Revenant Gun
By Yoon Ha Lee
The first two books are the story of two people who were betrayed by the Hexarchate but survived long enough to avenge themselves utterly. Those two being the undead general Jedao and the infantry captain Cheris. While Jedao sacrificed himself in the first book, Cheris was left with enough of his memories and reflexes burned into her mind and body to carry on the mission. Which she did, hijacking an entire fleet to fend off an invasion while positioning everything for a single powerful strike at the very foundation of the Hexarchate: it's calendar. Because Cheris single-handedly built a new calendar that would allow for the exotic technologies to work but with two changes that would tear everything down. First of all, the exotic effects became voluntary, this is huge because the Hexarchate military was built on an exotic technology called formation instinct which made disobedience nearly impossible. Second of all, no torture is needed to maintain it. Cheris also made sure it was big and widely publicized enough that no one could ignore it. Did I mention by the way that the torture cops who enforce the calendar are mostly using exotic technologies to force the population to comply? Kinda hard to do when everyone can just quietly opt-out isn't it (Heretic Lives Matter, motherfuckers!)?
As you can imagine the revelation shatters the Hexarchate into pieces but two successor states have risen from the ashes and pushed back foreign invaders and are dueling for final supremacy. The Compact is a democratic state using Cheris's calendar. The Protectorate is a military dictatorship using the old calendar (The Protectorate… talk about bootlickers who are ideologically committed to the need to keep torturing people to death). Meanwhile, Cheris has disappeared completely on her own mission and no one can find her. Both of them, however, are going to have to bury the hatchet real quick because there's a bigger threat gathering it's strength and no one wants to see it succeed. The Hexarchate was ruled by six factions, each focused on providing a single element of government service, each of these factions was ruled by a Hexarch. One of these factions was the Nirai, which basically conducted the science and technical work of the Hexarchate. They had a Hexarch who was killed but that Hexarch was only the frontman for the Hexarch Kujen, the genius who created the original calendar because it would empower the Hexarch military and give him a sort of immortality. Kujen has been alive for almost a thousand years at this point and spent that entire time pushing the exotic technologies as far as he could and keeping the really good bits for himself (Selfish dick). As far as he is concerned Cheris' new calendar is a direct attack on his life and he isn't going down without a fight (I’ve never understood this. Look, the prospect of oblivion hits a big outside context problem in my mind, as much as the next man. So I get the desire for immortality. However, you’d think at some point that at some point you’d have enough and just be ready to go. You just get bored at some point, if nothing else. All your friends are dead, you’ve outlived everyone you’ve ever loved and have probably at that point started keeping everyone at arms reach to avoid being hurt for the nth time. Why stick around?). So he has a hijacked fleet, full of hijacked Kel who cannot deny him and armed with technologies he has developed and held back specifically to destroy Hexarchate forces. There's a final weapon on top of all of this, Kujen has his own Jedao, the undefeated general that terrifies every man, woman, and child in the Hexarchate to lead this stolen fleet. A Jedao that Kujen has modified with abilities and talents that will make him better able to serve Kujen.
This Jedao, however, is a much younger man, not having any memories of his military career but Kujen is betting on a combination of his native talent and reputation to carry the day for him. This actually has some decent odds of working but only if Jedao is committed to the cause, which given Kujen’s disregard for all the short-lived creatures around him may be hard to gain (Protip: if you want someone’s loyalty, it helps if you are not a raging asshole in their general direction and can maybe at least pretend to have something for them to buy in to. Something other than “I need you to be absolutely committed to a system of torture that only needs to exist so I personally can be immortal”{I have to wonder if Kujen has lived so long and been so removed from other people that he simply cannot empathize with them any more.}). On top of this Cheris may have disappeared but her commitment to making sure that the torturing and abuse of the Hexarcate ends hasn't gone away. She is out there somewhere, stalking the void, hunting down the one threat to her new calendar and she's gained an unexpected ally to her cause. One with the information that might actually let her kill Kujen. She has the memories of an older, better trained, and more experienced Jedao and may know her opponent better than he knows himself. Meanwhile, Kujen's Jedao has no idea about Cheris' basic nature or capabilities because if he learns too much, he may defect (Yes! Withhold information about your enemy from your general! Sun Tzu predicts that doing so will go so very well for you!). As this younger Jedao struggles to make sense of this frightening new world, he needs to decide whose side he's on and why. He also needs to know why this world seems more afraid of him than he is of it and do so with a shrinking array of tools and resources. During all of this, Kujan seems ready to force his calendar back on everyone, and if he must do so on top of a whole mountain range of bodies then so much the better. The stage is set for a bitter conflict against enemies both within and without but it all might come down to Jedao deciding just who his enemies are.
