Review: Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

Check your formation instinct is ready, board your cindermoth, watch out for calendrical rot, swallow some carrion glass and blast some heretics with exotics in the name of hexarchate – it’s time to review NINEFOX GAMBIT!

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from gobbledygook and Ninefox Gambit is a military barrage of neologism. It is initially tough going – the premise is a future caste-based space-empire in which the underlying physics of the universe is open to mathematical manipulation. As a consequence, non-standard ideas are both physically dangerous and a military/social threat.

It is a bold idea and Yoon Ha Lee avoids info dumps and explanations but instead throws words, detached from clear concepts, at it. This is initially tiresome and the opening is a bit of a slog – so much so that I nearly abandoned the book. Note: don’t abandon this book.

It takes a little bit of initial effort but then it really hits its stride. A weird, violent space adventure as the central character(s) launch an offensive against a heretical space fortress.

There is a 5% dash of stuff that reminds a bit of John C Wright’s The Golden Age – a perspective of a human society whose understanding of how the universe works has itself become problematic. There is a hefty 40% of something Ann Leckie-ish – a cognitively unusual protagonist fighting for a space empire that is inherently wrong amid a background of military loyalties and a strange culture. The 40% overlaps with an Iain Bank’s vibe. Throw in some freaky space opera and a chunky dose of originality.