A Desolation Called Peace
Ratings232
Average rating4.2
Well, it was nice. But by far not as good as the first book. It started interesting, had a nice progression, but then it somehow dropped off and never really recovered and suddenly it was all finished.
Would I recommend this? Sort of, if you have time and nothing else to read. Else the first part is good enough and also has its own finished story line. So there is that.
Ambassador Mahit continues to surround herself with trouble in this follow up to A Memory Called Empire.
The struggles for supremacy at the capital have continued as the empire pursues an interplanetary war out on the edges of it's territory. A new emperor has been named and a guardian has been put on the throne until the emperor is of age. The Ministry of War is struggling against the Ministry of Information, and other sections of government are claiming their sphere of influence with those at the top.
The first book revealed that Mahit's mining has technology whereby a person's memories are stored on a brain stem implant chip, called an imago. The person's successor is then given those memories. This was developed so that pilots could be enhanced by the skills of their predecessors and lessen training time. Once this is discovered, there are those in the empire who want the technology, believing it to be some sort of eternal life existence.
Mahit has returned to her mining station and is running from discovery. When she was given her predecessor's memory, the official in charge of that department had deliberately sabotaged it. However, Mahit managed to recover the chip from the body of her predecessor and now has his memories and wisdom in her thoughts. But she can't let the imago official know her imago has been restored.
And then the empire recalls Mahit as ambassador and linguist to assist in making contact with their alien opponents, hoping they can end the war. Once again we are thrust into the internal battles for supremacy between various ministries and people seeking power. Martine proves to be a master of this high stakes political intrigue.
Martine is reunited with envoy Three Seagrass and they are taken to the battleship at the head of the war. Their role is to try to communicate with the aliens. Meanwhile, back at the capital, there are others who want to bomb the alien planet with enough destructive power to destroy it completely. And since when does the eleven year old future emperor think he has the authority to get involved in the affairs of adults?
The book has been fast paced from the beginning but something happens and all forward momentum stops as many different plot points suddenly coalesce and everybody has to rethink their part.
There is a phrase in writing that says, 'Somebody has to put the gun on the mantleshelf'. It means you can't write a sudden escape hatch into a story, you have to do the set up ahead of time. Martine has been 'putting guns on the mantleshelf' since book #1. And with the main players in the palace and in the control deck of the leading battle ship, everything is brought to a halt, and here comes the payoff.
The final chapter ends on such a calm note that it almost robs the overall story of its power. But there is a Postlude that brings it all to a very fitting conclusion - just enough mystery, just enough information, just enough satisfaction.
The word 'byzantine' is often used as an adjective to describe a highly complex and convoluted plot in literature. These two books definitely fit that description as the various power players outplay and sidestep each other. And having delighted in reading these two books of interweaving character arcs in their battles for supremacy, it is fitting to find that Arkady Martine is not only an esteemed scholar but has a PhD in Byzantine history, and that the first book was written through the time she was studying for that Doctorate. I knew we were in the hands of a master of her craft.
i'm writing this immediately after finishing the book, right at my no-more-renewals library due date, so i might feel differently after it's had time to settle (like what does/will dekakel onchu do after all that? is that a loose thread or not?), but right now: the story's conclusion was satisfying and hit all the right notes for me. it felt like closing a window, conclusive, final, but the universe would go on beyond it. i wasn't sure i'd like the eight antidote POV sections at first (i thought they'd fall somewhere between being very young but not in expected mannerisms, à la ender's game, and adult-writing-a-child) but they and the rotating POVs grew on me. i think a minor gripe was just that sometimes the text would progress entirely chronologically between characters and sometimes a POV switch would take you back in time to experience the same scene from another angle. and the we POVs were a bit purposefully opaque. besides some of the more blunt characters (like sixteen moonrise), i also lost track of some characters' political ties and motivations over time; there were so many different approaches to conflict and i wasn't ever 100% sure i was remembering certain details correctly. at the same time, though, that nuance was fun and the discontinuity human.
