Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee

When the hexarchate's gifted young captain Kel Cheris summoned the ghost of the long-dead General Shuos Jedao to help her put down a rebellion, she didn't reckon on his breaking free of centuries of imprisonment - and possessing her. Even worse, the enemy Hafn are invading, and Jedao takes over General Kel Khiruev's fleet, which was tasked with stopping them. Only one of Khiruev's subordinates, Lieutenant Colonel Kel Brezan, seems to be able to resist the influence of the brilliant but psychotic Jedao. Jedao claims to be interested in defending the hexarchate, but can Khiruev or Brezan trust him? For that matter, will the hexarchate's masters wipe out the entire fleet to destroy the rogue general?

I think I getting more used to the bananas world made this second volume a lot easier to handle than the first. I didn't spend the whole time just desperately trying to figure out what all these high concept science magic stuff was, and could enjoy the characters more. If you're on the fence about continuing this series, I would say go for it; it gets easier. The new characters are interesting, Jedao is still great, and without spoiling anything, I wasn't disappointed in the Cheris storyline either.

I enjoyed this second book much more than the first book. I think that it's because Raven Stratagem is more character-focused, and thus the story is a little more natural to follow. The world building is great. For whatever reason, I had less trouble visualizing the events this time around, perhaps because I was being a more careful reader. Anyhow, I am looking forward to the third and final book in the series.

Classic second book, what's good about it are things that were already good about the first. As a result, took me longer to finish, or at least felt like it dragged on.

“You've got to get over that Kel thing where you offer to commit suicide just to prove a point.”

I'm going to hide some of my review behind spoiler tags, but the tl;dr up front is that I enjoyed this book just as much as or maybe even more than the first. I know. I'm shocked too. Middle books of trilogies are usually so mediocre.

The author buries the lede in this book from the very beginning, with the vast majority of things taking place from the points of view of everyone else except Cheris/Jedao. Is she Cheris? Is she Jedao? Who knows? The author certainly isn't telling, and I appreciated being pulled along through the story and trying to figure it out alongside the other main(?) characters aboard the bannermoth of their fleet. Cheris/Jedao has a sneaky plan to get back at the hexarchate, but goes through the motions of investigating a Hafn invasion while doing so. We also get other points of view from people removed from the fleet, chief among them the Shuos hexarchate, Mikodez, who also harbors no great love for the system he works within. The ending, while no great space battle, was still satisfying (and a bit sad).While the first book started us off in the middle of things and I had to figure things out as we went along, this book took a much slower pace and felt more character-driven. I appreciated that. I also didn't feel nearly as beaten over the head by crazy terminology as I did from reading the first book, which helped me keep pace with what was going on and really develop feelings for some of these non-MCs. I had some real feels near the end.

If you've read the first book and are here to see if you'd enjoy the second, I highly recommend giving it a try. It's clear the author cleaned things up a bit here, and things feel tighter, more cohesive, and incredibly satisfying. I'm absolutely going to move onto the third.