Machineries of Empire

Machineries of Empire

Ninefox Gambit (2016), Raven Strategem (2017), Revenant Gun (2018)

Yoon Ha Lee

After I read Ninefox Gambit, the first in Lee’s Machineries of Empire trilogy, I wrote a blog post where I kicked off by immediately saying “I know it looks like a space opera, but maybe you should think of it as high fantasy.” Frankly, now I re-read that and I’m embarrassed. I think I sound like Comic Book Guy.

But all the same, the amorphous and possibly irrelevant line separating science fiction and fantasy is something that I’ve been thinking about lately. Every work of speculative fiction presents the audience with a universe and asks them to accept it on its own terms. In Yoon Ha Lee’s Machineries of Empire, that universe runs on strange indistinguishable-from-magic technology that doesn’t quite work like anything that the reader has seen before. There’s a lot for us wrap our brains around in Ninefox Gambit.

The remainder of the trilogy, Raven Strategem and Revenant Gun, do spectacular things with the foundation the first book lays. Trusting that the reader is now up to speed on how this universe works, Lee delivers a tightly focused story and fewer viewpoint characters than the first book to describe an insurrection that could mean the end of the brutal interstellar empire known as the Hexarchate.

The Hexarchate is named for its government split into six factions, each ruled by a Hexarch. Each division has a well-defined function within the empire; for instance, the Kel supply the troops and are known for their mental conditioning that renders them obedient, while the Shuos are the spies and schemers. (The author has this spoiler-free cheat sheet on the six factions on his website which I unfortunately didn’t know about until I had finished the series.)

The Hexarchate’s weird technology relies on everyone following and organizing their thoughts around an incredibly intricate calendar, which happens to require people’s death by slow torture on specified holidays for the full effect. Rival calendars constitute an existential threat to this system, so the Hexarchate stamps out these heresies with overwhelming force.

And that was what spurs the plot of the first book, Ninefox Gambit, in which the Hexarchate was forced to bring out a reserve weapon to deal with the latest heretical rebellion: infamous general Shuos Jedao. Hundreds of years ago, Jedao was executed following a battle that he won after he unnecessarily caused over a million collateral deaths and murdered his command crew. But it would be a shame to let such a tactical mastermind just simply die, so one of the Hexarchs kept his soul around through technological means of his own devising. (This particular Hexarch is a 900-year-old mad scientist who the reader should keep an eye on because he is important.)

The technology requires a body to tether Jedao’s spirit to, which brings us to the first book’s main protagonist: Kel Cheris, a military officer with a good head for the bizarre math this universe’s technology runs on. The plan was for Cheris to cautiously use Jedao’s experience and guidance as she led the Hexarchate forces against the heretics.

The events of Ninefox Gambit did not go according to plan.

At the start of book two, Raven Strategem, Jedao appears to have fully taken over Kel Cheris’ body, and he has taken advantage of the Kel’s obedience conditioning to gain possession of a formidable Kel military force for his rebellion against the Hexarchate. Cheris/Jedao cease to be a viewpoint character for Book 2 (keeping it uncertain who is actually in control of Cheris’s body), as new protagonists come to the forefront, including both military officers and a Hexarch with a decadent and incestuous personal life whose schemes are a main driver of the military and political strife that continue through the end of the final book, Revenant Gun.

The first book was heavy going with all the weird worldbuilding to wrap my head around, but now that the setting is established the second and third books are real page-turners. The setting is strange, the technology is unusual and often upsetting (some of the calendar-based weapons are pretty nasty), and the stakes are high, as the Hexarchate is a violent, brutal entity. Machineries of Empire, at its core, is a work of military SF, though one that’s set in a universe where physics follows very strange rules.

And there are numerous other angles I could discuss here but others might be better qualified, such as the exploration of queer sexuality. On the whole, this world is unlike any I have read about before, and I will remember it.