Ninefox Gambit

I heard about this book from the Ancillary Review of Books podcast and their notion was that this book has some world building commonalities with Bank’s Culture novels: well that’s catnip to me. At about 25% through the book I still don’t understand what is going on because (I assume) the author has imagined completely different, unique technology as well as cultural milieu wrapped around the technology and the story starts in media res, so it appears that the fun for me will be in coming to an understanding…

…three days later…

I still don’t really understand or even quite imagine the technology. But ignoring that little oddity, the story is about political intrigue and warfare that plays out over hundreds of years in a star spanning empire. The characters must plot their survival knowing that information is being rationed, lies are spread thickly, and no one can be trusted, so as a result all decisions are gamed out, they are moves on a chessboard that the reader can not really understand. And yet the characters along with the game are interesting. And the intrigues within intrigues aspect of the story is not unlike Culture stories even as the politics and assumptions of human nature are entirely different.

From the moment Vahenz stepped into the cindermoth, glass fibers drifted in the air, loosened by the intrusion. Her suit's filters would protect her, but she couldn't escape the sensation of ashes on the roof of her mouth, as though she were walking through a forest a scant hour after the inferno sputtered out. Her light, ordinarily a clear white, turned the color of broken steel in the dark passages.

Anyway the writing is strong, strong enough to keep me entertained when I can not grasp exactly how the weapons work or why the characters do the things they do. This is the first book of a trilogy that I will probably get around to finishing.