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"An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is running out of options. In a desperate attempt at diplomacy with the mysterious invaders, the fleet captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass-still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire-face the impossible task of trying to communicate with a hostile entity. Whether they succeed or fail could change show more the face of Teixcalaan forever"-- show lessTags
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I was very taken by A Memory Called Empire, but this one never really took off for me, alas. Memory worked slowly but purposefully until it suddenly accelerated and left me reading quickly to find out what happened next. This one never seemed to pick up any speed, possibly because I found its multiple points-of-view considerably less interesting than Mahit's fish-out-of-water diplomat perspective from the last one; I never really warmed to "badass space admiral" and found "precocious heir" intermittently interesting. There was less worldbuilding and cultural stuff, and it seemed to me that there was a missed opportunity in that it would have been neat to see some Teixcalaanli on Station (since last book was all about a Stationer on show more Teixcalaan), but that idea was squandered pretty quickly. Mahit seemed a bit overwrought in ways I didn't find very believable, too. Thankfully, Memory will stand alone as an accomplishment. I would read more in this world if Martine pens it, but hopefully I enjoy it more than this. show less
Sequel to A Memory Called Empire. As always with sequels, it's challenging to talk about this one without doing at least a little spoiling of the earlier book, but I'll do my best to keep it to a minimum.
Lsel is a small space station sitting at the edge of the Teixcalaanli Empire, and tenuously clinging to its independence from that empire. Mahit Dzmare, recently appointed Lsel's ambassador to Teixcalaan, has returned home where she is trying to catch her breath and figure out her next step after the events of the first book.
She quicly finds herself tangled in Lsel's own political struggles, a pawn being tossed about by several members of the station's ruling council. So when Teixcalaan calls on her -- she is still officially the show more ambassador, after all -- for assistance in making first contact with an alien race that is on the brink of war with the empire, she jumps at the chance to get away from Lsel.
Meanwhile, we're also following events on the Teixcalaanli home world, where the Emperor and her ministers are in conflict about how to play the potential war to their own advantage. Most entertaining of these characters is Eight Antidote, eleven-year-old clone of an earlier emperor, who is being trained to take over the throne himself one day, and who has his own thoughts about wartime ethics.
This is much more a traditional space opera than the first book was, with invading aliens, first contact, xenolinguistics, and a fleet commander worried about mutinous underlings. In terms of basic plot, you could have read something like this in 1953. But that book would have been 140 pages long instead of 500; it would have had fewer, thinner characters and subplots; and those characters would probably all have been male. The aliens would have been reduced to bug-eyed monsters, and the author wouldn't have even attempted (as Martine does, mostly successfully) to give us a glimpse into their way of thinking.
Very fine stuff, as was its predecessor. Both novels won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and while I haven't read all of the other nominees from those years, these are both entirely deserving of honor at that level. show less
Lsel is a small space station sitting at the edge of the Teixcalaanli Empire, and tenuously clinging to its independence from that empire. Mahit Dzmare, recently appointed Lsel's ambassador to Teixcalaan, has returned home where she is trying to catch her breath and figure out her next step after the events of the first book.
She quicly finds herself tangled in Lsel's own political struggles, a pawn being tossed about by several members of the station's ruling council. So when Teixcalaan calls on her -- she is still officially the show more ambassador, after all -- for assistance in making first contact with an alien race that is on the brink of war with the empire, she jumps at the chance to get away from Lsel.
Meanwhile, we're also following events on the Teixcalaanli home world, where the Emperor and her ministers are in conflict about how to play the potential war to their own advantage. Most entertaining of these characters is Eight Antidote, eleven-year-old clone of an earlier emperor, who is being trained to take over the throne himself one day, and who has his own thoughts about wartime ethics.
