Camestros Felapton

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Hugo 2019 Novels: Revenant Gun

Yoon Ha Lee’s Machineries of Empire has always been ambiguous about the protagonist of the story. The stories begin and end with Cheris but Shous Jedao is central to each book. The middle book (Raven Stratagem) confuses matters further with Cheris apparently subsumed beneath Jedao (and identified by most as Jedao) but with twists. Here in book three we have not only Cheris/Jedao as a character (mainly from the point of view of a servitor) but all a second Jedao conjured up as a counter-weapon to Cheris.

By the end of the book, Cheris is still something of an enigma and it is Jedao whose life and motivations we have explored. We’ve also learned more about the Hexarchate and its reasons for existence in the process. The story remains one that requires not so much a suspension of disbelief but a suspension of understanding. The Hexarchate’s calendrical technology is beyond our ken (as made apparent in the opening chapters of Nine Fox Gambit) and that’s just how it is — you can be forever confused by what kind of tactical advantage a ‘calendrical spike’ might bring or you can just let go and enjoy the ride.

The rewards for letting go are high. This is a tense and intriguing conclusion to the trilogy. Dark secrets are revealed and there’s greater concessions to comprehensibility than in earlier books (assuming you can keep track of your Jedaos). If you were wary but struggled through the first two books reluctantly, I suspect you’ll find this one a more conventional read. On the other hand, if Ninefox was too WTF, the trail of subsequent events would make this novel inaccessible as a stand alone read. I haven’t read the surrounding short stories (e.g. Extracurricular Activities) so I can’t say if they are a better route in.

As for the Hugo Awards, I suspect Machineries of Empire is a stronger contender for Best Series than Revenant Gun is for Best Novel. It is not a notably better story than the previous volumes and necessarily suffers from the need of a final book to wrap up story lines. It’s hard to see how this novel will win over anybody who was put off by Ninefox which had strong Marmite qualities. On the other hand this is a sparklingly original piece of space opera that very effectively demonstrates how alienating technological advance can be.

I’ll come back to my thoughts on this when I look at best series. In the meantime I can only applaud a bloody good read.

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21 responses to “Hugo 2019 Novels: Revenant Gun”

  1. +1 to everything you said. And yes, Extracurricular Activities is somewhat more conventional than the novels, though “somewhat” doesn’t mean run-of-the-mill.

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  2. Yeah, this was a little behind Raven Stratagem in my rankings of the series for me, but I still greatly enjoyed it….Lee does a phenomenal job finally building up Kujen as a character, which I really liked given that he was basically just a cackling bad guy in the first two books to the extent he was ever on-page. And Jedao2 was a rather interesting addition to the existing cast, as is Hemiola.

    My vote for Best series is going to be tainted I suspect because I got an e-ARC of Hexarchate Stories, which comes out later this year with mostly already published stories but also a novella that is a direct sequel to Revenant Gun which I really enjoyed. I mean I loved this series already (Ninefox got my Hugo vote two years ago), but still.

    My review of Revenant Gun is here if you’re curious: https://garik16.blogspot.com/2018/06/scififantasy-book-review-revenant-gun.html

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  4. “It’s hard to see how this novel will win over anybody who was put off by Ninefox which had strong Marmite qualities.”

    I’m looking forward to your new web site with book reviews on the Marmite scale.

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      • Vegemite?

        I don’t think it’s in with a real chance in Best Novel because it’s the third book of a truly odd trilogy and can’t really be got (as much as anything set in that universe can be “got”) without having read the previous two books. I’m hopeful that enough people loved the series enough for Machineries… to have a good shot at Best Series though. For me I’d rank it right up there with Broken Earth as something of a masterpiece.

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      • Machineries of Empire’s biggest problem was that it came out at the same time as the Broken Earth trilogy and was therefore overshadowed at the awards. I don’t see Revenant Gun taking best novel, though it’s at the top of my ballot at the moment. But I really hope it wins best series this year.

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  5. I hope for best series. The world building is great and its one of the best iterations of “advanced technology is magic” Ive read. In fact reading the third book I started to think about designing a board game for this universe, which is the highest praiose I can give.

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      • Hmmm… have sort of a Fluxx-like set of control rules on tiles, and a board where each space has one of the tiles face-down on it. Probably go for a random dealing, but tiles of different rule types are at set locations, so everybody’s guaranteed to have one tile that changes acquisition of new territory within easy reach. Everybody starts at one location with a default rule set, one of those rules being how you can take over new territory. Every time you take over a new previously-unused location, you take that tile and add it to your set. At least one of the ‘rules’ would describe how you can change the current rules between what’s your currently visible rules and what you have in your face-down set. Once you expand out enough to be able to engage with your opponent, taking territory that doesn’t have its own default rules, things change. Depending on the rules you have in play, you may be able to take one of your opponents tiles, either face-up or face-down, and use it yourself, or maybe you can’t do anything but make it part of your territory.

        Presumably there would be some advantage given if you can’t steal tiles; play-balancing something like this would be a pain.

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  7. It took me three tries (the second one I made it to 100 pages) for me to appreciate Ninefox Gambit. What finally worked for me was, as you say, to abandon the attempt to understand the calendrical worldbuilding, and just accept that it was a thing which allowed people to define the malleable physics for an existing region of space.

    Once I “got” that part, I enjoyed the novel and its sequels immensely. I thought that the author did a great job sticking the landing in Revenant Gun. And like bormgans, I think that the Sharkes’ criticism of the books as being ethically corrupt due to the nature of their subject matter is wrong.

    I place a high premium on stand-alone-ness when evaluating Best Novel finalists, and for that reason this book will not likely be at the top of my ballot (The Calculating Stars will be my top choice there). However, I think as a Series it’s especially strong, and it will be vying with Xuya and October Daye for the top of my ballot in that category.

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  8. I’m only now reading Ninefox Gambit, and at less than halfway through, my description would be the most obscure and confusing straight A to B plot I’ve ever encountered. So far the objective is clear and unchanging, the character traits and their collisions are familiar, the heroes and villains seem to be clearly delineated with the exception of Jedao who is meant to be a puzzle, the machinations aren’t that subtle… and yet I have no idea what all is really going on or what is going to happen next. And it’s not just the space opera weaponry that seems to also be magic which seems to also be high-plane mathematics.

    I’m enjoying it but it is work to enjoy. I am still hoping to get to the end of the series before final voting time. I’m also a bit scared to.

    Someone said Extracurricular Activities was a bit of an easier entry point, but I don’t know that for sure.

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    • Yeah, Ninefox is really confusing coming in cold. I will say the second book, Raven Stratagem, explains a lot. It’s much more accessible than Ninefox, to me. Also, the side stories–in particular, The Battle of Candle Arc, even more so than Extracurricular Activities–fill in quite a bit.

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      • The cool thing about Candle Arc is that it’s based on a real historical event – the Battle of Myeongnyang, in which Yi Sun-shin handed the Japanese their ass with even worse odds than Jedao faced.

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