A Memory Called Empire

If I'm honest I first picked up this book because of the image on the cover but once I picked up the book I remained interested and the aesthetic remained pretty cool throughout and gave me vibes from the "Coup" and "The Resistance" board games.

The book really focuses in a lot on the political manoeuvrers of the central character Mahit and her allies (and enemies). There's a fair amount of political theatre and description of Mahit's internal monologue which reminded me of House of Cards. The world building meant that the plot does take a little while to really get going but once it does get going, there's a fair amount to be excited about. The last few chapters were pretty gripping and more reminiscent of something like The Expanse.

There is a lot of description of the culture and language used in the Teixcalaanli Empire which for me, really teetered on the precipice between detailed world-building and self-absorbed. I'm not really in to poetry - which is a huge part of Teixcalaanli culture so maybe that explains why I didn't really get on board with certain aspects of the world building but the descriptions of the technology, city, space vessels etc were well done.

Overall a solid, captivating sci-fi read if you can get on board with some of the slower descriptive parts of the book.

What if, the Federation wasn't this big happy family and the humans weren't in charge but were only some minor part of some larger alien empire?

I enjoyed this book, it has a lot of politics; if you found the scenes in The Expanse around the earth parliament annoying, this book is not for you.

It also explains in an entertaining way how tricky being a Galatic Empire is, even (or perhaps because) you have the ships with the Big Guns.

Arkady Martine är författarpseudonym för AnnaLinden Weller som doktorerade på ämnet Bysans 2014 med uppsatsen Imagining Pre-Modern Empire: Byzantine Imperial Agents Outside the Metropole.

De kunskaperna märks i boken, en rymdopera med karaktärer just utanför imperiets centrum. Även författarens språkliga kunskaper speglar lite av bokens känsla.

Välgrundad paranoia och mindre välgrundad paranoia, osäkerheter, svårigheter. En viktig beståndsdel som gör att jag tycker läsningen blir mer fascinerande än enbart en beskrivning av politisk dramatik tycker jag är teman som på olika sätt går in i varandra: Självreflektion/självkännedom, inre röst, mentalisering, identitet, kultur, "vem är jag?". Det är inte så svårt att tänka sig att sådant kan samspela med politiska skeenden och skiften.

Boken tilldelades alldeles nyligen 2020 års Hugopriset för bästa science fiction-roman. Välförtjänt.