Lee has turned this elementary concern into a game of chicken he plays with himself. So how much can you screw with a world before you take it completely to pieces?. A living soldier named Cheris with an unlikely facility for mathematics, and Jedao, the centuries-old ghost of a brilliant general and known mass-murderer who lives in her shadow and in her head. It is the result of heretical forces allied against this world's rulers, and someone is going to have to go in there and purge the non-conformist thought from the system.

Here's the plot, presented as simply as I can make it: In the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a 'calendrical rot' has begun altering the fabric of reality.

And then twisting himself in the opposite direction, asking (and answering) how, in a place so alien, can you root the experience in something that gives it the roundness of an internal humanity? So how much can you screw with a world before you take it completely to pieces? How much fundamental similarity to our own must an author's imaginary place possess in order to hang together for a reader? With Ninefox, Lee has turned this elementary concern into a game of chicken he plays with himself, pushing hard to see how many of the essential, structural underpinnings of the universe can be removed before the fabric of stars unravels. Lee's is a universe that operates under different laws than does ours, where science and technology are based not around the manipulation of atoms (necessarily), but the interface of numbers and observance of a calendar, where power derives from the order given unto things by acceptance and belief in them. As the siege wears on, Cheris must decide how far she can trust Jedao–because she might be his next victim.And nothing gets easier from there. The bad news is that Jedao went mad in his first life and massacred two armies, one of them his own. 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. If the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next.Ĭheris’s best hope is to ally with the undead tactician Shuos Jedao. Cheris’s career isn’t the only thing at stake. Kel Command gives her the opportunity to redeem herself by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a star fortress that has recently been captured by heretics. To win an impossible war Captain Kel Cheris must awaken an ancient weapon and a despised traitor general.Ĭaptain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for using unconventional methods in a battle against heretics. The first installment of the trilogy, Ninefox Gambit, centers on disgraced captain Kel Cheris, who must recapture the formidable Fortress of Scattered Needles in order to redeem herself in front of the Hexarchate.

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee