As the sequel to the amazing Ninefox Gambit I went into this novel with high expectations that were mostly met. I read this book with my book group so I’ve spent more time discussing the story and how it’s put together than I usually do. All in all we liked it but there were a few divisive issues.

The first oddity of this novel is that we don’t get the same Point of View as the first book. The main character, Jedao, is there but we don’t see events from his perspective. Arguably this was also the case in the first book but Cheris was a lot closer to him than the characters in Raven Stratagem. It’s always a problem with great tactician characters that they have to be a little mysterious but in this case it might have gone too far. Anyway, I personally thought it was really well done but one of my friends thought it was a bit of a bait and switch.

This is maybe exacerbated by the fact that in general we don’t spend as much time around him as in the first book. In that one we were in mostly the same location throughout. In this one we are jumping between a number of different characters in different locations. This lets the world develop and gives it more depth, while letting us know more about what’s going on. However, the action in the book falls off towards the second half. There’s a lot of plotting and manoeuvring from several different people in reaction to Jedao but as we don’t know what he’s plotting in any way, because he’s not telling anyone, it mostly boils down to people making probing strikes at him.

The characters are all good and interesting. The action we see is on par with what we got to enjoy in the first book. The world is fascinating. But the slow down towards the end kind of takes away from this. All in all I think that this book depends a lot on the third novel, which is a general weakness of second books. Either it’s set everything up amazingly or it’s wasted a hundred odd pages. I have the upmost faith that it’ll turn out to be the former and I can’t wait to read it.