Ninefox Gambit - (The Machineries of Empire) by Yoon Ha Lee (Paperback)

About the Book

"To win an impossible war Captain Kel Cheris must awaken an ancient weapon and a despised traitor general"--Amazon.com.

Book Synopsis

New York Times Best-Selling Author - Nominated for the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Series - Winner of the 2016 Locus Award - Nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke Awards

When Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for her unconventional tactics, Kel Command gives her a chance to redeem herself, by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles from the heretics. Cheris's career isn't the only thing at stake: if the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next.

Cheris's 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.

Review Quotes

"Starship Troopers meets Apocalypse Now - and they've put Kurtz in charge... Mind-blistering military space opera, but with a density of ideas and strangeness that recalls the works of Hannu Rajaniemi, even Cordwainer Smith. An unmissable debut." --Stephen Baxter

"A high-octane ride through an endlessly inventive world, where calendars are weapons of war and dead soldiers can assist the living. Bold, fearlessly innovative and just a bit brutal, this is a book that deserves to be on every awards list." --Aliette de Bodard

"A striking space opera by a bright new talent." --Elizabeth Bear

"Beautiful, brutal and full of the kind of off-hand inventiveness that the best SF trades in, Ninefox Gambit is an effortlessly accomplished SF novel. Yoon Ha Lee has arrived in spectacular fashion." --Alastair Reynolds?

"Beautiful, vast and rooted in the real" --NPR

"Breathtakingly original" --The New York Times

"Daring, original and compulsive. As if Cordwainer Smith had written a Warhammer novel." --Gareth L. Powell

"For sixteen years Yoon Ha Lee has been the shadow general of science fiction, the calculating tactician behind victory after victory. Now he launches his great manoeuvre. Origami elegant, fox-sly, defiantly and ferociously new, this book will burn your brain. Axiomatically brilliant. Heretically good." --Seth Dickinson

"I love Yoon's work! Ninefox Gambit is solidly and satisfyingly full of battles and political intrigue, in a beautifully built far-future that manages to be human and alien at the same time. It should be a treat for readers already familiar with Yoon's excellent short fiction, and an extra treat for readers finding Yoon's work for the first time." --Ann Leckie

"With intergalactic battles and political schemes, Ninefox Gambit is set in an inventive world governed by calendrical systems." --The Portalist

"Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire is the kind of trilogy you love to discover -- one filled with space battles, political intrigue, and technology so advanced it feels magical." --SYFY

About the Author

Yoon Ha Lee is a writer and mathematician from Houston, Texas, whose work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed and The Magazine Of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He has published over forty short stories, and his critically acclaimed collection Conservation of Shadows was released in 2013. He lives in Louisiana with his family and an extremely lazy cat, and has not yet been eaten by gators.