Ninefox gambit

IT'S EASY TO GET LOST in the kaleidoscopic world-building of NINEFOX GAMBIT (Solaris, paper, $9.99), the first novel by the well-regarded story writer Yoon Ha Lee. Lee submerges readers without explanation into the hexarchate - a star-spanning far-future society whose culture relies on advanced mathematics to produce "exotic effects" that are nigh magical. A sort of unearthly physics, these can make select individuals functionally immortal, even as exotic generators churn forth monstrous vector-scrambling storms that disintegrate enemy soldiers down to component atoms. At the core of the technology is the high calendar. More than just a measurement of time, this calendar shapes the mathematical base of the exotic effects. Yet by changing the calendar and thus the underlying math of reality, dissidents can cripple hexarchate technology - a heresy to those in control, who punish dissenters by destroying them whole planets at a time. The disproportionate reprisals inevitably beget more heresy, so the hexarchate exists in a perpetual state of war in which it is too beneficially invested ever to end. Amid such brutal calculus, Lee (himself an Ivy League-educated mathematician) fortunately doesn't stint on character development or plot. The protagonist is Kel Cheris, a young soldier gifted in number theory, who is summoned from the battlefield for a strange new mission. She must partner with the disgraced General Jedao, possibly the only person in the hexarchate who can help reclaim the strategically critical Fortress of Scattered Needles and stop the looming threat of calendrical rot. Problem: Jedao has been dead for centuries, executed after he went mad and slaughtered thousands of his own people. Cheris must become host to this unstable genius's "ghost," or preserved personality - and once she does, she must immediately learn how to navigate her way through politics more ancient than the hexarchate itself. Meanwhile, if she slips even once in her self-control or calculations, her ghostly ally will drive her mad too. Or worse. The story is dense, the pace intense, and the delicate East Asian flavoring of the math-rich setting might make it seem utterly alien to many readers - yet metaphors for our own world abound. Mathematics is often lauded as a universal language, but this is blatantly untrue; for universality to work, adherents must believe in the same basic truths, or principles, to the same degree. Lee's quasireligious treatment of mathematics, and Cheris's need to simultaneously exploit and rely on Jedao, both serve as metaphors for colonialism. (As does the quiet, oblique rebellion taking place in the background amid the hexarchate's artificially intelligent servitors.) And the lesson of colonialism applies as well: Brute-force domination gets you only so far. For stability, trust is key. Readers willing to invest in a steep learning curve will be rewarded with a tight-woven, complicated but not convoluted, breathtakingly original space opera. And since this is only the first book of the Machineries of Empire trilogy, it's the start of what looks to be a wild ride. IN 2014, KAMERON HURLEY won a Hugo Award for her essay "We Have Always Fought: Challenging the ?Women, Cattle and Slaves' Narrative." The essay, in which Hurley processed her own reaction to realizing that women historically have made up significant percentages of revolutionary armies, tacitly pushed back against a common misapprehension in geek social circles that women (and by extension people of color, the disabled, transgender/nonbinary people and other marginalized groups) are somehow a recent and alien addition to geekdom. Hurley dismantled this misapprehension easily, with the judicious application of historical fact. Her point was clear: Women have always belonged within and contributed to spaces commonly thought of as "men's," and our societal failure to recognize this truth is an artificial and sometimes conscious erasure of reality. In her new essay collection, THE GEEK FEMINIST REVOLUTION (Tor/Tom Doherty, cloth, $26.99; paper, $15.99), Hurley expands on this initial conclusion, exploring life as an American woman and writer through personal anecdotes, plain-language feminist theory and further misapprehension-puncturing. The focus of these essays remains firmly fixed on geeky literature and media, though Hurley suggests - indeed, demands, in an introduction titled "Welcome to the Revolution" - that readers should see the genre as a microcosm of American society and even global politics. In token of this, Hurley ties together similar culture wars in gaming, fiction, health care, comics, even the comments sections of