Ninefox Gambit is unleashed!
16th June 2016
The sci-fi debut of the year is here: Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee is now available to buy, and boy are we excited.
As is befitting such a superb book, there’s been plenty of excitement out there. Yoon has been out talking to all manner of blogs, and you can check out what he’s been chatting about below.
- Check out five things Yoon learned writing Ninefox Gambit over at Chuck Wendig’s blog
- Yoon also wrote this terrific – and incredibly personal – blog about being trans over at The Book Smugglers. Essential reading.
- How did being a gamer influence Ninefox Gambit? Find out over at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.
- There are some incredibly inventive factions in the world of Ninefox Gambit – Yoon talks about them over at SciFiNow.
- How were tarot cards important to the creation of Ninefox Gambit? Find out over at Worlds Without End…
- Yoon has been over at SciFi Bulletin talking about art lessons and how they impacted his writing.
- Here’s a cracking interview over at Civilian Reader.
Meanwhile the reviews have been coming in thick and fast, and the early word is… well, read for yourself (hint: people love this book almost as much as we do):
- “Inventive storytelling and world-building… Remarkable.”Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog
- “Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy, beginning with Ancillary Justice, took science fiction fandom by storm a few years ago, and Ninefox Gambit is well-positioned to fill the void left by its 2015 conclusion. This is military SF with blood, guts, math, and heart.” Tor.com
- “Yoon Ha Lee’s short stories; he’s a brilliant world-builder, and he’s outdone himself in this book with the complex worlds he’s created here.” Pixellated Geek
- “A military science fiction novel, that offers so many layers it will only improve with the inevitable desire to read it all over again.” Strange Alliances
- “Ninefox Gambit is a book of precise rigor that gives a wonderful amount of worldbuilding without any clunky exposition dumps, is ruthlessly clear-eyed about the costs and concerns of war (especially at this technological level) and gives us an instantly ingratiating heroine who spends most of the book doing her best to outmaneuver the forces that have set her up to fail, waste the lives of her troops or just die.” RT Book Reviews
- “Moments of poetic elegance, offset here by blunt trauma. Sly comedy stops the story from getting weighed down by its own darkness and body count. The side serving of quietly sentient droids was a delight (but then I also love stories about emergent AI). And in the end, it still managed to surprise me. There’s so much imagination on display here, scintillating and elusive. It’s like a natural heir to the Culture – black humour, ruthless action, spiky politics, and a deep concern for the human cost.” Onemore
- “If you’re a fan of Ann Leckie, or Peter Watts-ian eeriness, you’ll want to read this. And be so, so grateful that it says #1, indicating there will be more of this. I can’t wait.” Fat Robot
- “Based on this opening gambit, there’s a good chance that this series will be seen as an important addition to the space opera resurgence of recent years… Lee has developed a singular combination of military SF, mathematical elegance, and futuristic strangeness, readers may note echoes of or similarities to Iain M. Banks, Hannu Rajaniemi, C. J. Cherryh, Ann Leckie – admirers of these authors, or anyone interested in state-of-the-art space opera, ought to give Ninefox Gambit a try.” Worlds Without End
- “Ninefox Gambit is a vivid, dense take on space opera that would seem to have a deeper political agenda left to be fulfilled by forthcoming books… Ninefox Gambit would seem to be the opening salvo (ha!) in a series seeking to dismantle the notions of power and dominance inherent to Western power structures.” Speculition
- “Ninefox Gambit is an impressively creative story brimming over with metaphor and symbolism and and analysis. If you’re a fan of mathematics and mindgames, you really need to check out this book.” Booklikes
- “The stellar and emotional ending has left me completely decided that I need to read book two.” The Illustrated Page
- And finally, here’s a video review from YouTuber FinalBlowJoe.
So there you have it: Ninefox Gambit is out now, and you are well advised to go and get your hands on what is shaping up to be one of the best sci-fi debuts of the year – if not the decade (yeah, we said it).