This book certainly held my attention - it delivered all the pathos and character drama that the first two books metered out at limited intervals. Also, some great worldbuilding (servitor POV character ftw!!)

Yet I missed the high-octane firefights of the first book, and didn't experience much suspense while I was reading. Most of the remaining mysteries were cleanly explicated (although I think I lost track of some of them along the way) and the plot felt fairly linear. There was also a lot of lampshading that left me uncertain about the parameters of the world and undercut the drama.

I possibly have some issues with Kujen's character, and to a lesser extent Jedao's. In general I am not super fond of stories that delve into villains' tragic backstories, as if evil has a genealogy. (This is a lie, I loved the Voldemort flashback scenes in HBP, but I'm not proud of this love.)

Overall I'm glad I followed this ambitious trilogy to its end, even if neither of the sequels wowed me quite like Ninefox Gambit.

A brilliant and heartbreaking conclusion to the Machineries of Empire Series. I have not enjoyed space opera that much since discovering Anne Leckie’s Imperial Radch books (this is not a comparison ;-) )
So if you like
- brilliant worldbuilding
- moral dilemmas and moral ambiguity
- lots of intrigues and backstabbing
- “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” territory

then you’ll probably like this.

(Oh, and I want more.) ( )

It took a while to get going. This book's whole universe is still a mysterious place, with enigmatic characters doing incomprehensible things. And yet. I couldn't put this book down, once I reached the second half.

Perhaps that's in part because of the basic alienness of the world, that it just seems rife with adventure. Or possibly it's simply that I got used to the techno babble and just wanted to taste more of the texture. Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed this series, sometimes despite its difficulty, perhaps because of it. ( )

God, this was so good! I can't believe I waited so long to read it, but life happened and I didn't have the attention & focus for reading. It was definitely worth the wait and an incredible end to an incredible series. A welcome relief from the last couple trilogies I read where the final book dragged and bored me, this was on par with the rest of the series, if not better. I can't wait to read Yoon Ha Lee's other works. ( )

These three books were great, set in a strange universe of calendrical warfare. I still can't explain what that is, but that doesn't matter. Just remember Clarke's Law. What made this book extra challenging was the fact that the protagonist exists twice, and at least at the start, is referred to by the same name, no matter which one of them the story currently focuses on. Once again, it all netaly comes together in the end, and makes for a good "final" book. ( )