brenticus reviewed A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (Teixcalaan, #1)
Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover …
None
4 stars
This was a very interesting read that really worked to highlight the allure and dangers of imperial culture – both for the empire and for everyone else. We see Teixcalaan through the eyes of Mahit Dzmare, new ambassador from a small space station who grew up enamoured with the culture, and see how it is to be in that culture without being born into it.
Teixcalaan is steeped in a literary tradition that is so ingrained in daily life it is almost enviable. Could you imagine it being stylish to send emails that are entirely clever references to Byron? Or political speeches invoking obscure Byzantine emperors to root policy in? Hell, can you imagine if cocktail parties had poetry instead of speeches, and we shared couplets instead of tiktoks? It feels good, in a way.
But we also see when this falls apart. The constant dramatization of everyday interactions. The othering of the less educated, or differently educated, which we see with the ambassadors and to some extent as Mahit leaves the central province. We see the constant intrigue and the crazy political choices seemingly done in order to appear out of an epic, the purposeful rhyming of events, the constant lookout for similarities to guess how things will turn out. It's interesting to read, but seems painful to live.
There are plenty of other interesting themes in this book with the imagos, cloudhooks and AI city services, stratification of society, general weakness of dictatorships, and so on and so forth. But the culture of Teixcalaan stands out so far that it's practically its own character, and it's an impressive thing to read about.
As for complaints, I have two somewhat minor ones. First, the pacing feels really slow early on and really fast towards the end. The plot is a boulder rolling downhill out of control, speeding up as it goes, but it's a gentle slope and it takes a while to get going. My other complaint is just that the story structure feels sort of typical for the first book of a sci-fi series: it's mostly bound to a single planet, but the lingering problems are all threats from outer space. I may not have known how the book was going to end, but I sure knew which hooks weren't going to be resolved.
Teixcalaan is steeped in a literary tradition that is so ingrained in daily life it is almost enviable. Could you imagine it being stylish to send emails that are entirely clever references to Byron? Or political speeches invoking obscure Byzantine emperors to root policy in? Hell, can you imagine if cocktail parties had poetry instead of speeches, and we shared couplets instead of tiktoks? It feels good, in a way.
But we also see when this falls apart. The constant dramatization of everyday interactions. The othering of the less educated, or differently educated, which we see with the ambassadors and to some extent as Mahit leaves the central province. We see the constant intrigue and the crazy political choices seemingly done in order to appear out of an epic, the purposeful rhyming of events, the constant lookout for similarities to guess how things will turn out. It's interesting to read, but seems painful to live.
There are plenty of other interesting themes in this book with the imagos, cloudhooks and AI city services, stratification of society, general weakness of dictatorships, and so on and so forth. But the culture of Teixcalaan stands out so far that it's practically its own character, and it's an impressive thing to read about.
As for complaints, I have two somewhat minor ones. First, the pacing feels really slow early on and really fast towards the end. The plot is a boulder rolling downhill out of control, speeding up as it goes, but it's a gentle slope and it takes a while to get going. My other complaint is just that the story structure feels sort of typical for the first book of a sci-fi series: it's mostly bound to a single planet, but the lingering problems are all threats from outer space. I may not have known how the book was going to end, but I sure knew which hooks weren't going to be resolved.