Title: A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan #1)
Author: Arkady Martine
Publisher: Tor
Date Published: March 26, 2019
Genre: Sci-Fi, Space Opera
Ratings: ★★⍣☆☆
REVIEW
This book won the 2020 Hugo award, and it's sequel won the 2022 award. This duology was part of my priority read list for this year, and I was super excited to get started. I've heard so many amazing things from reviewers that I usually have fairly similar taste to. I like political sci-fi like Red Rising, Enders Game, The Expanse, etc. I went into this fully expecting to love this duology. I'm not sure if this was a case of me expecting something amazing, but I was very let down by this book. I ended up giving it a 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3.
The beginning sucked me in and I was very intrigued about the technology (the imago), a customs on Teixcalaan, as well as the world itself. However, that excitement about the book quickly faded as I realized that nothing related to the imago would ever be well explained. A majority of this book took place in the main characters thoughts and conversations. That meant that rather than showing and describing the world it was Mahit telling us what she saw. That became repetitive and old very quickly.
The book managed to hold my attention, though, due to the actions that were sprinkled throughout. Various assassination attempts, interesting gatherings, and a bombing. But those moments were few and far between. It was written in a way that was extremely slow paced, which can work very well when the characters are interesting and fun to read from the perspective of. Mahit was such a boring character. We don't really learn anything about her other than that she spent her whole life training to become the ambassador. Other than that, we don't get much of a personality. Even her job is somewhat behind a veil. What is the purpose of the ambassador? What is she there to do? Why does she not have a team of people from Lsel station with her, and instead just is isolated with no means of communication? It didn't make any sense why she would be sent to a foreign planet with no way to call home or explain that there was a murder, and attempts on her life as well.
I generally enjoy political intrigue in my fantasy, as it can help build the world in a way that feels beyond the surface. But even with Mahit travelling to parts of Teixcalaan, the world never managed to stop feeling foreign. For example, the Sunlit were some sort of hive mind, yet they weren't explored. The language was introduced as a form of poetry, yet the characters are only hinted at speaking it. Why did they dislike the imago technology so much? I wanted the tech to be explained so much more than it was, but because it was rendered useless in the first 10% of the book, it never was explored. It almost felt like the author wanted to create a really cool new tech, but not have to explain it.
Overall, I still enjoyed parts of this book, but I don't think I'll continue with the duology, sadly.
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