This story is primarily told through the viewpoint of the younger Jedao as he wakes up in a confusing future surrounded by people who think they know him. He has to get up to speed fast while unraveling the mystery of just what he is as well as who. This leaves him feeling isolated and alienated from everyone. On top of that, he can't simply sit down and ask people to explain anything because he can't trust any of the Kel to tell him the truth. Which in theory should make it easier for Kujen to simply seduce him (Not really? If you can’t trust the underlings to tell you the truth, it’s gonna be really hard to believe that the Big Cheese will do so. There are ways to do it, but Kujen doesn’t seem to have the ability to even conceive of using those strategies anymore.). Unfortunately, Kujen doesn't seem to be willing to restrain his darker habits long enough to seal the deal. Or perhaps after being alive so long he's no longer capable of understanding that he needs to. While Kujen is never a viewpoint character, we do get information about his backstory. It's enough that we start to vaguely understand how someone who once tried to keep a small girl from starving to death by sharing out his own meager rations could turn into the kind of man who creates a system that will torture hundreds of thousands if not millions to death in a single day just to prolong his own life (I mean, Trotsky started off as a decent person too, but then he ended up… Doing Things™ in Western Russia/Poland that don’t exactly comport with the concept of human rights. Same with Lenin.). I can't say that I sympathize with Kujen though, but he does seem to embody the idea that any system can start out with the best of intentions but end up worse than what it replaced. Especially when it prioritizes power over the wellbeing of its citizens and refuses all compromises. I say system because in a real way Kujen was the living embodiment of the old Hexarchate system and like President Kennedy predicted his making peaceful reform impossible made violent revolution inevitable (I feel like this describes Right Now. I mean, I’d MUCH prefer a peaceful “revolution” in the sense of a political sea change over “1917” but there is gonna come to a point where “1917” is inevitable unless it becomes structurally possible to change the system peacefully.). Something I think everyone should remember, even the powerful aren't untouchable and all the wealth and power in the world only provides the illusion of being above consequences. On a long enough timeline, everyone pays for their actions (Eh. Not really. I mean, sure, if you believe in an afterlife that distributes justice sure, but strictly in terms of the material, the world is not just. Not as it is.{Gonna side with the the Rev. King, the arc of the universe is long but it bends towards moral justice.}).
That said, Mr. Lee doesn't abandon the characters who got us here entirely. Our long-suffering crashhawk (A Kel who lacks formation instinct) Brezan is back, as the highest general in the Compact having to settle matters with the Protectorate while protecting the new calendar. Of course, he is still dealing with the fall out of his decision to defect to Cheris' plan from the last book, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished. Brezan's role in this book is entirely political (The poor benighted soul) as he has to try to get everyone on the same page. Cheris herself is also present in the book although in a much-diminished role as the spotlight is thrown completely on the younger Jedao. Here Cheris is really just finishing up the last loose ends of her mission. Ironically I do have to just mention that if the Hexarchate hadn't betrayed her in the first book and tried to kill her, Kujen wouldn't be in this situation in the first place and the younger Jedao wouldn't exist. So Kujen was in a way the architect of the Hexarchate's fall as much as he was the architect of its rise. There are also new characters but I won't ruin the surprise so I'll let you meet them yourself when you read this book
Mr. Lee wraps up his trilogy with a well-written ending that brings a number of his characters full circle while letting us consider how others wrote their own fates. He does so by giving us an epic story but focusing on the small and personal parts that drive it forward because this story isn't decided by the clashes of millions but by the choices and decisions of individuals who find themselves in the right place at the right time. While mostly focusing on the internal struggle of a couple of characters it does provide us plenty of action and intrigue to go along with it so I doubt anyone will find the book boring. Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee gets an A.
So this month every book we reviewed was voted for by our ever wise patrons. If you would like a say in what books get reviewed, what themes we chose to pursue and other topics, consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where you get a vote for as low as a 1$ a month. Next week we continue with Challenges of the Deeps by Ryk E Spoor. Until then, stay safe and keep reading!
Red Text was your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Black Text your editor Garvin Anders
You can read the last two reviews in this series at the links below!
http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2019/09/raven-stratagem-by-yoon-ha-lee.html
http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2019/05/ninefox-gambit-by-yoon-ha-lee.html
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