Ninefox Gambit

ReRead January 2021
(Original review to follow, followed by my original DNF review. This book and I have been through the ringer.)

You know, I forgot a lot about this book. Anyway, liked it more on reread. In fact, if I wasn't quite adamant about not changing my rating for rereads, I'd raise this from four stars to five. (As it is, I'm still very tempted.)

The world building is inventive and unique and, a first read, has a huge learning curve ahead of them, but it's not a nice world. I've heard some complaints about the world building not being hard sci-fi enough - but I come from a background of reading fantasy and...it really puts me in mind of some of that stuff.

The characters...you get Cheris and Jedao. If you don't like one of both of them, I find it hard to believe you could like the book. Cheris is pretty okay. She gets better later in the book, for reasons that should be obvious if you know me. Jedao, I love. I'll have to finish the series first, because this is a character that could go badly off the rails, but he looks to be going on my list of favorite characters.

Final note: I like how this is the first book to a sci-fi trilogy - instead of a 16 book series (that still might never end) - and the book is just over 300 pages - instead of an 800 page doorstop. I need more of these.


Original Review

...Have you ever played Dragon Age: Inquisition? (There's a reason for this question.) Did you ever have a nice long talk about the Qunari with The Iron Bull?

I actually tried to read this book before, made about 80 pages and marked it as dnf. (Recently, when I was going through some of my books, I found this one and several others that I wanted to give another go.) Really, the only thing about this book I remembered was that it was so different than anything else I've ever read. And it is, so it took me awhile to read it because this wasn't a simple read.

However, another reason I dnf'd it was because of the world. Now, after reading it and having played Dragon Age: Inquisition, I realize that, at the very least, the Kel remind me of the Qunari. A society that is, essentially, brainwashed into doing exactly what they're supposed to, each person given a job for life, under the Qun (the Qunari religion/government thing-y) no one has a name, rather their name is their job description/title and in this book, when someone decides on a path, they loose their family name and are given a faction title before their first name. (Such as Kel Cheris where Kel is the faction the given name Cheris belongs to.) Oh, and if the brainwashing doesn't take the first time you can be ‘reeducated' under the Qun and, I don't know, returned to fledge-null in this world.

Honestly, the whole world is one that I find disturbing and very unsettling, but it is still an interesting read. And this is definitely a book that needs to be read in full. Which, it turns out, wasn't really a chore, because it is also a book that gets progressively better as it goes.


Original Review to follow:


DNF - PG 79

Why?

Because I'm already reading one book that's turning into a chore to get through, I don't need to make that two. Now, specifically about this book:

Nothing happens. The last time I saw anything remotely resembling action was before page twenty. But, the big thing? I can't connect to the characters because I can't understand them. Which also plays into the world building. This book is super heavy on the world building - something I'm already not a fan of - but the world building also makes no sense. I've heard several people call this a fantasy story, and it's more that than sci-fi, because we're dealing with things like magic ‘exotics' that only work when the ‘Kel' are in the right formation, something that also only works when there is no ‘calendar rot'. As best as I can figure, humans train at an academy for a prestigious position and the teachers recommend what faction they join (all of a sudden, this sounds REALLY familiar...) but the human has last say. Once they decide on their faction, they get...implanted with something? Something that, basically controls them and brainwashes them.

‘Someday someone might come up with a better government, one in which brainwashing and the remembrances' ritual torture weren't an unremarkable fact of life. Until then, he did what he could.'

Sorry. I really, really can't deal with a culture where brainwashing and ritual torture is seen as ‘unremarkable' and NO ONE thinks things need to change/the government needs to be overthrown.