Others: Mostly positive Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for using unconventional methods in a battle against heretics. Kel Command gives her the opportunity to redeem herself by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a star fortress that has recently been captured by heretics. Cheris's career isn't the only thing at stake. If the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next. Cheris's best hope is to ally with the undead tactician Shuos Jedao. The good news is that Jedao has never lost a battle, and he may be the only one who can figure out how to successfully besiege the fortress. The bad news is that Jedao went mad in his first life and massacred two armies, one of them his own. As the siege wears on, Cheris must decide how far she can trust Jedao--because she might be his next victim.
Genres: science fiction
Lists: …
Yoon Ha Lee
2018 · 427 pages · 5 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positive"Shuos Jedao is awake... and nothing is as he remembers. He's a teenager, a cadet--a nobody--in the body of an old man; a general in command of an elite force. And he's the most feared, and reviled, man in the galaxy. Jedao carries orders from Hexarch Nirai Kujen to re-conquer the fractured pieces of the hexarchate. But he has no memory of ever being a soldier, let alone a general, and the Kel soldiers under his command hate him for 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 than he does himself..."--
What made the match, strongest first
Ada Palmer
2016 · 432 pages · 13 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positive"The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labeling all public writing and speech... And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destabilize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life..."--Book jacket.
What made the match, strongest first
Arkady Martine
2019 · 462 pages · 22 reviews
Others: Mostly positiveWon the 2020 Hugo for Best Novel. Ambassador Mahit Dzmare is posted far from her mining station home, to the Empire's glorious capital. Yet when she arrives, she discovers her predecessor was murdered. But no-one will admit his death wasn't accidental - and she might be next. Mahit must navigate the capital's deadly halls of power, while hunting the killer. She must also somehow stop the Empire from annexing her fiercely independent colony. As she sinks deeper into this seductive yet unfamiliar culture, Mahit engages in intrigues of her own. For she's hiding an extraordinary technological secret, one which might destroy her station and its way of life.Or it might save them all from annihilation.
What made the match, strongest first
Ryka Aoki
2021 · 376 pages · 16 reviews
Others: Mostly positiveAn adventure set in California's San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts. Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six. When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate. But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline. As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.
What made the match, strongest first
Adrian Tchaikovsky
2015 · 624 pages · 17 reviews
Others: Mostly positiveThe last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home. Following their ancestor's star maps, they discovered the greatest treasure of a past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New monsters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare. Now two civilisations are on a collision course and must fight to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?
What made the match, strongest first
Elizabeth Moon
1996 · 338 pages · 6 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveFor forty years, Colony 3245.12 has been Ofelia's home. On this planet far away in space and time from the world of her youth, she has lived and loved, weathered the death of her husband, raised her one surviving child, lovingly tended her garden, and grown placidly old. And it is here that she fully expects to finish out her days--until the shifting corporate fortunes of the Sims Bancorp Company dictates that Colony 3245.12 is to be disbanded, its residents shipped off, deep in cryo-sleep, to somewhere new and strange and not of their choosing. But while her fellow colonists grudgingly anticipate a difficult readjustment on some distant world, Ofelia savors the promise of a golden opportunity. Not starting over in the hurly-burly of a new community . . . but closing out her life in blissful solitude, in the place she has no intention of leaving. A population of one.With everything she needs to sustain her, and her independent spirit to buoy her, Ofelia actually does start life over--for the first time on her own terms: free of the demands, the judgments, and the petty tyrannies of others. But when a reconnaissance ship returns to her idyllic domain, and its crew is mysteriously slaughtered, Ofelia realizes she is not the sole inhabitant of her paradise after all. And, when the inevitable time of first contact finally arrives, she will find her life changed yet again--in ways she could never have imagined. . . .From the Trade Paperback edition.
What made the match, strongest first
Loved itNine Fox Gambit man, the sci fi is tough. All right, so I think this has to go here. Not because I don't love nine Fox, Gambit and The Machinery of Empire, but I simply have not read it in five years. But it is so unique, so cool.
Loved itthis series is completed all three books are ones that I have totally finished and each book is fantastic I really got sucked into each of the missions that she gets pulled on
Mixedi fully admit that while i love the series i do find the first book is not the strongest it is a little bit more confusing and you don't fully understand the world or the characters at the beginning
Loved itIn the same vein as the quantum thief is a nine Foxx gambit by Yoon Holly this is another story where nothing is explained to the reader you have to figure out the world building on your own you have to decide for yourself whether some things are technological and science fictional or magic
