A Memory Called Empire

My opinion is probably an unpopular one...this book was just fine. It's solid read that I enjoyed and I have no regrets picking it up, but I really did think based on the hype and you know, the Hugo, I was going to love this. It's mostly plot-driven (which didn't truly wow me by the end by-the-by), it's missing quite a bit of character depth IMO, it had some interesting dialogue (it's kind of one of the components that struck me the most) but again mostly just fine, the writing is fine, the deep themes I look for were there but I thought they were very surface level, the sci-fi elements were compelling at first but again, ended up being just fine...all that to say my socks are still on. It's a book that is clearly touching many people (I mean I'm seeing many reviews where folks think all the elements I think are weak are actually strong) so if it seems interesting definitely check it out. I'm going to read the sequel because what grabbed me the most plot-wise will continue on...well I hope at least.

This is another one of those ‘scifi in name only books'. 95% of the story could have taken place anywhere but since it's a talky book and I like talky books I continued on. Now, with talky books, you need intelligent characters having intelligent dialogue so that when you read a conversation you get goosebumps. Did the author manage to do that here? no, not by a long shot. The Author tries to put layer upon layer of subtext, double and triple meaning in every little gesture in every dialogue that ultimately everything turns out to be almost meaningless. Luckily she recognised this and had the MC's sidekick or the MC's inner monologue explain the actual meaning of every line, making it unnecessarily long and pointless.
This book is a masterclass in ignoring ‘show, don't tell'. We get told about aliens, yet never meet any. We get told about spaceships, yet never see any, we get told about jump gates, yet never use any let alone learn how they work, probably magic, I don't know. There is very little ‘sci' here.
80% of the book is buildup to the last 20% which are somewhat promising for the second book. But having a whole book as setup for a second book, which other authors put on the blurb, is a bit much, for my taste.

All in all it kinda feels like a more highbrow, less interesting, less fun version of ‘The Collapsing Empire' by Scalzi with all the scifi elements taken out.

...reading about Mahit???s conflicting feelings about Teixcalaanli culture and language is, to me, like looking into a mirror of my own thoughts and feelings about my relationship with Empire. It is a relationship that is complex and complicated, and more often than not it can feel as though I belong nowhere: ???Not, in the end, quite home???, to quote the novel. This might seem terribly bleak, these are very important questions, not least because they touch me so deeply. I do not want to shy away from such questions just because they do not make me smile ??? indeed, I think that makes them even more important.

Full review here: https://wp.me/p21txV-Jq

I love a good sci-fi novel!! The main character Mahit becomes the new ambassador for her small mining station and gets to fulfill her childhood dream of visiting the Empire. Of course there's one small problem in that her predecessor died under mysterious circumstances and a bunch of politics ensue.

Even though the Empire is this overwhelming force that could at any time annex her home, I likex how it wasn't just Empire = bad and Mahit's station = good. Mahit grew up enjoying a lot of the empire's cultural exports e.g. poetry and gets to know some of its people as well through her work as an ambassador.

The other cool part about this book is the maintaining of heritage through copies of people's consciousnesss. Essentially you have a copy of the mind of your predecessor living in you, so that with each successive generation the knowledge can continue to grow and be passed down. I would love to see this concept explored more in future books.

I might suffer from inflated expectation because this book has just won Hugo, but this was underwhelming. I had to plod through and promised myself rewards every 30 pages or so because it really didn't compel me to continue reading.

The book began with a decent mystery, actually: Yskandr, the previous ambassador to the Empire, was dead and so Mahit was sent as a replacement. The whoddunit was quite intriguing.

But the narration could not sustain my interest. Maybe it was one thing being piled on after another in a very quick timeframe, maybe it was the long, pointlessly meandering internal thoughts on Mahit's part, maybe it was my lack of aptitude for poetry. English is not my first language so when they began to celebrate scansion and meters.. I just couldn't picture it in my mind.

As I began to lose my interest, several things stood out:
- This was billed as a space opera, but it's mainly political intrigue and you could transport most of the book to say, 14th century Italy, or a fantasy, or to present-day monarchy and there would be little difference to notice. [I noticed this point as I was listening to Genre Junkies podcast making this same exact complain about Scalzi's The Collapsing Empire–at least there were physics and physicists in Scalzi's Interdependency].
- An ambassador of one? How is it that Mahit was sent as an ambassador and she was the only person from Lesl in the City? It's hardly likely that if there had been trade no one else from Lesl would be in the City. She doesn't even have a native staff and I think it just beggars belief.
- An ambassador without access to resources that she had almost nothing to offer for a medical procedure? No money, nothing? (Compare this to real-life embassies full of diplomatic staff, local and otherwise.)
- Everyone in Teixcalaan seems to be basically human? At least everyone with speaking lines in the story is. And other than the (surmountable) difference in language, Mahit seems to be taller than other people, but that's it.
- Why is the imago technology that Mahit has seems to be an unspeakable taboo but other forms of bodily augmentation seems OK?

