Machineries of Empire by Yoon Ha Lee
Jan. 15th, 2018 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iariaNinefox Gambit
I ended up liking it more by the end and I see why it’s gotten so many accolades.
+ The world-building is super unique and complex, and once I understood it more really interesting. This universe and the whole calendrical system is pretty fascinating and also clearly magic scifi/tech explanation regardless.
+ The characters are great and I liked both Cheris and Jedao a lot. I loved the end of the novel with them becoming one person by Cheris’s choice. I loved her decision to take on Jedao’s campaign to bring down the hexarchate. I liked the memories of his past.
+ I really liked the servitors and their subplot and Cheris’s friendship with them.
+ I loved how much gender doesn’t matter and that any character seemingly has an equal chance of being female or male (and even some that are other). It’s just really nice to read a story where at least half the characters are female.
+ I hate the hexarchate, much in the way I hated the terrible world of that Richard Morgan series, because they are terrible and do terrible things and for the most of the book Cheris is very much a Kel and part of the system, and I am so going to enjoy Cheris/Jedao's take down of them.
+ All positives aside I did find this book really, really hard to get into. The writing is good and I like it in itself but the world-building is so unusual with so many names/concepts that I’m unfamiliar with that I found it difficult to immerse myself in the story. It ended up being a much denser and longer read than the writing style would suggest because of that. I actually really wasn’t sure I’d read the sequel for the first half of the book despite all the positives but by the end I was sold.
Raven Stratagem
I enjoyed this one a lot more right from the beginning and also got through it a lot quicker.
+ I wish we could have gotten more of Cheris/Jedao’s POV especially in the beginning but I understand why we didn’t. Jedao technically died in the last book but he was also a part of Cheris so it didn’t hit so hard and then for much of this book it was Jedao we were dealing with but then at the end with the Cheris reveal the novel seemed to pull back a little bit on just how much was Cheris and how much was Jedao. I guess I was fine with him technically being dead if he and Cheris had become one but the end with Cheris felt like it was implying that she was mostly still Cheris playing at Jedao which has weirdly left me very :( about it. That's not how I want it. I want both Cheris and Jedao. I want him to still be very much a presence, an actual ghost now. I guess we’ll see how it plays out in the next book.
+ I liked all the new characters that were introduced and this book made me love Mikodez and Zehun. One thing these books do really well is to create interesting characters you get attached to. I like how, as with the first book, we get the occasionally POV of a random character (who then often dies) because it fleshes out the world a lot more. I really liked that scene at Kel Command with servitor sin x^2 rushing to High General Aurel’s side to die with her/so she wouldn’t die alone, even though she never realised it was even sentient.
+ I do enjoy how this series does sexuality and gender and the way relationships are portrayed, though the casual incest was a bit surprising. But I like how homophobia and sexism are basically non-existent. I like how female feels almost like the default than male for once.
+ I liked Cheris plan and end goal and how she got there.
I ended up liking it more by the end and I see why it’s gotten so many accolades.
+ The world-building is super unique and complex, and once I understood it more really interesting. This universe and the whole calendrical system is pretty fascinating and also clearly magic scifi/tech explanation regardless.
+ The characters are great and I liked both Cheris and Jedao a lot. I loved the end of the novel with them becoming one person by Cheris’s choice. I loved her decision to take on Jedao’s campaign to bring down the hexarchate. I liked the memories of his past.
+ I really liked the servitors and their subplot and Cheris’s friendship with them.
+ I loved how much gender doesn’t matter and that any character seemingly has an equal chance of being female or male (and even some that are other). It’s just really nice to read a story where at least half the characters are female.
+ I hate the hexarchate, much in the way I hated the terrible world of that Richard Morgan series, because they are terrible and do terrible things and for the most of the book Cheris is very much a Kel and part of the system, and I am so going to enjoy Cheris/Jedao's take down of them.
+ All positives aside I did find this book really, really hard to get into. The writing is good and I like it in itself but the world-building is so unusual with so many names/concepts that I’m unfamiliar with that I found it difficult to immerse myself in the story. It ended up being a much denser and longer read than the writing style would suggest because of that. I actually really wasn’t sure I’d read the sequel for the first half of the book despite all the positives but by the end I was sold.
Raven Stratagem
I enjoyed this one a lot more right from the beginning and also got through it a lot quicker.
+ I wish we could have gotten more of Cheris/Jedao’s POV especially in the beginning but I understand why we didn’t. Jedao technically died in the last book but he was also a part of Cheris so it didn’t hit so hard and then for much of this book it was Jedao we were dealing with but then at the end with the Cheris reveal the novel seemed to pull back a little bit on just how much was Cheris and how much was Jedao. I guess I was fine with him technically being dead if he and Cheris had become one but the end with Cheris felt like it was implying that she was mostly still Cheris playing at Jedao which has weirdly left me very :( about it. That's not how I want it. I want both Cheris and Jedao. I want him to still be very much a presence, an actual ghost now. I guess we’ll see how it plays out in the next book.
+ I liked all the new characters that were introduced and this book made me love Mikodez and Zehun. One thing these books do really well is to create interesting characters you get attached to. I like how, as with the first book, we get the occasionally POV of a random character (who then often dies) because it fleshes out the world a lot more. I really liked that scene at Kel Command with servitor sin x^2 rushing to High General Aurel’s side to die with her/so she wouldn’t die alone, even though she never realised it was even sentient.
+ I do enjoy how this series does sexuality and gender and the way relationships are portrayed, though the casual incest was a bit surprising. But I like how homophobia and sexism are basically non-existent. I like how female feels almost like the default than male for once.
+ I liked Cheris plan and end goal and how she got there.
