Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee
More calendrical warfare, more mathematics, more heresy!
Raven Stratagem, published in 2017, is the second book in the awesome Machineries of Empire trilogy by Yoon Ha Lee. While this review doesn't contain spoilers for Raven Stratagem, it does spoil some major plot points from the first book, so if you haven't read Ninefox Gambit, check out my review of it here:
Michal “Michael” Belička
The story
In Ninefox Gambit, the heretics at the Fortress of Scattered Needles are destroyed by Brevet General Kel Cheris and the ghost of Shuos Jedao. But this revival of the Liozh heresy is revealed only to be a part of a larger invasion by the enemy Hafn.
Following the assassination of General Kel Chrenka, General Kel Khiurev is charged with assembling a fleet to fight the Hafn instead. But when a person claiming to be Shuos Jedao, the undead tactician turned arch-traitor boards her flagship, Khiurev has no choice but to relinquish the control of her fleet and hope that the rogue general will do what he promised—defend the Hexarchate from the enemy Hafn.
The review
I don't want to spoil anything too important from the second book (or indeed the ending of the first one), so I'll just say this much: While protagonists from the first book are still present, in a way, the second book focuses on an almost entirely new cast.
If you grew to love Cheris and Jedao in Ninefox Gambit as much as I did, this change might be a bit difficult to swallow. After all, we were introduced to the world of the Hexarchate through these two characters and their intense dynamic. Cheris taught us mathematics while Jedao helped us learn strategy. Instead, we now have General Kel Khiurev, Kel Brezan, and, most notably, Hexarch Shuos Mikodez.
But there is a good reason for this change.
While the first book was a brilliant, almost one-shot type adventure that was pretty self-contained, in this second book, Yoon Ha Lee takes his time to expand the world and set the stage for a larger narrative, a story about the Hexarchate itself.
Aside from the Hafn invasion—which becomes almost a backdrop—we learn about the life of Hexarchate citizens, the many downsides of living there, and even the dealings of the Hexarchs themselves.
This expansion of scope means—as is often the case with second parts of trilogies—that Raven Stratagem slows down in some places compared to Ninefox Gambit. But this is to be expected, with multiple points of view and plot threads being added. And while this does make reading Raven Stratagem a bit more tedious (honestly, I should probably just blame Ninefox Gambit for its brilliant pacing), the plot quickly picks up and resumes at a faster pace.
Raven Stratagem, however, is not one of those middle books that serve only as a bridge between the first and the final book of a trilogy, expanding on the story without resolving any of it. Here, Yoon Ha Lee was able to leverage multiple plot threads into a satisfying climax with some amazing plot twists, both resolving problems and introducing new ones, to be explored in the final book.
As I mentioned already, Raven Stratagem is a story about the Hexarchate itself. While we already get signals of this in the first book, Raven Stratagem places a lot more emphasis on the fact that the Hexarchate is a terrible place to live, with each successive generation of leadership finding new and exciting ways to limit the personal freedoms of its subjects.
Here, I want to commend Yoon Ha Lee on his wonderful character work, as we get these beautiful—and sometimes tragic—backstories explaining the reasons why various characters decided to serve the Hexarchate, and how they once hoped to change it from within.
And while all the new characters are entertaining in their own way, the absolute highlight of the book is none other than Hexarch Mikodez, the ruler of the Shuos faction. While Mikodez—and some other Hexarchs—have appeared in Ninefox Gambit, in Raven Stratagem he becomes a more prominent character and chapters told from his point of view are the most fun.
Mikodez is the ultimate schemer, and his ADHD means that he is always cooking up something—always several steps ahead of everyone else with multiple contingencies for all sorts of unwanted developments. He has hundreds of hobbies, eats too much candy, and he drugs himself to avoid having to sleep and to improve his concentration—and he still can't focus on one thing for more than a couple of minutes. And that is to say nothing of his antics with his assistant Shuos Zehun—on a side note, I adore how Zehun loves cats and names their cats after famous Shuos assassins.
I like to think that, in this second book, Mikodez replaces Jedao as our main psychopath. Even his signifier—a mystical symbol or emblem that might or might not mean something about the person it belongs to—has, at some point, changed to Ninefox Crowned with Eyes (Jedao's original signifier) before reverting to Ninefox Smiling.
He's paranoid, he's fun, he's all the things we love about the Shuos!
The conclusion
While I don't think anything can top Ninefox Gambit and how impressive that first contact with the world Yoon Ha Lee has created is (and let's be honest, with this one, we already know what we're getting into), I think Raven Stratagem comes pretty damn close.
The second book takes a much more conventional approach that some readers may find more accessible (again, since we're in known territory, there's no need to make it difficult) and chooses to instead focus on painting the broader picture. Here, the story becomes more character-driven with rich backstories and amusing antics. And while I did want it to have more of Cheris and Jedao, I have grown to love all the new characters as well.
At this point, I want this to become a genre unto itself. I want the stories set in the Hexarchate to never end. I want Yoon Ha Lee to give me a twenty-book series about calendrical warfare, heresy, mathematics, the whole shebang. Oh yes, and a lot more calendrical fencing!
