“Ninefox Gambit”

Yoon Ha Lee

I post many book reviews here, but one thing that I tend not to mention, is that I don’t actually review every book I read. If I give up on the book—in disgust, in boredom, for whatever reason—I won’t review it. If I make it through the whole book, sit down to write my thoughts, and can’t come up with a single positive note, I won’t review it. (There’s already enough negativity in the world, I’m not going to add to it.)

As a natural result of that, there’s a solid amount of very generic science fiction that I don’t post reviews of. Stuff that’s… fine. Uninspiring, cliche, trite, but not offensively bad.

“Ninefox Gambit” stands out because it is none of those things. It is unabashedly strange, gloriously new. Disconcerting and disquieting. It actually took me quite a while to be certain that all the characters are human—and, later, to determine that they’re not just pan-human, but human human, and the different classifications are a matter of culture.

In short, I absolutely loved this book. For all that I want to rave about the fascinating setting, the technological backdrop underpinning everything, I won’t, because a good part of the fun was in figuring out what, exactly, all of that was. Please, get a copy of the book, set aside some time to read, and lose yourself in this masterpiece.1

This is an Amazon affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I prefer Bookshop affiliate links to Amazon when possible, but in this case, the book wasn’t available there, so it’ll have to do. ↩