Friday, June 15, 2018

What is Yoon Ha Lee reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Yoon Ha Lee, author of Revenant Gun.

From Lee's entry:
...I'm reading Strategy Strikes Back: How Star Wars Explains Modern Military Conflict, ed. Max Brooks, John Amble, M. L. Cavanaugh, and Jaym Gates. I'm only casually acquainted with the Star Wars universe, but I enjoy reading military history and space opera, and this marries the two in one enticing package. I was especially intrigued by the Preface by Cavanaugh, who's taught strategy at West Point: he explains that in trying to discuss strategy with colleagues in South Korea, he needed to find common ground as South Koreans will not necessarily, say, have a clue about American Civil War battles that are well-known in the United States. So the solution was to talk about strategy through the lens of Star Wars! (My sister and I, who have both lived in South Korea, were impressed Star Wars worked for this purpose. Who knew!) The essays run the gamut from satire to serious analysis, and...[read on]
About Revenant Gun, from the publisher:
Shuos Jedao is awake...

...and nothing is as he remembers. He's a teenager, a cadet—a nobody—in the body of an old man: a general in command of an elite force. And he's the most feared, and reviled, man in the galaxy.

Jedao carries orders from Hexarch Nirai Kujen to re-conquer the fractured pieces of the hexarchate. But he has no memory of ever being a soldier, let alone a general, and the Kel soldiers under his command hate him for a massacre he can't remember committing.

Kujen's friendliness cant hide the fact that he's a tyrant. And what's worse, Jedao and Kujen are being hunted—by an enemy who knows more about Jedao than he does himself...
Visit Yoon Ha Lee's website.

The Page 69 Test: Revenant Gun.

Writers Read: Yoon Ha Lee.

--Marshal Zeringue