Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I read some peers reviews of this before I dove in and I agree with their assessments. Who stole our Yoon Ha Lee and replaced him with someone who explains things. XD
I fully expected this to be a mind warp of digging for understanding in a complex Hexarchate system with it’s mystical calendrical exotic weapons housed within Moth swarms and political bodies of remembrances. See? See? You don’t know WTH I’m talking about! hehe. You have to read and ponder!
Nah, this was a great book! Maybe Lee has a new editor and he course corrected the would-be-difficulty into something far more approachable. That or we as readers have figured out the key to the cryptography and are much easier at deciphering this text than the last.
“Never ascribe to irrational benevolence what selfishness will explain.” — Kujen
This book was just a nice read. Cheris / Jedao show up at a Swarm and take it. Are they going after the Hafn? Or are they going to give the HexA a what-for. You’re going to have to read to find out. Heck if I’ll spoil it.
Least to say there are a few good battles but mainly we exist within a few threads of life that move around the understanding of Jedao and the makeup of the Hexarchs along with far more subordinate understanding than prior.
The end of this book feels far more like a beginning. The galaxy is in more turmoil as things have been flipped end over end.
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
There are missing actors and a lot of explaining to do but we’ll have to wait. For an ongoing “space opera” this one might just be warming up.
If you had trouble reading the first one, read on, it got a lot easier to comprehend and a lot less jargon riddled. Whether or not we enjoyed that space-pretzel or not. 😀