Review: A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine

Russ Allbery eagle at eyrie.org
Sun Aug 25 16:21:28 PDT 2019


A Memory Called Empire
by Arkady Martine

Series:    Teixcalaan #1
Publisher: Tor
Copyright: March 2019
ISBN:      1-250-18645-5
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     462

Mahit Dzmare grew up dreaming of Teixcalaan. She learned its language,
read its stories, and even ventured some of her own poetry, in love
with the partial and censored glimpses of its culture that were visible
outside of the empire. From her home in Lsel Station, an independent
mining station, Teixcalaan was a vast, lurking weight of history,
drama, and military force. She dreamed of going there in person. She
did not expect to be rushed to Teixcalaan as the new ambassador from
Lsel Station, bearing a woefully out-of-date imago that she's barely
begun to integrate, with no word from the previous ambassador and no
indication of why Teixcalaan has suddenly demanded a replacement.

Lsel is small, precarious, and tightly managed, a station without a
planet and with only the resources that it can maintain and mine for
itself, but it does have a valuable secret. It cannot afford to lose
vital skills to accident or age, and therefore has mastered the
technology of recording people's personalities, memories, and skills
using a device called an imago. The imago can then be implanted in the
brain of another, giving them at first a companion in the back of their
mind and, with time, a unification that grants them inherited skills
and memory. Valuable expertise in piloting, mining, and every other
field of importance need not be lost to death, but can be preserved
through carefully tended imago lines and passed on to others who test
as compatible.

Mahit has the imago of the previous ambassador to Teixcalaan, but it's
a copy from five years after his appointment, and he was the first of
his line. Yskandr Aghavn served another fifteen years before the loss
of contact and Teixcalaan's emergency summons, never returning home to
deposit another copy. Worse, the implantation had to be rushed due to
Teixcalaan's demand. Rather than the normal six months of careful
integration under active psychiatric supervision, Mahit has had only a
month with her new imago, spent on a Teixcalaan ship without any Lsel
support.

With only that assistance from home, Mahit's job is to navigate the
complex bureaucracy and rich culture of an all-consuming interstellar
empire to prevent the ruthlessly expansionist Teixcalaanli from
deciding to absorb Lsel Station like they have so many other stations,
planets, and cultures before them. Oh, and determine what happened to
her predecessor, while keeping the imagos secret.

I love when my on-line circles light up with delight about a new novel,
and it turns out to be just as good as everyone said it was.

A Memory Called Empire is a fascinating, twisty, complex political
drama set primarily in the City at the heart of an empire, a city
filled with people, computer-controlled services, factions,
manuevering, frighteningly unified city guards, automated defense
mechanisms, unexpected allies, and untrustworthy offers. Martine weaves
a culture that feels down to its bones like an empire at the height of
its powers and confidence: glorious, sophisticated, deeply aware of its
history, rich in poetry and convention, inward-looking, and alternately
bemused by and contemptuous of anyone from outside what Teixcalaan
defines as civilization, when Teixcalaan thinks of them at all.

But as good as the setting is (and it's superb, with a deep, lived-in
feel), the strength of this book is its characters. Mahit was expecting
to be the relatively insignificant ambassador of a small station,
tasked with trade negotiations and routine approvals and given time to
get her feet under her. But when it quickly becomes clear that Yskandr
was involved in some complex machinations at the heart of the
Teixcalaan government, she shows admirable skill for thinking on her
feet, making fast decisions, and mixing thoughtful reserve and daring
leaps of judgment.

Mahit is here alone from Lsel, but she's not without assistance.
Teixcalaan has assigned her an asekreta, a cultural liaison who works
for the Information Ministry. Her name is Three Seagrass, and she is
the best part of this book. Mahit starts wisely suspicious of her, and
Three Seagrass starts carefully and thoroughly professional. But as the
complexities of Mahit's situation mount, she and Three Seagrass develop
a complex and delightful friendship, one that slowly builds on cautious
trust and crosses cultural boundaries without ignoring them. Three
Seagrass's nearly-unflappable curiosity and guidance is a perfect
complement to Mahit's reserve and calculated gambits, and then inverts
beautifully later in the book when the politics Mahit uncovers start to
shake Three Seagrass's sense of stability. Their friendship is the
emotional heart of this story, full of delicate grace notes and never
falling into stock patterns.

Martine also does some things with gender and sexuality that are
remarkable in how smoothly they lie below the surface. Neither culture
in this novel cares much about the gender configurations of sexual
partnerships, which means A Memory Called Empire shares with Nicola
Griffith novels an unmarked acceptance of same-sex relationships. It's
also not eager to pair up characters or put romance at the center of
the story, which I greatly appreciated. And I was delighted that the
character who navigates hierarchy via emotional connection and tumbling
into the beds of the politically influential is, for once, the man.

I am stunned that this is a first novel. Martine has masterful control
over both the characters and plot, keeping me engrossed and fully
engaged from the first chapter. Mahit's caution towards her possible
allies and her discovery of the lay of the political land parallel the
reader's discovery of the shape of the plot in a way that let's one
absorb Teixcalaanli politics alongside her. Lsel is at the center of
the story, but only as part of Teixcalaanli internal maneuvering. It is
important to the empire but is not treated as significant or worthy of
its own voice, which is a knife-sharp thrust of cultural
characterization. And the shadow of Yskandr's prior actions is
beautifully handled, leaving both the reader and Mahit wondering
whether he was a brilliant strategic genius or in way over his head. Or
perhaps both.

This is also a book about empire, colonization, and absorption, about
what it's like to delight in the vastness of its culture and history
while simultaneously fearful of drowning in it. I've never before read
a book that captures the tension of being an ambassador to a larger and
more powerful nation: the complex feelings of admiration and fear, and
the need to both understand and respect and in some ways crave the
culture while still holding oneself apart. Mahit is by turns isolated
and accepted, and by turns craves acceptance and inclusion and is wary
of it. It's a set of emotions that I rarely see in space opera.

This is one of the best science fiction novels I've read, one that I'll
mention in the same breath as Ancillary Justice or Cyteen. It is a
thoroughly satisfying story, one that lasted just as long as it should
and left me feeling satiated, happy, and eager for the sequel. You will
not regret reading this, and I expect to see it on a lot of award lists
next year.

Followed by A Desolation Called Peace, which I've already pre-ordered.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Reviewed: 2019-08-25

URL: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-250-18645-5.html

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>


More information about the book-reviews mailing list