Not-Wednesday Reading: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

I really enjoyed this, although I won't pretend to understand why we have Mixtecs in SPAAACE, nor why so many well-read reviewers didn't recognize the distinctive name formations. Six Direction, Thirty Larkspur, Nineteen Adze, and the others are clearly linguistic descendants of Eight Deer, Six Rabbit, and all the others in the Mixteca Codex Bodley and other sources.

As the book opens, Mahit Dzmare, of the small, independent space station/nation Lsel, is arriving at the capital of the huge, voracious Teixcalaanli Empire to serve as the ambassador of her people. This is a position she's wanted all her life: she's a huge fan of Teixcalaanli culture, has been learning the language since she was very young, and can even write poetry in it: an important skill among the Teixcalaanli people.

( cut for spoilers, you are warned )

Reviewers are comparing this book to the works of Ann Leckie and Yoon Ha Lee. I would imagine that fans of their works (and those of C.J. Cherryh, especially the Foreigner series) are likely to enjoy this one. (And it turns out that Martine is a friend of Max Gladstone ... there seems to be some very rich cross-pollination going on. See NPR interview with Martine here.)

As one review noted, the payoff for all this is somewhat slight, but it looks like a sequel is in the works. I'm looking forward to reading A Desolation Called Peace.