Book Review: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

This book has been on my to-read list for a while since, along with Gideon The Ninth, it's received a lot of praise and award nominations. I did have to put a pause while I read a collection of short stories, but that did not detract from my enjoyment. Here's the Goodreads blurb:

Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining Station, has died. But no one will admit that his death wasn't an accident—or that Mahit might be next to die, during a time of political instability in the highest echelons of the imperial court.

Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan's unceasing expansion—all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret—one that might spell the end of her Station and her way of life—or rescue it from annihilation.

Read on for my spoiler-free review.

Overall Impression

This was a pretty solid book. The high-tech mesoamerican setting and the intrigue of the Teixcalaanli court is very cool and the characters play well within it. It feels quite fast paced as well with a lot going on in a relatively short span of time. I also liked some of the poetry in it, which gave it that extra fancy feel to the whole novel.

Plot

The plot starts of fairly generic, with an unsurprising scenario of a new ambassador being selected to replace another who has mysteriously died. It quickly grows convoluted and frenzied with suspicions of murder and double dealings and as the characters start struggling against their technology and each other. Overall, it's fast paced with a few levels of intrigue going on at personal, imperial, and even galactic levels.

Characters

There are a number of characters in the book, but the one we follow most closely is Mahit Dzmare, the new ambassador from Lsel. She is very capable, but well over her head given all the secret dealings of her predecessor. She's joined by her liaison, Three Seagrass, and other characters like the ezuazuacat Nineteen Adze and the emperor himself, Six Direction. It was very hard to tell who is on what side with all the intrigue going on and the very little information Mahit has, but it's also satisfying to see her struggle through regardless and make the best of the situation.

Setting / World Building

The novel is set primarily in the capital of the Teixcalaanli Empire, though we do have brief glimpses into life in the Lsel Station. The capital is pretty much a standard high-tech metropolis, with lots of sky scrappers and AI to facilitate transportation and security, but also has quite a bit of emphasis to gardens and flowers, due to their prominence in Teixcalaanli culture. I really liked the Teixcalaanli names, with their number and their object, particularly those that were clearly far out and funny. I also liked the mesoamerican feel to everything, with the choice of names, titles, symbols. It's a refreshing change from the typical European-centric settings many novels have.

One central point to the plot is the technology behind Lsel's imago lines. These are effectively recordings of a person's entity that can be taken out and inserted to another person. The implications of that are quite staggering, as well as the morality behind it, and I think Martine did a good job of presenting that in a manner that both served the story as an enjoyable plot point, and that left me thinking afterwards for many hours.

Final Thoughts

This was a good book, probably not the best I've read this year but certainly one of the better ones. It has a cool setting that manages to be both familiar and exotic to fans of science fiction. The characters grew on me and I want to continue reading their stories. The ending was one of those that leave you wondering if it's a happy ending or a sad one; more is sure to come. In the end, it's a complex story of imperialism and a small nation's struggle to remain itself amidst its own yearning to be part of the culture that threatens to engulf it.