popular news outlets like The New York Times. The big picture of the essays coheres slowly but clearly: These culture wars are real, life-and-death matters, whose soldiers (of all genders) suffer lost opportunities, death threats and worse. More important, the existential struggles of fans and writers in the geekosphere are part of a battle for the Zeitgeist - for control over the stories that shape reality, over who gets to be treated as "people" in art and life, and over what constitutes true quality and mastery in any craft. These essays are funny; they are poignant; they are powerful. Many of them first found life on Hurley's website or other media venues like The Atlantic, so it is somewhat disappointing to find only nine new ones written for this collection. Still, those interested in a deep examination of subculture, womanhood and art through the lens of speculative fiction will be highly entertained. AMID THE CROWDED bustle of a present-day Kolkata night, Alok Mukherjee, a meek historian, is drawn into a discussion with a nameless stranger. The stranger spins him a meandering tale of shape-shifters who prey on humans, hidden in the shadows of society since the Greek myth of Lycaon. Mukherjee is skeptical, because the stranger insists the tale is true, but he is intrigued enough to ask for more. The rest of this tale is presented to him as translated ancient journals written on scrolls made of human skin. Thus begins Indra Das's THE DEVOURERS (Del Rey, $26), a chilling, gorgeous saga that spans several centuries and many lands, though the bulk of the tale is set in India of the Mughal Empire and today. The tale begins with cruelty: A shapeshifter, weary of his inherently destructive existence (they devour human souls to extend their own lives), commits the taboo of raping and impregnating a human woman out of the twisted urge to create something. The woman, enraged by the assault, seeks out other shapeshifters in her quest for vengeance, persuading them to help rather than devour her. The incident proves to be a watershed event for shapeshifter-kind, who have begun to dwindle amid the unsustainability and nihilism of their existence - and thus it is the half-human, half-shapeshifter product of this rape who must find some way to negotiate a new path between the magical brutality of his father's kind and his mother's beautiful mundanity. The frame tale of the professor and the nameless stranger is by no means the least important part of the saga, wending through the older story and eventually bringing both tales to a heartbreaking conclusion. Themes of hunger and hiddenness recur in all three narratives: the shape-shifters' yearning for human connection apart from violence; the self-protective camouflages of multiracialism and nonbinary queerness and womanhood amid patriarchy; the desperation of traditionalists when faced with inevitable change. Das imparts these messages delicately, as filigree on a story already gilded in rich imagery and harrowing conflict. The language is the true treasure here, though, as Das imbues even grotesque scenes of cannibalism with a disturbing yet sensuous weight. The all-too-human characters - including the nonhuman ones - and the dreamlike, recursive plot serve to entrance the reader as well. Push past the slightly disjointed beginning; it has a purpose, but this does not become clear until much later in the book. Once the stranger presents the human-skin scrolls, however, there's no escaping "The Devourers." Readers will savor every bite. N.K. JEMISIN'S new novel, "The Obelisk Gate," will be published this week.

Lee's imagination isn't matched by his execution in this awkward debut, which kicks off a hard science fiction trilogy. Capt. Kel Cheris has survived a bloody campaign against the heretic Eels on the outpost world of Dredge, only to be drafted by her superiors to scour the "calendrical rot" centered at the Fortress of Scattered Needles. This phenomenon threatens the entire hexarchate society, which is dependent on calendrical stability (an intriguing concept that unfortunately remains opaque to the reader). Cheris offers a novel solution to the problem: she'll enlist the assistance of the undead General Shuos Jedao, whose persona will become part of her. Any momentum this plot line generates is diffused by chapters in the form of communiqués within the target fortress that skirt dangerously close to parody (one dates itself as "Year of the Fatted Cow, Month of the Chicken, Day of the Rooster"). Many readers will struggle to absorb the contours of this universe by osmosis, which is the only option Lee presents. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.