Revenant Gun

Machineries of Empire, Book 3

By: Yoon Ha Lee

Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller

Machineries of Empire, the most exciting science fiction trilogy of the decade, reaches its astonishing conclusion!

When Shuos Jedao wakes up for the first time, several things go wrong. His few memories tell him that he's a 17-year-old cadet - but his body belongs to a man decades older. Hexarch Nirai Kujen orders Jedao to reconquer the fractured hexarchate on his behalf, even though Jedao has no memory of ever being a soldier, let alone a general. Surely a knack for video games doesn't qualify you to take charge of an army?

Soon Jedao learns the situation is even worse. The Kel soldiers under his command may be compelled to obey him, but they hate him thanks to a massacre he can't remember committing. Kujen's friendliness can't hide the fact that he's a tyrant. And what's worse, Jedao and Kujen are being hunted by an enemy who knows more about Jedao and his crimes than he does himself....

©2018 Yoon Ha Lee (P)2018 Recorded Books

devastatingly good hard scifi

A beautiful and epic capstone to a soul destroying series. These books are so good. The author is a tiny bit allergic to purely happy endings which is so hard because by now you're devastatingly attached to every single person in the series. It's a beautiful book.

Very rarely does something come along this utterly genre-bending and genuinely hardcore original, and in the Revenant Gun YHL totally sticks his landing.

Mixed bag

Good world-building, bad character motivations and development, heavy usage of ex machina to progress the plot. The new Jedao character is boring as hell. Heavily eye-rolled most of the book.

Calendrical closure

Revenant Gun is the 3rd installment in Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire trilogy. The Cheris/Jedao combo has been out of the picture for a while two forces initially vie for control of the new calendar, while a remaining Hexarc with the assistance of a new Jedao clone is attempting to reinstate the old calendar. Ironically, even though Cheris and the Jedao clone are ostensibly in opposition, they are aligned with regards to the barbaric customs that had maintained the original order, which can be traced to a Hexarc that is essentially immortal.

The sci-fi elements are in line with earlier installments with further exploration of both servitors which display rather advanced AI as well as a penchant for soap operas and the moth spaceships which turn out to grown, rather than made and display consciousness.

The narration is first rate with good character distinction with pacing and tone well suited to the pace of the plot.

Slightly low-key ending to an amazing trilogy

I was expecting more revelations and pyrotechnics after the build up in the previous volumes

voice actor is great, but volume changes are not

this is a great book and the voice acting was well done, but there were so many parts where the volume of the voice actor changed so much from line the line that I constantly found myself either unable to hear the quiet parts or blowing out my eardrums for the loud parts