If you haven’t read, A Memory Called Empire, I strongly suggest you put it at the top of your reading list and line A Desolation Called Peace up next.
An ambassador from a small mining station is trying to avoid becoming political lunchmeat, when her handler—and one-time lover—from the heart of the Empire, arrives stowed away on a goods transport and demands her help. The mission is to make first contact with a vicious and incomprehensible alien civilisation, which is currently eating ships and wiping out whole planets on their doorstep.
Arkady Martine (pen name of academic and author, Anna Linden Weller), is one of the new queens of the space opera, and if you’re at all attracted by the idea of political intrigue played out over giant intergalactic empires, you will love this book. If you’re not, I’d seriously recommend putting any prejudices aside and giving it a go.
“It is the minds of a people that have to stay free. Bodies die, or suffer, or are imprisoned. Memory lasts.” A Desolation Called Peace
I don’t like space ship sci-fi that puts the ‘sci’ before the ‘fi’, but this is a few hundred light years from that (sorry, no more space travel puns, I promise). Every single character in this vast, ambitious story, is delicious. They are fleshy and real and so seductive that you can’t wait to leave one to get back to another, but then are just as hungry to return. The themes of language and memory and ultimately what it means to be ‘a person’, are handled with sophistication, and the civilisation at the heart of the story is crafted with a loving attention to detail that is frankly intimidating.
This is a master storyteller at work, and the skill with which she draws together layer upon layer of complex narrative for the big finale, is orchestrated with the studied flair of a symphony conductor. The book will demand your time and attention, but it more than repays the effort. If you’ve already read it, let me know what you thought in the comments. If you haven’t, I’m jealous! You’ve a treat in store.
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Buy on kindle £4.99
Paperback from Waterstones £7.49
Follow the author on twitter @ArkadyMartine
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