I can see this could have been an otherwise enjoyable read–but it doesn't seem to do the trick for me.

This is a novel written with impressive confidence and fluency, which feels up to date in style and yet recognizably falls into the tradition of science fiction as we know it. Mahit's initial situation as a vulnerable envoy reminded me vaguely of [b:The Left Hand of Darkness 18423 The Left Hand of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1488213612l/18423.SY75.jpg 817527]; later on I was reminded vaguely of [a:Samuel R. Delany 49111 Samuel R. Delany https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1516722468p2/49111.jpg]; and perhaps the author would acknowledge such influences in a general sense, but she's gone on to create something original that's her own.The story seems to get off to a slow start, but in fact Mahit Dzmare (the protagonist) is always under pressure from the situation and the plot, though the pressure gradually increases as time goes on. There's more action and excitement in the second half.Rather cleverly, the author has given the Teixcalaanli characters names that seem outlandish to us, but which consist of normal words—translated from Texicalaanli to English for our convenience, so they're easy to pronounce and relatively feasible to remember (although it's a bit of a struggle at first). However, the Lsel characters (such as Mahit) have names that are just names.I like this book and I'm glad to have encountered it: it's a fine and recommendable example of modern sf. It's complete in itself and doesn't really need a sequel, but I see it's due to get one, and no doubt I'll read that too.Mild criticisms:1. The interactions between characters can be quite likeable and engaging, but the characters themselves are mostly too driven and dedicated for normal people to identify with them easily. Furthermore, as a result of the situation and the plot, they're constantly under stress and never get a chance to relax, which makes me feel uncomfortable in sympathy.2. The idea of a far-future interstellar civilization with a powerful Emperor (and sun temples!) seems anachronistic—not impossible, it could happen, but I find it somewhat implausible. I hope that future humans will invent new political structures that we haven't yet thought of, not fall back on old ones that we've already discarded.The title of the book seems meaningless to me. Memory and Empire are both important to the story, but memory is not called empire in any way I can think of.

such intrigue many court drama w0w

DNF - PG 25

Why?

I'll be honest with you, when I have a knee-jerk reaction to a book, it has to be pretty much perfect to keep me around after that. This book isn't perfect, and it would have only been well served to get rid of that needlessly complicatedly written ‘prelude' (which is actually a prologue, but we have to sound cooler than that) and the needless, overly complicated and irrelevant excerpts at the beginning of each chapter.

(The needless, overly complicated and irrelevant excerpt that starts off chapter two (then a second excerpt follows, as important as the first one is):

urgently direct your attention / novelty and importance characterize what comes next / IMMEDIATELY on Channel Eight!

Tonight, Seven Chysoprase and Four Sycamore bring you a report from Odile-1 in the Odile System, where Twenty-sixth Legion under sub-yaotlek Three Sumac are preparing to break orbit now that the insurrection in Odile-1's capital city has been quelled - in a moment we will have Four Sycamore, on site in the capital's central square, with an interview with the newly reinstated planetary governor Nine Shuttle - trade through the Odile Gate is expected to return to normal levels within the next two weeks...

- Channel Eight nightly newscast, as broadcast on the City's internal cloud hook network, 245th day, 3rd year in the 11th indiction of the Emperor of all Teixcalaan Six Direction)

Now, I didn't actually make it to chapter two, because I've had enough of the world that the author has created. My kind of sci-fi does not include statements like :[...]'“radiant blaze” was the epithet for the Emperor Twelve Solar-Flare in The Expansion History as Attributed to Pseudo-Thirteen River[...]. (Unless your name is Ninefox Gambit and even then, people at least had people names, not numbers and ‘plants, tools or inanimate objects'. Ninefox Gambit was an uphill slog for me the first time I tried to read it, and I only persevered because 1) it actually moves from the start and 2) even early on, like from the first page, I was at the least interested in the characters. Flipping through this book, I discovered that the most interesting thing in it - the imago memory thing - is very underutilized.)

Also, reading some of the one star reviews indicates that my opinion of the world-building will not improve.

There is a lot if inventiveness in the infrastructure of the story, that makes the read entertaining. In the end, though, there is also some tiredness and the usual empires and noble people doing political things. I think the world literature has enough space empires, so I'm not going to read the sequel.