the romance was overall sweet, and i thought left off in a good, realistic way. reminded me a bit of the abyss surrounds us in terms of power dynamics, but much less harsh (that one had pirates and their prisoners and a toxic hate-love situation) while simultaneously being much more full of microaggressions that were alluded to but not addressed head-on between the characters. like even when they were fighting about it they weren't, and apologies happened through intent only. some steamy stuff happens though. a memory called empire took place over what, a week? this one, less than? hard to say, but either way my girl three seagrass was down bad.
my page 444 status update was me having my mind blown. how wide is the concept of “you”? except now i see “the world, the empire” in the status update got annihilated because it was between yskandr-voice angle brackets and goodreads didn't like it. that's hilarious.
i also read this via a combination of hardcover, ebook, and audiobook while at home and on the road. the audiobook properly served its purpose of injecting the book into my earholes, but even after i got used to the narrator i found the speech patterns chosen for mahit dzmare and three seagrass incongruous with what i imagined for them, and especially so after three seagrass is described as having a clear alto voice in chapters eleven and fifteen. via audiobook, she comes across as too high-pitched, girlish, and whiny to me, rather than the kind of steady poet, diplomat, and orator i imagined her to be. the scenes in which neither character spoke were much more tolerable.
This book tries so hard to be so clever but fails miserably. We get pages upon pages on pseudo philosophical rambling, like the author is explaining the most basic concepts to a toddler. On top of that we can witness the MC having irrational relationship fights for no reason other than drama. Yiekes.
Arkady, here's a tip when you write your next book: stop using so many f'ing italics and parentheses. You're writing a sci-fi novel, not your PHD dissertation.
This reads closer to 3.5 stars, but because of that interlude scene that I loved I'm giving it 4 stars.
I really loved A Memory Called Empire, but one of the bits of it that felt a little forced to me was the Mahit/Three Seagrass romance. I feel like that book was so much about Mahit and Yskander and the murder mystery that the romance just didn't ever feel like it belonged. This book actually changed my opinion completely. This book is totally about the complicated relationship of Mahit and Three Seagrass because it's about the complicated relationship between colonized and colonizer. They are the microcosm for the larger political themes, and the two stories play out in a way that is both realistic, emotional, and fascinating. The political intrigue is ramped up another level, the aliens are great, and Martine's writing remains strong. If you liked or were just ambivalent with the first book, definitely go on to the second. Well-deserved Hugo.
I might go back and change this to 4 stars as I keep percolating about it...my main complaint with this book is that I think it's a wee bit crushed under my all-consuming love for A Memory Called Empire. Which is not Martine's fault! This sequel is sexier and higher stakes, with another doozy of an apt opening quote: “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles - this they named empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace” (Tacitus quoting Calgacus). For me personally, the tension in this book around clashing war tactics was less compelling than the geopolitics without the immediate threat of genocide of the first, and I think some of my star rating reflects the profound sense of melancholy I was left with about Mahit & Three Seagrass - Martine is so, so skilled at illustrating the ways that bias embedded in language itself makes it impossible for Three Seagrass to really see, and therefore truly love, Mahit, and I didn't want a happy ending, I don't think, but maybe just a squee less pathos? These are personal problems, though, and this is a beautiful book. A quote from a review on whatever you call the part of a book where they put quotes from reviews struck me as very accurate: “demands and rewards the reader's attention.” I couldn't have torn through this even if I wanted to, which I didn't, and I feel myself uncomfortably, but maybe ultimately productively, provoked by all the many things Martine gives a person to think about, especially what it means to be alive. Okay, there, I wrote myself into it. 4 stars!
hello Yaotlek, i'm Sixty-Nine Daffodil and my cute name is Tulip something something poetry something something caesura
Nice continuation from the first book. Can't remember what the pace of the plot was for the first book but this one was a bit slow for my taste. More of the interesting naming convention, which I enjoyed thinking about, however I had a hard time remembering which name set went with which person causing me to miss some of the storyline.
I don't think I will continue with this series if any other books are released.
A solid sequel, although unfortunately since there was a big gap between me reading the first and the second book, I was quite confused at what was happening for a while. I'm not too sure if reading the books back to back would have helped or if it would have been confusing either way.
The rare sequel that lives up to and surpasses the first book. Great world building and interesting, smart and complex characters in a smart, interesting and complex world.
