But I had trouble suspending my disbelief that a successful empire would take such a rushed and amateurish approach to first contact, and the plot’s turns were much more transparent. The close-up view of the Teixcalaanli military is an interesting perspective, and the aliens are deliciously alien. We follow Mahit home to Lsel Station, as she struggles to avoid entrapment in station politics, and then into a war zone as her Teixcalaanli friend Three Seagrass bluffs her way into a first contact assignment and drags Mahit along as a language expert.
This is a solid second chapter, but doesn’t sing like the first. I immediately bought the sequel, A Desolation Called Peace, to find out what happens next. The mystery of Yksander’s fate, his role in imperial politics, and the growing likelihood of civil war drive an exciting plot that twists and turns within the carefully constructed internal logic of an alien but all too human culture. I could see the allure of the empire to a smart ambitious young woman from just outside its fringe, and also feel the dread of being engulfed by its military, economic and cultural might. Martine immerses Mahit in a vividly realised imperial culture, as an outsider mixing in the loftiest of circles. She learns on her arrival that he is dead, under suspicious circumstances, pushing her out of her depth into dangerous waters, with only two new-found friends to cling to as she tries to uncover who killed Yksander and why, and to keep Lsel Station out of the path of the Empire’s expansion. Her immediate predecessor’s last upload was fifteen years ago, leaving her dangerously underprepared for her new role. Mahit is also carrying an imago, a brain implant that allows her to access the memories of her predecessors, a secret technology that is central to Lsel Station’s own culture and ability to survive as a small population in a risky environment. Mahit is enthralled by Teixcalaanli culture, acutely aware of how she can never match the ability of its elite citizens to deftly deploy a literary allusion. The main character, Mahit Dzmare, has been sent to the City at the heart of the Teixcalaanli empire – a place where the word for the city, world and empire are the same – as the new ambassador from Lsel Station, which has not (yet) been annexed into the empire, but feels the tidal pull of its cultural dominance. So I loved A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine right from the beginning. Add beautiful writing, and big questions about identity and ethics, and I am in heaven. But I love my space opera to be populated by complex, conflicted people (and other beings) living in intricate worlds with a deep culture and history. Space opera can definitely be big, loud and dumb and that can be fun and exciting.
** Some spoilers for the plot of Ancillary Justice in the review of later books in the series **
0 kommentar(er)
