Never before have I been so confused by calendars.

You check the date, schedule some plans, mark out vacation days—bada bing, bada boom. Simple.

The problem is, in Ninefox Gambit, there are many things that can go wrong with calendars.

“Like what?”

Well, heresy. That’s what.

Ninefox Gambit is one of the most imaginative sci-fi books I’ve read. It has top-notch worldbuilding and many great qualities, including a badass female protagonist, undead tactician, faction-based society and math magic.

If that last bit sounds more like a nightmare than a fantasy, stick with me. Let’s return to the calendars.

Ninefox Gambit‘s calendar has all the standard features. You use it to track the date, and it comes with associated feast days and observances. Some include a healthy dose of ritual torture. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

Things take a turn for the weird when you learn the calendar is also a doctrine: a set of beliefs that must be followed unless you want to be labeled a heretic and destroyed. Because if you don’t obey the calendar, then reality… doesn’t work.

It’s all very Planescape-esque.

If enough people believe in certain laws of the universe, the universe will function accordingly. If too many people diverge, you get “calendrical rot,” which means all your mathematical calculations will be wrong, which means the formula you used to conjure an energy shield is going to fizzle out and all your troops die.

It frustrated me that Lee didn’t really go into the details of how this all worked, making the book feel more sci-fantasy than pure sci-fi at times, but it was an interesting premise.

It’s basically game theory taken to the nth degree, aptly described by one of the main characters:

“…Games are about behavior modification. The rules constrain some behaviors and reward others. Of course, people cheat, and there are consequences around that, too, so implicit rules and social context are just as important. Meaningless cards, tokens, and symbols become invest with value and significance in the world of the game. In a sense, all calendrical war is a game between competing sets of rules, fueled by the coherence of our beliefs. To win a calendrical war, you have to understand how game systems work.”

Sounds cool (“I can use a device to change the weather if enough people believe it? Sweet!”) until you realize that the hexarchate (government) is abusing the calendar to keep the factions under control and rule the world according to their personal (often twisted) views.

Bummer. And a sad reflection of our reality.

The story’s heroine is Captain Kel Cheris, a brilliant mathematician and commander. When a battle goes south, she commits the ultimate no-no in a society obsessed with control—she breaks the rules.

She may have done it to save her troops, but high command decides it’s enough to end her career, unless she takes on a dangerous mission.

This is how she ends up mind-melded to crazy/sexy mastermind Jedao, famous for his spotless record of military success. At least before he went mad and murdered his own troops.

The two are tasked with taking back a fortress that’s broken away from the hexarchate to revel in heresy, and thus begins our adventure.

“The nine-eyed shadow whipped around behind her in defiance of all the laws of geometry it had obeyed until now, and then she knew she was really in trouble. All that time she had spent reading up on her swarm’s high officers and what intelligence they had on the enemy—some of it should have been spent researching Jedao.”

This premise was pretty fantastic. Add in the hexarchate’s unique mix of factions, and you get a world I was eager to explore.

Cheris is part of the Kel, jarringly referred to as “suicide hawks” due to their propensity for noble sacrifice. Not that they have a choice. The Kel are programmed with a psychosomatic “formation instinct” as soon as they join, making it near impossible for soldiers to disobey orders or diverge from the calendar.

Cheris’ comrade in minds is Jedao, a member of the Shuos. They’re represented by the titular ninefox. The Shuos make inscrutability an art and are the best strategists in the hexarchate. To say they specialize in backstabbing would be an insult to the quality of long cons they can perform.

If you want to learn more about each of the six (formerly seven) factions, Mr. Lee has posted a helpful breakdown here.

When you read Ninefox Gambit itself, note that Mr. Lee will not provide you with a helpful breakdown. And this is one of the reasons I didn’t find myself adoring the book.

“Year of the Fatted Cow, Month of the Chicken, and it’s bizarre that people voted in farm animals for this newfangled calendar, but make it Day of the Silkworm? Send me a memo if Doctrine has come up with something more thrilling.”

Right away you’re thrown into the battle that leads to Cheris’ fall from grace. There’s talk of math, formations, heretics and other things you’d have no clue about before reading this review. Put gently, it’s confusing as hell.

If I hadn’t been stuck on a plane with Ninefox Gambit as my sole reading option, I would’ve put the book down. But I pushed through, and it wasn’t until about 50 pages in that I started to hash out the details. (For context, that quote from Jedao earlier takes place 190 pages into the story.)

I get that this is a “thing” among some authors. It seems fairly common within sci-fi overall: Toss the reader into the fray and wait for them to catch up. “They like a challenge. If they’re smart, they’ll want to puzzle it out.”

Personally, I find this approach condescending and obnoxious. The writer should make things clear enough that the audience isn’t getting lost every other sentence. It makes me feel like Lee couldn’t figure out how to drop hints about the world without info dumping, so he just decided to skip explanations entirely.

It’s not edgy, it’s not gritty. It’s just shoddy storytelling.

That being said, I’m glad I gutted it out. Once you slog past the learning curve, the world is excitingly complex, and Lee’s writing is descriptive enough that it feels elegant even when it’s violent. Which is often. Yet despite the harsh environment, there are frequent moments of humanity and humor.

Turning back to the characters, I wish I could say Cheris lived up to her potential. It wasn’t that she was indecisive or lovelorn or incompetent. Quite the opposite, actually. She’s a mathematical genius and discerning leader. She struggles with her sense of duty but doesn’t let it overwhelm her. These are all admirable qualities.

“Someone banged on the canister. ‘Are you, er, comfortable in there?’ 13610 failed to see what comfort had to do with anything. Did this Kel child want to hand out soothing logic puzzles and blankets? One of the other servitors, taking pity on the child, made a chirring sound of reassurance.”

She’s just so darn boring.

Readers only get brief glimpses into Cheris’ psyche despite her being the viewpoint character, and she’s entirely overshadowed by the charismatic Jedao. She seemed more of a reader self-insert than a foil.

If you have a question about Jedao, you can bet Cheris will ask it. Then she’ll numbly ponder his answer, fiddle around with her math and go back to the job at hand.

Oh sure, she watches daytime dramas and chats with the servitors (attendant, animal-like robots who also have more personality than Cheris). But these little quirks feel tacked on, like Lee realized Cheris was essentially just a plot device for Jedao and figured she should maybe have some unique traits of her own.

As such, Jedao excited me while Cheris wallowed in the background of her own story. I never connected with her or saw her as a fully-realized character. There’s a trivial attempt to share more about Cheris in the final few pages, but it’s too little too late, and once again, everything revealed about Cheris is overshadowed by Jedao’s backstory.

I liked Ninefox Gambit enough that I’m eager to pick up the upcoming sequel Raven Strategem, if only for more Jedao and hexarchate antics. The next time around, I’ll feel more prepared to jump into some calendrical mischief.

Image credit Matt Chan, J-Humphries and Sang Han.

Links

Ninefox Gambit on Amazon