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Ninefox Gambit

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Ninefox Gambit

By: Yoon Ha Lee
Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
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The first installment of the trilogy, Ninefox Gambit centers on disgraced captain Kel Cheris, who must recapture the formidable Fortress of Scattered Needles in order to redeem herself in front of the Hexarchate.

To win an impossible war, Captain Kel Cheris must awaken an ancient weapon and a despised traitor general.

Captain Kel Cheris of the Hexarchate is disgraced for using unconventional methods in a battle against heretics. Kel Command gives her the opportunity to redeem herself by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a star fortress that has recently been captured by heretics. Cheris' career isn't the only thing at stake. If the fortress falls, the Hexarchate itself might be next. Cheris' best hope is to ally with the undead tactician Shuos Jedao. The good news is that Jedao has never lost a battle, and he may be the only one who can figure out how to successfully besiege the fortress. The bad news is that Jedao went mad in his first life and massacred two armies, one of them his own. As the siege wears on, Cheris must decide how far she can trust Jedao - because she might be his next victim.

©2016 Yoon Ha Lee (P)2016 Recorded Books Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera Fiction
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In a lot of ways, this is a very good book. It's got really exciting, interesting concepts, and I loved the protagonists.

In other ways, not so much. By not explaining any of the rules of calendars, or how technology works, it feels both like: a) Lee is deliberately keeping information back for no reason other than to be obscure, and b) as if Lee is doing it so he doesn't have to live by any rules, and can make up whatever he likes. I like rules in my universes, even just a few, to give the world limits.

I really liked the narration, though, and may still listen to the second book. But not as essential a novel as the awards might make it out to be.

Mixed Feelings

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Yoon Ha Lee has written an engrossing story which on the surface is quite simple. Sci-fi wise anyway. No spoiler in saying that the concousness of a brilliant general is uploaded to a living soldier. There are conflicts both external and internal.

The difference here is that the interstellar empire relies on exotic technology based on a common and enforced calendar. The author drops us right in with no explanation. WTF! So some effort is required.

The narration is excellent and made this magi tech world easier to follow. The characteristics of each party are clear even when genders are deliberately confused. A boon to the listener.

Hard to get into but worth it

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narration was fairly painful. often too quiet to hear and would get loud again. voices weren't great either.

struggled to understand what was going on in the story although some intriguing moments

hard to hear narration and confusing book

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I don't have the brain to do this justice right now and everyone has said everything I could say with more eloquence, so I will probably come back to this at some point. But for now, I have so very many feelings about this book and how it has given me some perspective on my capacity to process and engage with certain things (due to my chronic conditions, severe ADHD, and listening to audiobooks, while playing Elden Ring as a way to keep my head above a protracted depressive episode), and how it's sometimes possible for me to have a personal and extremely subjective rating of a book, which I might end up rating differently because of its obvious quality and my experience of it being dictated by personal biases.

All that to say, I enjoyed this book and was blown away by the concepts, characters, and just how rich and realised everything and everyone was. It took me a long time to hooked on the main character and grounded in the detailed universe, and I just have to be honest that, as much as I love fantasy and sci-fi, the military and tactics of it all isn't my cup of tea. This and my own capacity issues meant that I struggled and was lost, which is very much on me, but the prose and inspiration always carried me through. Once the character dynamics became clear and continued to deepen I was absolutely hooked.

For the first half of the book I was feeling like this was a 3/5 for me, but a 4/5 actually, and ended up enjoying it so much the scores aligned. Honestly, this could be 5/5 and I'm just not the best person for this novel. I do plan to check out at least the next book in the series in the future and thoroughly recommend it to anyone who enjoys military and hard sci-fi.

The narration of the audiobook was really good. The voices and emotions were really effective. The only issue I had was the hard transition from character voice to abrupt and breaking the flow "they said". It's really jarring, but thankfully the author is great and there is very little repetition of that. This is something of a bugbear of mine.

So yeah, my brain is mush and this book is better then me.

Brilliant, Inspired, and Dense

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Such creativity and world building, yet constantly in danger of losing the listener. This audiobook punishes the inattentive.

Impenetrably creative

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