This is much more a traditional space opera than the first book was, with invading aliens, first contact, xenolinguistics, and a fleet commander worried about mutinous underlings. In terms of basic plot, you could have read something like this in 1953. But that book would have been 140 pages long instead of 500; it would have had fewer, thinner characters and subplots; and those characters would probably all have been male. The aliens would have been reduced to bug-eyed monsters, and the author wouldn't have even attempted (as Martine does, mostly successfully) to give us a glimpse into their way of thinking.
Very fine stuff, as was its predecessor. Both novels won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and while I haven't read all of the other nominees from those years, these are both entirely deserving of honor at that level. show less
Though this novel continues the travails of Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, as she comes to a frightening understanding of just how expendable she has become to her own government, the narrative really begins with the military leader Nine Hibiscus on the bridge of her flagship, as she finds herself prosecuting the war that Ambassador Dzmare instigated. From there we have a multi-layered political thriller as various factions try to make the war pay off for them, and I am very impressed with how Martine makes the juggling of all these plot lines look effortless. I look forward to what comes from Martine next, because, as far as I'm concerned, these two novels basically represent the current gold standard of space opera.
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.
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.
Martine, Arkady. A Desolation Called Peace. Teixcalaan No. 2. Tor, 2021.
A Desolation Called Peace is an excellent sequel to A Memory Called Empire. It contains widescale action and some complexity of character and technology that the first novel did not quite have. It is unusual to find epic space opera with such good characterization. The fraught relationship between Three Seagrass and Mahit is given a few unexpected twists. The young heir to the Teixcalaani empire, Eight Antidote, is now a fully-fledged character and reminds me a lot of Cajieri in C. J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series. Arkady Martine says that she was much influenced by Elizabeth Bear, and I can see that, but she owes a lot to Cherryh as well. The linguistic themes and show more biological and technological issues are pitted against one another in original ways. Like Peter Watts’s Blindsight, it really makes you think about how far the ideas of consciousness, sentience, and individual identity are related. Highly recommended. show less
A Desolation Called Peace is an excellent sequel to A Memory Called Empire. It contains widescale action and some complexity of character and technology that the first novel did not quite have. It is unusual to find epic space opera with such good characterization. The fraught relationship between Three Seagrass and Mahit is given a few unexpected twists. The young heir to the Teixcalaani empire, Eight Antidote, is now a fully-fledged character and reminds me a lot of Cajieri in C. J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series. Arkady Martine says that she was much influenced by Elizabeth Bear, and I can see that, but she owes a lot to Cherryh as well. The linguistic themes and show more biological and technological issues are pitted against one another in original ways. Like Peter Watts’s Blindsight, it really makes you think about how far the ideas of consciousness, sentience, and individual identity are related. Highly recommended. show less
Where A Memory Called Empire innovated by describing a new world, with a novel political structure and brilliant intrigue, this book innovates in the philosophy of identity - what is "I," what is "we," what can it encompass? It's brilliant throughout and gives you so much intellectual material to chew on that I loved it. And of COURSE I adored the romance between Mahit and Three Seagrass, they're such a good couple with their realistic struggles.
Five stars, no question, won't be leaving my shelf. I would read anything else sprung from Teixcalaan happily.
Five stars, no question, won't be leaving my shelf. I would read anything else sprung from Teixcalaan happily.
This is the sequel to Martine’s Hugo Award-winning debut, A Memory Called Empire. It follows the story of Mahit Dzmare, who at 26, found herself unexpectedly appointed the new Ambassador sent to the Teixcalaan Empire from her home on Lsel Station, an artificial mining construct with at most 30,000 inhabitants. After only a short time, and despite the connection she felt with her cultural liaison in the capital a woman named Three Seagrass, she had enough and returned home. But home was not the sanctuary she thought it would be, and she immediately became a pawn between rival ruling members of Lsel Station’s Council and was in danger for her life.
Mahit improbably gets a last minute reprieve through the intervention of Three Seagrass, show more who insists Mahit needs to accompany her to the edge of the galaxy to help serve as an interpreter between the Teixcalaanli fleet and a bizarre alien race that is attacking them.
