Ninefox Gambit

I enjoyed this one overall. It was a fascinating dive into consciousness, magic, prejudice, rigidity, and also slices of life at times, all set in the simple framework of military scifi. You are dumped into the magic with no exposition. The author trusts that you'll follow along. And I loved that - being trusted that I could handle a foundational difference in the universe without needing my hand held was pretty cool. Unfortunately, there were some left turns in the narrative that could have used a little more hand-holding. I kept thinking I'd skipped a paragraph or so. I found this distracting enough that it detracted from the narrative. Still, it was quite a good effort by Lee, and I'd read more by him.

I have mixed feelings about this one. Lee does not conform to the usual spoon-feeding of background info through long swathes of explanation or dialogue. In fact, he assumes you can figure it out and marches on with the story without explaining how the magic works. Kudos to him for skipping exposition. He also does a masterful job of presenting his factions as what they are. Additionally, there were lovely slice of life moments.

However, there are times when he jumos POV, and it's very difficult to keep up with what's going on during those jumps. I kept feeling like I had missed a paragraph or two.

Overall, the book is enjoyable, interesting, and has a solid universe. I could have wished for a tiny bit more hand-holding from Lee, as that's really where the book fell down, but it was definitely worth my time.

This is the kind of book that really gets into worldbuilding, especially in the earlier parts. The reader is introduced to all sorts of weird concepts in the universe, and even if the earlier introductions feel like a bit of a dump, they are smooth—the setting is inventive with its space magic empire, but shows that it is a space magic empire from the get go. The overall concept of the book's universe is, by itself, also captivating.

There are ways to do vast, dystopian interstellar empires well, and there are ways to do them badly. Fortunately, Ninefox Gambit does them well. The story is pretty dark, and the setting is grim, but it doesn't feel gratuitous. Horrible things do happen to characters, but they happen to characters, instead of merely as an arbitrary background violence that punctuates the point. The story feels like it is, appropriately enough, about how people exist within the machineries of empire.

I enjoyed this thoroughly. The technology is so weird that you could argue it's fantasy, not science fiction. And I didn't understand a lot of what was going on. But it pulled me along. I'm looking forward to the next volume that is due out in April 2017.