A Memory Called Empire

I loved the intrigue, scheming, politics, and even poetry. Martine does a very good job of making it feel like Mahit really has walked right into an already-twisted web full of characters in conflict, and it gives the plot the perfect balance between crazy plot twists and "oh, so that's what's going on!" that made me feel rather smart at times as I was reading it. The pacing was excellent: no chapters felt like drags, but it was also very rare that I wished any scene had been made much longer. The story starts slow, then accelerates, building more and more tension until all hell breaks loose --- just what's expected of the genre. By the end, I couldn't stop reading the book. Well, actually, the whole thing was so gripping that I went through it all in one plane ride to Detroit. I'd like to call special attention to the names Martine uses for Teixcalaanli characters. Each Teixcalaanlitzim has a name composed of a cardinal number and a thing, almost always a type of plant, something else from nature, or a cool science fiction word; examples include "Three Seagrass", "One Lightning", and "Nineteen Adze". Wait, an adze? Yes, the theming is fairly loose, but I think having just a general trend towards plants and nature gives a lot to establish a poetic theme for Teixcalaanli society while also giving room for individual Teixcalaanlitzim to have names that stand out. Some readers of the book seem to struggle with keeping these names straight, which I can imagine, but I never had any problem with this myself... I guess that's something that should be kept in mind, though. It's also interesting to me the way that Martine has set up Teixcalaan and Lsel Station as seeming very different and being constantly at odds --- culturally, anyway --- while really having very similar core values. Stationers may do through technology what Teixcalaanlitzim do through literature, but in the end, both societies are built around constantly emulating and even reliving the past. I'll avoid going into some kind of deep analysis of the novel, but I do feel that A Memory Called Empire is symbolically rich enough to appeal to that kind of reader as well. Highly recommended.