Revenant Gun

[psocoptera]

Revenant Gun, the conclusion of the trilogy by Yoon Ha Lee, previous parts Ninefox Gambit (my reaction here) and Raven Strategem (my reaction here).

I assume basically everyone who liked Raven Strategem is going to read this one and nobody who didn't like Raven Strategem is going to read this one unless/until it ends up on a ballot and they feel obligated, so let's jump right to the MAJOR SPOILERS:

Ok, wow, what?? I was really into this for the first 90% and then ended up completely thrown by the end and now I'm not sure what I think. I think all along I had been making the assumption that this ended up with the Cheris Jedao and the moth Jedao together. Not in a self-cest sense but in some sort of "two halves making a whole, filling in each other's missing pieces" way (sort of in parallel to how the split pieces of the old hexarchy, the Compact and the Protectorate, need to rejoin to be whole), or, I guess, particularly Cheris Jedao being that for moth Jedao, Cheris Jedao seems pretty complete in herself, but, like, that older version of Jedao having the opportunity to take the younger version under her wing and give him the second chance at a life not of exploitation that original Jedao didn't have? (Which is a trope I'm kind of obsessed with, yes.) So I was completely unprepared for Cheris Jedao to shoot him and tell him if she ever sees him again she'll kill him more! What?? Waah!

With the ostensible reason for Cheris shooting being moth Jedao's claim to have raped Danneth, I spent quite awhile thinking about whether I thought that was accurate. Consent is weird in mind control settings! Should moth Jedao have known that nobody in the orbit of Kujen/who had been psychosurgeried was capable of giving meaningful consent? I dunno, maybe, but moth Jedao was also literally born yesterday and in the orbit of Kujen himself. And I think it's basically impossible to know what Danneth "really thought" - unless Kujen's mind control somehow weakened once he was eradicated, it seems pretty clear that everything Danneth said/did at the end was to get Jedao into the escape capsule. As Josh put it, cutting to the essentials, do we think Danneth would have done anything different there if Jedao had not been sexual with him? Probably not? So, I dunno, while I do see character-wise why both moth-Jedao and Cheris-Jedao might have that reaction, it wasn't satisfying to me-the-reader as the determining thing for their interaction.

I was also confused about the servitors coming in at the end to kill the crew, and the Revenant taking off... I guess I thought something more was going to happen with the moths somehow. Maybe Cheris Jedao and moth Jedao would make freeing the moths their next quest, or moth Jedao would turn out to be able to be a bridge/ambassador/negotiator between the Compact and the moths or something. Jedao maybe being put to use by Mikodez just felt really random? I mean, sure, why not, but it didn't really have any resonance for me or feeling of a story being resolved. I guess sometimes things just keep happening and that's a valid narrative structure, or maybe there were things in Ninefox or Raven that if I remembered would have made that a more satisfying ending; maybe same for Cheris teaching math? I mean, sure, that's nice, and I liked the last line about carrying on with the small acts that keep civilization moving, I was just so discombobulated by that point that it was hard to tell what I thought. I haven't gone looking for reviews yet so I have no idea if this all landed more solidly with people who weren't me. And I did *like* it... when I reread the last 15% knowing what to expect, it already went more smoothly than the initial confusion... but I'll be very curious to see whether it's as popular as Raven Strategem.

Comments

[ursula]

I was spoiled for the moths by the rpg and expected the entire book to be about the problems created when they withdraw consent for the mothdrive...

I was angry that Talaw covered for Jedao's lie, at the end. My more general weird-ending-thoughts post is here.

[psocoptera]

I'm not sure what you mean about Talaw covering for Jedao's lie, but I'm interested, if you wanted to explain! (I am definitely very capable of missing things in the text that should be obvious so please feel free to explain like I'm dumb, I will not mind.)

I think Kujen's "Iiiii (and only I) will always love yoooouu" schtick *does* kind of hit me, and that's why I really wanted Cheris Jedao to show up at the end and be like "nope! we also love you!". When in fact as far as I can tell Kujen was telling the truth and moth Jedao is going to get to spend the rest of his life with a nice robot friend but no human (or moth) friends. Not to knock robot friends... Hemiola is awesome... but that doesn't really feel like enough to me. :(

[ursula]

Jedao tells Cheris that the crew on the command moth mutinied. He continues to stick to that explanation, rather than explaining all the stuff about the servitors and his psychic connection with moths. And nobody comes back to ask him about it, which means Talaw isn't telling a different story (and is sending him jeng-zai cards instead). Which means Talaw is just letting everyone think that the Kel under their command turned against a superior officer. And that they might be alive out there somewhere.

