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Alright - be warned - this is the lead book in a series. They want to sell you more books, LOL!
Science fiction? I don't think Lee's story is strictly SF. There is some resemblance to SF, and some to fantasy. Lee has written something different here.
There is no real attempt to explain, or to lean upon science. Lee has some almost magical force, largely based on numerology, or more accurately, the Calendar, which the characters manipulate in various ways. Space opera? Ehhh - maybe. There are only a limited number of characters that are truly developed. And, those characters don't get to meet each other very much, so it's not really opera.
I asked in the poll thread, whether this was likely to be a SJW's idea of science fiction. https://soylentnews.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=104&aid=-1 There is some of that, but it's not the purpose of the book to put across one of the currently favored SJW themes.
Mr. Lee is Chinese, and he seems to draw on Chinese mythology, legend, or maybe even history. Sadly, I'm not sure that I'm getting the full story, because I know so little of the Chinese culture. [Yoon Ha Lee is Korean.]
All the same, this has been a pretty action packed space adventure. The heroine is a military commander (captain of infantry) whose pastime is math. The math that enables and manipulates this mysterious force. As a military commander, her task is less to bring firepower to bear upon the enemy, as to keep her troops in formation. The formation is mathematically calculated to focus the force on the enemy, or to defend freindly troops. A "gun" may or may not fire a projectile, at all - and if it does fire a projectile, it is unlikely to be a solid, physical projectile. Call it magic - the gun merely focuses the magic that the commander intends to use.
Kel Cheris' math abilities help her to defeat an anemy in the opening chapter, which her colleagues have been unable to touch. This brings her to the attention of the high command, who has a far greater challenge to be met.
Enter the hero/madman/villian/anti-hero/traitor. Shuos Jedao can be described as a disembodied mind, kept as a pet of the Heptarch, and routinely trotted out of his "black cradle" to solve insoluble problems. Jedao will be "anchored" to Cheris mind, and body.
Cheris and Jedao are approved as the most likely solution to a rebellion on a Heptarch fortress that threatens the very existence of the Heptarch. The parameters defining "success" are pretty strict - the impregnable fortress must not be destroyed, if, in fact, they can gain entry.
There is plenty of intrique, with the Heptarch holding the end of a long leash, which Jedao must not escape. Cheris herself is also on a leash. But, the higher echelons don't understand the game that Jedao has been developing for the last four centuries.
This story is a wild ride, and just when you think you're nearing the end of the journey, you find that you have only just begun!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday March 29 2017, @02:49PM (4 children)
"they both military women"
Is there supposed to be some significance to when you drop into grammatically-incorrect mode? You kept going on about "we was kings" in the other article.
Or is this one of those tongue-in-cheek things that if you explain it it'll start a big fight and downmods :P
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:06PM (3 children)
Type at 100+ wpm, blink the wrong way, $#& dropped an apostrophe. If you read glyphically entire words at a time then proofreading nonsense like relics relating to strange non-fiction unironically described randomness slips right thru, although a major missspelin would be instantly caught because thats a malformed glyph. Even worse they both military women is not only spelled correctly by is conceptually correct in that both imaginary characters were captains. You know who else was a fictional female sci fi captain? Janeway. I wonder how Janeway fits in WRT Kel Cheris.
The "we was kings" is not my invention that's a self described by a racial revisionist history group. They have some impressive although incredibly unrealistic alternative facts relating to African pre historic civilization. There are some fascinating youtube videos. In the other discussion about an alt-hist sci fi novel there are people who more or less unironically believe in it to one level or another as non-fiction. Ancient Egyptians were black and built the pyramids. Africans invented philosophy and writing and horses and pretty much everything but the whites stole it and there has been a multi-millennial multi-cultural coverup in place to make sure black folks don't get credit because, um, we'll skip the because part... Also Africans discovered America before Columbus because there's evidence of maps of the new world in African relics none of which unfortunately are present in museums or scientific study. Pottery in Scotland was occasionally made with black pigment drawings of people therefore ancient Scots were black skinned aka Africans, ditto Greeks and Chinese and Romans and Japanese (Africans were also the first Ninjas, and I'm not making this up). Its strange, kinda interesting stuff.
I remember reading an interview or biography of Tolkien where he more or less admitted the Germans and Nords had cooler mythological supernatural prehistory and origin story, so he kinda made one for England out of what dumpy fairy tales the English had. Beowulf is cool let me write an even better fanfic and set it in England, kinda. "We was kings" is kinda the same thing in Africa without the self awareness that its mythological fiction. Sorta their Atlantis mythos. It mostly comes from people in America not Africa which makes it weirder yet.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:21PM (1 child)
"we was steampunk kings"
"we wuz kangs"
because we was steampunk kings.
I wasn't questioning the idea of the African steampunk thing, I was questioning why you kept purposely writing it grammatically wrong. It comes off as as some sort of backhanded Ebonics "haha, black people can't talk properly."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:49PM
I looked it up and the technical term for it, which is useless to search for, is "Pan-African Black Afrocentric Egyptian Hypothesis". Or something like that.
Its a cultural appropriation to steal lines out of their youtube videos but much like "white men can't dance" its more straightforward to appropriate their own phrase than to try and express it in another vernacular.
Umm... most of the people commenting on the Pan-African Black Afrocentric Egyptian Hypothesis on the internet are making fun of it and their people, something like "the old negro space program" as seen on youtube is probably the most polite mocking you'll see probably because it splits its time between making fun of Ken Burns and his SWPL fans while also making fun of "Pan-African Black Afrocentric Egyptian Hypothesis" if it were logically extended into an alternative history of the 50s/60s space race. And that being the most polite and respectful video I can think of, while also not being safe for work, you might find other commentary on that academic topic somewhat toxic. There is a two video series by people in the "Pan-African Black Afrocentric Egyptian Hypothesis" movement, I can't remember the name, something with "colors" in it, that's not supposed to be a comedy yet is somehow more comedic than the space program video.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @11:10PM
Maybe you shouldn't type so fast.
But that does explain your stream of consciousness style.
Typing at 100+ wpm is fine for copying something from dead tree format.