A Desolation Called Peace

I read A Memory Called Empire earlier this year and really enjoyed it. In this sequel, I was curious to see how the author would handle the mysterious aliens, who we previously hadn’t seen on page.

We see this story from multiple points of view. While I liked getting different perspectives, they felt rather contrived in terms of answering questions raised by the previous PoV character. I also felt there was a lot of characters standing around being told (or overhearing) information by other characters. Sometimes I was put in mind of “messenger speeches” in Greek drama, where important events are recounted to the actors (and audience) by a messenger, rather than being played out on stage.

There was a sex scene which… felt unnecessary and didn’t (in my opinion) contribute in any way to the story, and I could have done without as much angst-y interactions. (Or perhaps, since we all have angsty moments, not having them spelled out so explicitly).

That said, I enjoyed the read overall and the interweaving of the narrative viewpoints.

I enjoyed the previous book enough to push for us to read the second at a book club before I’d even bought it. Fortunately I wasn’t disappointed! There’s less world building this time round, as many of the characters have already been introduced, as have most of the key concepts and the different cultures. Instead we get what is fundamentally a first contact story, along with some romance (and an unconvincing, as is often the case in sci-fi, sex scene) and political manoeuvring. If you enjoyed the first book, I think you’ll find the second at least as good - possibly better if you disliked the poetry as there is less this time round.

It’s a shame there isn’t a third book as I really enjoyed the universe and characters, but it did feel like a natural place to end and perhaps the author felt she had taken things as far as they could go.

There were many directions in which Arkady Martine could have taken the sequel to her popular 2019 novel A Memory Called Empire, and she has chosen an interesting and entertaining one.

The worldbuilding for which A Memory Called Empire was praised is back in A Desolation Called Peace, and while the first book focused on the Teixcalaanli capital, the second one explores more of the life onboard of the Lsel Station, as well as life in campaigning military fleets of the empire. For the most part, the worldbuilding in the sequel does not disappoint.

The bits where it does disappoint is in Martine leaning perhaps too heavily on space opera tropes in the parts of the book that take place aboard starships. While the descriptions of the capital or the palace grounds therein continue to be evocative, the descriptions of what it is like onboard of an imperial warship feel dull in comparison.

The plot continues to explore the politics of empire, and their relationship to individuals. Like with the first book, Martine manages to portray empire as a system built up of individuals—same as those it looms over, poised for conquest. The grand plots of the novel are not driven by villains motivated by their own evil nature, but by people who, entwined as they are with the culture of the empire, are doing what they think is the right thing to do. This is perhaps the most compelling aspect of Martine's Teixcalaan novels—the view of empire from within, but also from the liminal space on its edges.

The one complaint to level here, though, is that the book's pacing leave some to be desired in the first parts of it. The action moves rather slowly as everyone gets from where they were at the end of the first novel to where interesting things will happen in the second one. It is in the second part that things become more interesting and compelling.

Overall, the book is likely to be enjoyable for anyone who enjoyed A Memory Called Empire. The lack of novelty inherent in a sequel means that A Desolation Called Peace does not outshine the first novel, it is nevertheless a worthy successor.

What I liked:

- The worldbuilding
- The romance
- The Eight Antidote subplot. When I'd read "Interstellar Mail Fraud" somewhere on an interview, I'd set expectations on what it was going to be (once Eight Antidote starts asking questions), but I was pleasantly surprised at what it ended up becoming
- The foreshadowing was good. Swarm's character for example perfectly fits with his ending, and so do the various Shard Trick scenes (especially the ones where the Aliens keep singularly calling out the Pilots as "we").
- STARSHIPS MAKE THE SAME SOUND AS PURRING KITTENS. personal headcanon for all space operas.
- The 2 references I caught to Ancillary Justice. It is apparently a Holodrama
- The writing. I wish there was more poetry in this one, but it was still lovely nonetheless.

What I didn't like: 1. The scope of the Empire. Despite all the epigraphs that hint towards the Teixcalaan Empire being ginormous, there is very little in the actual bureaucracy that feels galactic scale. This is something that I kept feeling through the first book as well, but it exacerbates in the second. In the first book, for eg, it only takes them less than an hour to reach a barely populated town rife with unrest. From the center of the empire (Jewel of the World). In this one, there's tons of places where I couldn't suspend my disbelief:

- The Strategy meetings in the War Ministry. Barely 3-4 people present.
- Nine Hibiscus's authority. She wields so much power as a Yaotlek yet makes so few decisions on her own (most of her decisions are merely suggestions from Swarm/Reed/Mahit).
- All the scenes set in the bridge of the Weight of the World. So few people doing so many things. Maybe this was just because I came to this after reading [b:Dauntless|112292|Dauntless (The Lost Fleet, #1)|Jack Campbell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309198180l/112292.SY75.jpg|108122], which has a Admiral taking battle tactics much more seriously. Over here, we barely Nine Hibiscus take any battle calls.
- No presence of xeno-biologists or any sort of xeno-experts.

2. The whole Swarm-gets-left-behind subplot also felt weird. Surely, they could've left an escort? Or something of the sort?

3. The Lsel station politics. For some reason, Mahit acting in the best interest of the Stationers isn't able to convince anyone that she's literally saved everyone's lives. In my head, the Ambassador ought to hold the same political leverage as a Councillor. (How many Councillors are there?). Mahit running away from a unstated threat from Darj/Amnarbad doesn't make much sense to me, because she hasn't done anything wrong!

On a completely unrelated note, how old is Nineteen Adze?