the mathematician that he is, Lee seems to be constantly finding new answers to the same equation.
At the end of Raven Stratagem the status quo of Lee's universe has been seriously upended. The calendar-based system which powered the universe had been overthrown, many of its architects (the hexarchs) were dead and chaos was threatening to flow into their wake. Revenant Gun jumps forward nine years from that point – the empire is split in two, and an ancient enemy is rising keen to see the status quo re-estbalished and the universe go back to the way it was.
Saying too much more about the plot would invite more spoilers. Suffice to say that Lee uses the book to once again reset his two main characters Shuos Jedao and Kel Cheris. Each book of the series has dug into a these two characters in a different way. In Revenant Gun there are two Jedaos, working for opposite sides. The Jedao working for Hexarch Nirai Kujen , an ancient, seemingly unkillable force with no respect for other lives, has been given the body of the grown man but only has the memories of the seventeen year old original Jedao. While the other Jedao, out of favour with the new regime that he helped establish, is on a mission to stop Kujen. But Lee also has plenty of time for a number of other point of view characters including Kel Brezan, introduced in Raven Stratagem, and a robot servitor character called Hemiola who goes on her own journey of discovery.
Revenant Gun, like its predecessors has war at its heart. The main characters are soldiers and the narrative revolves around the political and tactical manoeuvring around a couple of major campaigns. The Kel are soldiers, bred to serve and strictly follow command in order to keep formation. Those under the young Jedao's command hate him for crimes that he committed but that he has no memory of but are bound to serve him. Despite its military styling, Lee never shies away from the human cost of battle, and the consequences of being forced to blindly follow orders.
Revenant Gun has all of the trappings of modern space opera that have been wielded so effectively recently by exponents like Iain M Banks and Ann Leckie – including complex politics, a reconfigured society, snarky independent robots and sentient space ships. And like these authors, despite all the strangeness of the setting, there is a deep humanity to the characters and their concerns. And Lee’s mathematics-driven universe combined with the way he tells these tales has its own uniqueness which sets him both apart from these and other authors.
So that once again, on top of all of the verbal and descriptive flourishes and the military science fiction styling Lee has delivered a deeply humanistic tale that furthers the concerns of the previous volumes of the series but does not feel repetitive. Revenant Gun wraps the up Machineries of Empire series well. While there are possibly more permutations Lee can put his main characters through it is probably time to let them settle even if the future of this universe remains ambiguous. Because life, even in a mathematics driven universe, does not always have easy answers.
At the end of Raven Stratagem the status quo of Lee's universe has been seriously upended. The calendar-based system which powered the universe had been overthrown, many of its architects (the hexarchs) were dead and chaos was threatening to flow into their wake. Revenant Gun jumps forward nine years from that point – the empire is split in two, and an ancient enemy is rising keen to see the status quo re-estbalished and the universe go back to the way it was.
Saying too much more about the plot would invite more spoilers. Suffice to say that Lee uses the book to once again reset his two main characters Shuos Jedao and Kel Cheris. Each book of the series has dug into a these two characters in a different way. In Revenant Gun there are two Jedaos, working for opposite sides. The Jedao working for Hexarch Nirai Kujen , an ancient, seemingly unkillable force with no respect for other lives, has been given the body of the grown man but only has the memories of the seventeen year old original Jedao. While the other Jedao, out of favour with the new regime that he helped establish, is on a mission to stop Kujen. But Lee also has plenty of time for a number of other point of view characters including Kel Brezan, introduced in Raven Stratagem, and a robot servitor character called Hemiola who goes on her own journey of discovery.
Revenant Gun, like its predecessors has war at its heart. The main characters are soldiers and the narrative revolves around the political and tactical manoeuvring around a couple of major campaigns. The Kel are soldiers, bred to serve and strictly follow command in order to keep formation. Those under the young Jedao's command hate him for crimes that he committed but that he has no memory of but are bound to serve him. Despite its military styling, Lee never shies away from the human cost of battle, and the consequences of being forced to blindly follow orders.
Revenant Gun has all of the trappings of modern space opera that have been wielded so effectively recently by exponents like Iain M Banks and Ann Leckie – including complex politics, a reconfigured society, snarky independent robots and sentient space ships. And like these authors, despite all the strangeness of the setting, there is a deep humanity to the characters and their concerns. And Lee’s mathematics-driven universe combined with the way he tells these tales has its own uniqueness which sets him both apart from these and other authors.
So that once again, on top of all of the verbal and descriptive flourishes and the military science fiction styling Lee has delivered a deeply humanistic tale that furthers the concerns of the previous volumes of the series but does not feel repetitive. Revenant Gun wraps the up Machineries of Empire series well. While there are possibly more permutations Lee can put his main characters through it is probably time to let them settle even if the future of this universe remains ambiguous. Because life, even in a mathematics driven universe, does not always have easy answers.