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

[chomiji]

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.

The one problem seems to be the fact that the previous ambassador, Yskander, hasn't been back to Lsel for 15 years, so his imago—a copy of his mind, with all his knowledge and memories—is out of date. But the Empire is calling, so the authorities at Lsel implant the outdated imago in Mahit. After all, her aptitude scores for receiving an imago are stellar (all Lsel children are tested for this, so that precious knowledge of their most honored forbears won't be lost), and she and Yskander had so much in common. Surely the fact that the whole process is a little more rushed than is ideal won't matter.

But when Mahit arrives, she discovers why the Teixcalaanli were so insistent on another ambassador. Yskander is dead. But she still has his imago, right?

Right?

Mahit is plunged into a political hothouse. The Empire has an aging ruler, three possible official heirs, and growing support for a charismatic military leader. Yskander may have been involved with any of the above, and perhaps some other dangerous dealings as well. As a new ambassador from a much weaker polity, Mahit has to make a good impression on the powers-that-be, not so easy given that the Teixcalaanli consider her a barbarian, but it also turns out that she has to worry about sheer survival. Terrorist actions are on the rise, and even if Mahit is not an important target, she may be associating with people who are.

Guided by her assigned aide Three Seagrass, who is a wonderful character, Mahit threads a perilous path through formal court events (with poetry competitions), a city that can defend itself, powerful people who may have their own use for her, and back-alley medical practitioners. The supporting characters are excellent: in addition to Three Seagrass, there's her old friend Twelve Azalea, the powerful yet sentimental uber-bureaucrat Twelve Adze, the melancholy emperor Six Direction, and many more. The city itself becomes something of a character (in her day job, the author is a historian and city planner), and its people do appealingly familiar things, from lunching at fashionable cafes to taking part in protest marches.

And Three Seagrass and Twelve Azalea have the sweetest non-romantic female-male friendship that I can recall reading in ages. It is a pleasure to see a friendship depicted so well and so appealingly.

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.

Comments

[armiphlage]

Thank you

[skygiants]

Man, I would love to be a fly on the wall for Gladstone and Martine's conversations about Mesoamerican empire -- I liked Martine's take on The Apparently Unavoidable Human Sacrifice Thing better than Gladstone's, but I do think both are interesting.