Reading: Raven Stratagem
Feb. 11th, 2018 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartYoon Ha Lee's Ninefox Gambit was one of the most stunning books I read last year, so I was very much looking forward to reading the sequel, Raven Stratagem. It didn't disappoint. Raven Stratagem is perhaps slightly less focused on war and more on the politics behind the war; where Ninefox Gambit mostly stuck to one viewpoint with occasional ventures into other heads to show the realities of battle and some of the background, Raven Stratagem switches between three main viewpoint characters (plus occasional ventures into other heads), which allows Lee to explore the reality of life in a particularly creepy space fascist society (the hexarchate makes the Imperial Radch seem positively fluffy and liberal by comparison) and to convey brilliantly the way that people carry on being people, with all their quirks and trivial concerns, even in situations that seem intolerable to an outside eye.
The book also tackles gender in an interesting way; the first book showed us a society which, for all its flaws, seemed to make no distinction between men and women when it came to appointments to high office, and had a central character who was a gay woman sharing her body with a bisexual man. This book features at least three distinct genders and includes multiple trans and genderqueer characters, while also making it clear that in this world biology and gender aren't necessarily linked; "manform" and "womanform" are used to indicate physical appearances which don't necessarily correspond to gender (one of the viewpoint characters, Brezan, is a man who we are also told is a womanform, and an agender character is described as a manform).
In some ways, this is a slightly easier read than Ninefox Gambit because it builds on background already established in the first book; I still didn't understand the hexarchate's sufficiently-advanced-technology any more than I did before, but I had realised that it wasn't actually necessary to understand it. The plot, on the other hand, is probably twistier than the first book, with subterfuge and double-crossing all over the place and one element which makes me doubt my understanding of the events of the first book for most of the second. Between that and some really quite disturbing scenes of genocide and repression, "a slightly easier read than Ninefox Gambit" definitely doesn't mean it's a book to embark on when you're looking for light reading. If you want something a bit chewier, though, it's great and definitely my favourite new space-opera SF since Ancillary Justice.
(Also, because I have been watching Star Trek: Discovery, I realised when I started reading Raven Strategem that my mental image of Shuos Jedao is always going to be Jason Isaacs as Gabriel Lorca.)
The book also tackles gender in an interesting way; the first book showed us a society which, for all its flaws, seemed to make no distinction between men and women when it came to appointments to high office, and had a central character who was a gay woman sharing her body with a bisexual man. This book features at least three distinct genders and includes multiple trans and genderqueer characters, while also making it clear that in this world biology and gender aren't necessarily linked; "manform" and "womanform" are used to indicate physical appearances which don't necessarily correspond to gender (one of the viewpoint characters, Brezan, is a man who we are also told is a womanform, and an agender character is described as a manform).
In some ways, this is a slightly easier read than Ninefox Gambit because it builds on background already established in the first book; I still didn't understand the hexarchate's sufficiently-advanced-technology any more than I did before, but I had realised that it wasn't actually necessary to understand it. The plot, on the other hand, is probably twistier than the first book, with subterfuge and double-crossing all over the place and one element which makes me doubt my understanding of the events of the first book for most of the second. Between that and some really quite disturbing scenes of genocide and repression, "a slightly easier read than Ninefox Gambit" definitely doesn't mean it's a book to embark on when you're looking for light reading. If you want something a bit chewier, though, it's great and definitely my favourite new space-opera SF since Ancillary Justice.
(Also, because I have been watching Star Trek: Discovery, I realised when I started reading Raven Strategem that my mental image of Shuos Jedao is always going to be Jason Isaacs as Gabriel Lorca.)
