Ninefox Gambit

I had no idea what to expect when I went into Ninefox Gambit, and it was extraordinarily confusing for the first... 100 pages or so. The book begins in media res during a big future/magic infantry battle except the magic might be high-level mathematics? In the first 20 pages alone are going to be puzzling your way through deliberately alien concepts like "calendrical rot" and "linearizable force multiplier formations" and "threshold winnowers". These aren't presented a friendly, "here's a new word, we will explain it now, or at least provide some context way." They are presented as things everyone takes for granted, and if you're lucky, in the next 20 or 50 pages you will gather enough contextual knowledge to piece together what they actually mean in the world of the book.

That could all be a really bad thing, but ultimately it ended up being kind of like a fun puzzle.

Ninefox Gambit (and the following two books in the Machineries of Empire trilogy) ultimately pays off all the weird math/magic stuff. It ends up being an extremely powerful metaphor for the systems that underlay all imperial powers. It's kind of like LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", but writ large as a space opera. I give this book four stars, though I would give the series as a whole five? The series as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and I like the first book more in retrospect having read the next two books in the series.

An exciting book of show-don't-tell. Military states united under a common N-archy work separate but together to protect the status quo in the following: agreed upon mathematical systems which manifest themselves in physical space as regions that allow or disallow the use of exotic weapons and technologies. Heretics focused on getting a large enough society to use a different base number, calendar, time systems, or even holidays can disrupt the expected area to disable shields, drives, weapons and countless other technologies while enabling others.

People will say it's not sci-fi. It's as much sci-fi as many others accepted in the genre, but know it's not science but space and "math magic" that give it this place. If you like Hannu Rajaniemi's stories you'll probably be happy here as well.

People will also say this book must be read and not listened to. This was not the case for me. I read about 60% of the book and listened to the other 40% on Audible (interspersed, as driving and home time allowed). I had no trouble following and enjoying the book either way.

I went straight to the sequel after finishing.