A Desolation Called Peace continues Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan series about: where do the boundaries of culture/community and individuality get drawn? What does it mean to be a member of a community. Those themes are much more deeply explored in a Desolation Called Peace with the addition of the ring aliens and a deeper focus on life on Lsel station.
However, it lacks the central focus of a Memory called Empire – Teixcalaan culture is just so richly developed. A Memory Called Empire was brilliant in part because the best parts of the world, the philosophical questions it raised and the most compelling central character was all bound up in a central mystery about Lysander. A desolation steps away from that singularity of focus, and also includes multiple substories and the book really suffers from this diffusion.
Nonetheless, Arkady Martine realizes alien cultures with a depth like no one else, and a Desolation is one of the best science fiction books I've ever read, it just pales in comparison to its predecessor.
I loved the world of Teixcalaan, with all its poetry and political brutality. With the second book in the series, I was at first disappointed that we were spending most of our time out in space on Weight for the Wheel and Nine Hibiscus. But the pace quickly picked up once we began encountering the unknowable enemy, and we reconnect with Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass. Their complicated relationship soon takes center stage, even though they share their POVs with Eight Antidote, the Emperor-To-Be who is trying to figure out what kind of leader he wants to become - even when it flies in the face of his teachers and mentors.
Good:
Cool aliens
Intel into the Shard pilots and Sunlit
Sexy times
Not my favorite:
I always want more Yskandr
The discovery amount what makes the aliens tick comes SO LATE in the story, and I would have liked to explore that more
Too much time spend on Stationer politics that didn't really go anywhere (in this book at least)
Overall, a good successor to A Memory Called Empire, and I'm excited to see how the trilogy ends!
As someone who has spent most of his life immersed in other cultures, speaking and thinking in a language that I love but that's not my own, Mahid's sens of not-belonging resonated well with me. She and all the other major characters were well realized, and had complex interior lives that made this book very enjoyable.
If I am not mistaken, “They should have sent a poet” is a quote from Contact, which is very fitting because this book deals with a very unusual first contact scenario, so much of Teixcalaan culture revolves around poetry, and because Martine writes beautifully.
The spin on the alien hive-mind is what elevates this book to five stars for me, the parallels to Lsel's imago technology and the empire's Sunlit and Shard pilots were wonderfully drawn.
A worthy successor to what was a spectacular first book in this series.
Arkady Martine's intensely political take on space opera with added poetry gets its second entry. The first of the Teixcalaan novels was an impressively polished debut - beautiful prose, interesting plot and a clever new feeling take on Sci-Fi. It was a deserving Hugo winner. This follow up had a tough act to follow, but Arkady has knocked it out the park again.
The themes carry over from the first novel to a certain extent - culture and identity are the over-riding questions being examined. Firstly on the culture side we have the conflict between being a member of a small and relatively culturally minor society going to live in a big dominant culture - how much of your own cultural identity do you preserve? Where does assimilation begin and culture loss occur? Secondly we have identity - one of Arkady's best concepts is that of an Imago machine - a device that stores the memories and experiences of your predecessors and allows you to approach a given task with much more knowledge than would be available otherwise. The question here is how much of yourself gets overwritten by the memories of a previous person?
A Desolation Called Peace adds in a first contact tale. We move away from the capital of Teixcalaan and into the Lsel station and ultimately the Teixcalaan fleet. This starts to delve into the topics of jingoism and military intrigue.
Martine has a great ability to portray these challenges and conflicts but leave them open to interpretation - you don't have black and white answers. The characters are complex, nuanced and believable.
When it comes to Teixcalaan - believe the hype. This is superior space opera. Clever and erudite without being overly densely written. Weighty topics dealt with subtlety and nuance, written in an easily digestible style. One of my top reads of the year
First, this book made me feel like I was watching a Star Trek series (particularly it has DS9 vibes) and therefore I loved it. Second, I mildly enjoyed A Memory Called Empire (I rated it 3-stars) and quite frankly I can't believe this is the sequel. It turned from (mostly) single point-of-view to multi, and everything from the plot, political plays and character development has improved for me 80 billion percent. And what I love about sci-fi (read: aliens) is much more present in this book as well. I definitely had a blast with this sequel. If there's a next book, this time I will not hesitate about picking it up.