The Raven Stratagem, by Yoon Ha Lee
Synopsis: A rouge general seizes a space fleet to defend the local populace and build support for a coup.
Book Review: The book starts out great, dropping you right into the middle of the fleet being taken over and characters resisting their biological programming (or failing to!) while a madman plays them like puppets.
And the last third of the book is also great, with tons of action, lots of fantastic revelations and intriguing back-stabbery. It’s exciting and enticing.
Unfortunately the middle half of the book is mainly holding patterns that do nothing. On the one hand, I really sympathize with the author. He has a story to tell, and he has a contract with a minimum word count, and if his story doesn’t fill that word-count, his publisher will sue him for breach of contract. Then who knows if he’ll ever get another one? Business always ruins art. On the other hand, as a fellow book club member said “It’s not my job to pay his mortgage.”
I almost stopped reading, because the middle is such a slog. A chapter here and there stood out, but they were diamonds in a lot of rough. The book could’ve easily been 1/3rd shorter.
Also, cutting all those extra words would’ve let in some room for physical description! I didn’t really notice this in the first book, because I was so enchanted with the cool “laws of physics can be altered by coordinated mass-belief” thing, but there is basically no physical description anywhere. Throughout the book I felt like I was in an empty grey room constantly. It was really depressing.
Raven Stratagem does have a lot going for it. The universe is still really cool, and the bizarre characters fit great in a bizarre universe. I’m really torn on this. I feel like it should have been great, but something about it just didn’t hit for me. Maybe the lack of description, or the slog in the middle, or the fact that the physics-by-consensus was kinda a background fact and didn’t really effect anything in this novel. It’s only real use was in the climax, and that was somewhat underwhelming and felt more like a footnote.
Honestly, this is another middle book. One of these days, someone’s gonna come up with a formula to make middle books good. Until that day, they will continue to just sorta drag and feel disappointing. Raven Stratagem is interesting, and I don’t regret reading it. But I can’t excitedly push it into someone’s hands and say “You gotta read this!” So, a borderline Not Recommended.
Book Club Review: This is a book that’s enhanced by gathering to talk about it. It’s neat to hear everyone’s individual takes on what’s going on, and it’s fun to relive the really cool plot turns. That being said, the meeting went pretty fast, there wasn’t a lot to chew over. Also, this is absolutely not a book you can read on its own. If one hasn’t read the first one, they’ll be completely lost picking this up. Anyway, same basic verdict on this – not bad, but also Not Recommended.