Personally I ship moth!Jedao/Mikodez, which I imagine entails Mikodez tying Jedao up a lot and lecturing him about making efforts to socialize with other humans. This seems unlikely to happen except in the sense that maybe someday I'll persuade someone else to write fic about it, but I do feel hopeful about Mikodez slowly working his way around to being friends with Jedao.

[psocoptera]

Aha, right, that, with the "mutiny". Thank you!

[glynhogen]

It was definitely rape; formation instinct means Kel can't give meaningful consent within their chain of command, and Jedao 3.0 has some idea about how it works. Best case scenario would be the equivalent of somebody wasted wanting to have sex with somebody who was sober, and it's on the sober person to put the brakes on. My read was that Major Monkeypony was the instigator because a) Kujen knows what Jedao likes and he's really good at picking out gifts and b) Dhanneth was throwing himself on the metaphorical grenade of Jedao's penis. Unhealthy sexytimes didn't happen until right after the incredibly creepy guy, primarily famous for killing everybody in his army but also known for killing people up close and personal, started taking an interest in hanging out with other Kel on the moth.

Re: Mikodez, his political philosophy is: 1. power, including territorial protection of his stuff, 2. no genocide, 3. term limits, 4. ooh, shiny! Keeping Jedao 3.0 in the basement is kind of a terrible idea, but it only violates principle #3. (Though it's not like moths aren't destroyed--unless it's just the technology, and there are all these formerly-cyborged moths floating around, eternally tortured in fungal wraps or whatever.) I think it technically sticks the landing of a humane arc, while obviously being unsustainable. More like this is the onion until after Cheris (inadvertently or otherwise) builds the Shuos a Mossad on the cheap. (Also, remember Jedao 2.x said wanted to teach--that was presumably 1.0's Plan A for overthrowing the government--and that plus bleed through and ingested memories also makes the epilogue feel much less like a nice, peaceful third act for her.)

I agree that the moths were underdeveloped. I liked the inadvertent reinscribing of oppression (Cheris almost starts to get it), but felt like it also undermined the people-versus-technology argument of the text (and any version of Jedao). But I was also really disappointed by the general lack of killing Space Nazis, so when the indiscriminate killing on general principles began, I was just "Thank you!"

[psocoptera]

Well, okay, I would definitely buy that it was rape committed by Kujen, who has wound up his various wind-up toys and set them loose to bump into each other in unfortunate ways. I'm less convinced that Jedao really understands himself to be part of the Kel/understands that the Kel rules really apply to him too - given how resistant/afraid he is to put on the uniform at the beginning, I'm not convinced he's really internalized that he's in the Kel now as opposed to just being faking it through a giant weird game. But maybe he *should*, that's fair, and I would certainly believe that my moral instincts about rape just aren't very well developed in how I should be thinking about these weirdzo sff-world cases, because why would they be. Definitely an interesting point that Danneth may be trying to get Jedao to focus on him and not his crew, I hadn't caught that.

I'm not sure what you mean about the moths being destroyed? I think they're mostly still enslaved as ships and it's just the Revenant that got away, right? I wasn't sure how significant the destruction of that one mothyards was... are there more of those, or was that really the one place where they had the moth babies and could build new moth ships and now there won't be more? I was confused.

[glynhogen]

Ah, sorry, with the moths I just meant that Jedao 3.0 is framed as being effectively immortal and nigh indestructible ("don't dive into a star" is very different from "don't get hit by lots of conventional and exotic weapons") and while Kujen might well have lied, Mikodez also seems to be under the impression that killing him might be challenging (as opposed to merely an expensive pain in the ass). We see regular moths killed in the mothyards, and moths-as-ships destroyed in action. Which probably just means we're supposed to conclude that the specialized breeding and modding that went into Jedao 3.0 just resulted in an extra-special robust moth.

Even if Jedao 3.0 doesn't consider himself Kel, he still understands himself as being in charge (to a certain extent) purely in a position-on-the-org-chart sense. That alone would kick things into kinda-sketchy territory. As far as we know, in four centuries the dude's had precisely one relationship that didn't involve a serious power imbalance. And we also know that folks in the heptarchate and hexarchate do have an understanding of power relationships, consent, etc., so even if we assume he's just a teenager (which he isn't, quite, though representing that variable state was one of the weaknesses of the book for me) he's still behaving badly. He briefly thought it was a game--frankly, I don't know why he didn't continue to assume it was a training exercise, because how is "wake up in a strange room and react to a totally bizarre situation to see which way you jump" not part of the Shuos curriculum?--but he got on board awfully quickly.

[psocoptera]

Well, that's fair. Also thanks for explaining what you meant about moths/Jedao, and I agree.