A Desolation Called Peace is a follow-up novel to the earlier work A Memory Called Empire. This book again revolves around the characters Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass, but this time it throws them into the middle of a war with an alien species who no one can understand (linguistically or otherwise) in the role of negotiators. While the aliens themselves are pretty alien and we mostly don't get their point of view, there is a lot of political maneuvering within the factions on the human side, with each having their own preferred outcome of the war--reconciliation, genocide, never-ending war, conveniently eliminating people loyal to a certain regime, etc. I did enjoy the interplay of sympathetic characters working at cross-purposes, and especially the adventures of Imperial heir Eight Antidote (who is the best-written character in the book). However, it is still a step below the first book, which set a very high bar. ( )

Good, I liked it more than the first one. ( )

I liked it even better than the 1st one in the series ( )

I read A Memory Called Empire earlier this year and really enjoyed it. In this sequel, I was curious to see how the author would handle the mysterious aliens, who we previously hadn’t seen on page.

We see this story from multiple points of view. While I liked getting different perspectives, they felt rather contrived in terms of answering questions raised by the previous PoV character. I also felt there was a lot of characters standing around being told (or overhearing) information by other characters. Sometimes I was put in mind of “messenger speeches” in Greek drama, where important events are recounted to the actors (and audience) by a messenger, rather than being played out on stage.

There was a sex scene which… felt unnecessary and didn’t (in my opinion) contribute in any way to the story, and I could have done without as much angst-y interactions. (Or perhaps, since we all have angsty moments, not having them spelled out so explicitly).

That said, I enjoyed the read overall and the interweaving of the narrative viewpoints.

The writing is exquisite, just like in the (much beloved) first book. This is the kind of writing you both want to swallow whole and drink every sentence in small sips - slowly. I'm glad there is now such a thing as Teixcalaan in the universe of books and I would dive into it again and again.
Palace intrigues, space battles, great characters and their web of relationships are all there for the reader to enjoy ;-) (Eight Antidote, I love you so much! And all the rest of them.). Also, I appreciate sci-fi books with aliens that are truly, horrifyingly alien.

Yes, there were a few plot devices that might have made me go into facepalm mode - in a lesser book. So these were easy to forgive. ( )