#hexarchate

Book summaries below:

I’m dead serious. the “Machineries of Empire” series - buy and read them immediately.

Do you like intricate genderfucked sci-fi world building powered by arcane mathematical space magic

Do you like raw characters careening back and forth between despair and mania, who want to make the world a better place, but commit atrocities and sacrifice the lives of millions in the name of that dream

Do you like piercing analysis of imperialism, empire manifested both in violence and in culture, the ways entire cultures are swallowed by empire but also resist and thrive in hiding and exile

Do you like mind control

Do you like characters who crave mind control and the security of conformity, a found family that would die for you, and have it taken all away

Do you like people being made into weapons, objectified to the point they can’t conceive of themselves any other way

Do you like immortals playing games of mutually assured destruction, cat and mouse enemies-to-allies-to-I-would-kill-you-but-I-need-you-you-are-the-only-one-who-understands-me-and-I-love-the-way-you-hurt-me

Do you like quiet little green onions growing in quiet little pots, kept on the desks of dictators to remind themselves that they are human

Do you like questioning the definition of human

Do you like unreliable narrators

Do you like conflicting factions and political alliances and backstabbing and assassins

Do you like canonical edge play dubcon sex scenes that expand the reader’s understanding of the characters’ emotional topography and motivations, and which ALSO scratch a deep and vicious Dead Dove Don’t Eat itch deep inside you

Do you like cats

Listen to me. This series is 50 content warnings in a trench coat. I read all the books and short stories in two weeks over the summer. I think they rewrote me on a chemical level.

You need to read “Machineries of Empire”

i cannot express how much i love MoE and all its characters

Jedao and Cheris from Yoon Ha Lee’s Machineries of Empire series 💙❤️

Someone: So you’re transgender?

Are you looking for your next book?

Would you like to read a book that several other Grishaverse fans have enjoyed?

Did you think the Darkling was a cool villain, but wish it had been made crystal clear that he was an abusive piece of shit?

Do you like the idea of Tailoring but think it didn’t go far enough?

Do you want to read a book with literally no white characters whatsoever?

(Okay, there’s two. They’re unnamed prisoners of war without control over their bodies and have zero lines.)

(Everyone else is Asian I think (ethnicity is a little hard to describe when you’re millions of light-years away from Asia, if such a continent ever existed), mostly Korean)

Do you want a book with more gay/bi/pan characters?

Do you want a book with lesbians, trans men, trans women, and characters who are nonbinary, asexual, and polyamorous?

Do you want that book to be mostly chill about all of the above?

(I say “mostly” because this book has no chill whatsoever.)

Do you like reading about characters slowly working through their trauma?

Do you like ghosts?

Do you like a fast-paced, intricate plot laced with plenty of slow character moments?

Do you like a setting so descriptive you can smell it?

A strong ensemble cast?

Kindness and survival?

Do you like the politics of fictional empires?

Do you hate empires?

Do you like ✨ scheming ✨?

You do? Awesome! A few more questions:

Are you an adult? (Normally I recommend kids & teens read adult books, but...maybe not this one.)

Are you good at managing your reactions to upsetting literature?

How about triggering literature, if you have triggers? (Someone made a trigger warning list for this but I can’t think of a single common trigger that‘s not present)

Would you keep reading and enjoying a book even if a major sympathetic character did something horrible and unjustifiable in any moral system, and did not repent it?

Would you enjoy a book even without a single romantic relationship you could really fully root for?

Do you want to read something that’s pretty screwed-up, actually?

If you answered “yes” to all of the above, you should read the Machineries of Empire series by Yoon Ha Lee

And then come yell at me on my sideblog @arin-greenonion