Indeed, the problems of language and ways to communicate is central to this sequel, always underlying the Byzantine politics and characters who are struggling to survive in a world rife with ambition, ideology, loyalty, and complex machinations among all the parties.
Interestingly, one of the languages at play is poetry and its expression through song, because that is a primary means of transmission in the Teixcalaanli culture. A second very different language that figures strongly in the story is that of shared perceptions and experiences, and how that sharing shapes future thought.
Yet another theme running through the story is the famous quote from Tacitus, the Roman orator, lawyer, and senator considered one of antiquity's greatest historians, from which the book’s title comes:
“These plunderers of the world [the Romans], after exhausting the land by their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
Evaluation: Martine’s imagination can literally be said to know no bounds. The world-building in this space opera is very detailed and complex. The author assists by providing a glossary at the end of the book, although I would have preferred if it had preceded the story. While this book is clearly "science fiction" set in a very alien universe, the themes are universal and recognizable: quest for power, fear of death, and most of all, the desire for connection and belonging. show less
Mahit improbably gets a last minute reprieve through the intervention of Three Seagrass, show more who insists Mahit needs to accompany her to the edge of the galaxy to help serve as an interpreter between the Teixcalaanli fleet and a bizarre alien race that is attacking them.
Indeed, the problems of language and ways to communicate is central to this sequel, always underlying the Byzantine politics and characters who are struggling to survive in a world rife with ambition, ideology, loyalty, and complex machinations among all the parties.
Interestingly, one of the languages at play is poetry and its expression through song, because that is a primary means of transmission in the Teixcalaanli culture. A second very different language that figures strongly in the story is that of shared perceptions and experiences, and how that sharing shapes future thought.
Yet another theme running through the story is the famous quote from Tacitus, the Roman orator, lawyer, and senator considered one of antiquity's greatest historians, from which the book’s title comes:
“These plunderers of the world [the Romans], after exhausting the land by their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
Evaluation: Martine’s imagination can literally be said to know no bounds. The world-building in this space opera is very detailed and complex. The author assists by providing a glossary at the end of the book, although I would have preferred if it had preceded the story. While this book is clearly "science fiction" set in a very alien universe, the themes are universal and recognizable: quest for power, fear of death, and most of all, the desire for connection and belonging. show less
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- Canonical title
- A Desolation Called Peace
- Original publication date
- 2021-03-02
- People/Characters
- Mahit Dzmare; Three Seagrass; Nineteen Adze; Eight Antidote; Nine Hibiscus; Twenty Cicada
- Epigraph
- First, reality was suspended. All breaches to Inca protocol occurred at once: the rules governing personal contact (visual, oral and corporal), drinking, and eating were broken. When Ciquinchara first met the conquerors he wa... (show all)s allowed to do what no Indian could, and now the tables were turned. Since there was no signifying context to frame their interactions, the actors exposed themselves to limitless risk. Atahualpa could have been slaughtered, or Soto and Hernando poisoned....
-Gonzolo Lamana, in "Beyond Exoticization and Likeness: Alterity and the Production of Sense in a Colonial Encounter," Comparative Studies in Society and History 47, no. 1 (2005): 4-39
To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles--this they name empire; and where they make a desert they call it peace.
-Tacitus (quoting Calgacus), Agricola 30 - Dedication
- This book is for all the exiles:
the displaced, the refugee, the stateless;
the abandoned and the abandoner;
those made desolate and those cast free.
(And for Stanislav Petrov, who knew when to question orders... (show all).) - First words
- To think--not language.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"I'd write back," she said. "All the time."
- Blurbers
- Tchaikovsky, Adrian; Baxter, Stephen; Riordan, Rick; Anders, Charlie Jane; Leckie, Ann; Lee, Yoon Ha (show all 8); North, Claire; Oswald, James
- Original language
- English
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