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.

Ich mochte Band 2 richtig gerne, weil ich die politischen Erwägungen und das zusätzliche Worldbuilding noch spannender fand als in Band 1. Jetzt, wo ich Band 2 auf Englisch gelesen habe (Band 1 auf Deutsch), kam mir die Sprache auch weniger „kindlich“ und generell runder vor. Nichtsdestotrotz fand ich manche Namen im Deutschen einfach gelungener als im Original (Neunzehn Breitaxt klingt so viel pompöser als Nineteen Adze). Was Gender jenseits Männer/Frauen angeht sieht es leider fast genau so mau aus wie in Band 1. Wobei möglicherweise in einem Satz ein Nebencharakter mit „they“ bezeichnet wurde, aber das ist ein bisschen wenig ;). Zum Ausgleich hatte ich in Band 2 — vielleicht wegen des fehlenden generischen Maskulinums — weniger das Gefühl, dass die Gesellschaft hinter den Kulissen doch patriarchal ist. Auch scheint es, als würde Homo-/Bisexualität nicht „akzeptiert“ werden, sondern einfach gar keine Abweichung von irgendwas sein. Das finde ich erfrischend. Leider habe ich auch in Band 2 nichts zusätzlich über die Reproduktion im Imperium oder auf Lsel gelernt, die Themen hängen ja häufig zusammen.

Inhaltlich hat mich die neue Alienspezies mitgerissen. Um nicht zu spoilern gehe ich hier nicht ins Detail… aber ich hätte sehr sehr gerne ein Spin-Off mit der Spezies im Zentrum.

Was mich auch sehr gefreut hat: Das Buch stellte alle „Gruppen“ kritisch da: Die „Aliens“, die Stationsbewohnenden, die Texa.. Texaner_innen. Es wurde schön veranschaulicht, wie sehr, was man für richtig und falsch hält, für absurd und normal, davon geprägt ist, was die eigene Gruppe als richtig/normal/… vorgibt. Was sogar undenkbar wird dadurch. Wirklich gut gemacht. Meine einzigen Minuspunkte sind, a) dass ich gerne noch mehr aus Aliensicht gelesen hätte b) dass ich 11 Jährige als Hauptcharas einfach nicht sonderlich mag und doppelt nicht, wenn es wieder das monarchistische Auserwähltentrope ist.

Aber das verzeihe ich, denn die von Arkady Martine erschaffene Welt ist super spannend und ich würde gerne mehr von ihr lesen.

I liked the first Teixcalaan book but did not love it. I went into the sequel expecting another book I'd really like, and ended up with a book that is rather stunning. A Memory Called Empire was all about politics, intrigue, machinations without much sci-fi in it. A Desolation Called Peace is still all that, and yet it is much broader as we venture out into the war between the Teixcalaan Empire and an unknown, almost invisible, entirely alien enemy. Mahit Dzmare has returned home to her space station, but is dragged into the middle of the war by Three Seagrass, her Teixcalaan liaison, who is now an envoy to be a diplomat between Teixcalaan and the aliens.

It's fascinating how so many things from the first book are still ever present in this book. The role of individuals, collective mind and memory, ever-present. The view of Empire. The unsung hero of the book is Twenty Cicada. Also, there's this crazy chemistry between Mahit and Three Seagrass, so the book has that added benefit for queer me.

It's ridiculously well-written and thoughtful, and I praise it for giving us aliens who are entirely alien, in this first contact scenario. Together, those two books will likely be considered classics.

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.

This second book in the Teixcalaan series moves in larger circles than the first one which mostly confined itself to the politics of the world city. Most notably, this story has multiple viewpoints running at the same time, including that of the non-human alien adversaries. It is out and out space opera with those baffling aliens, enormously powerful military spaceships, technologies which are being kept secret from the Emperor herself, and a romance acknowledged in the midst of everything. In the end there are three ways of direct mental communication which were all unknown to the ordinary citizen of the Empire. The author does a decent job of raising the stakes again and again leading up to the big climax, and when early on the characters make decisions which advance the plot while at the same time seeming somewhat unmotivated, I was okay with it, because I just wanted to see how it would play out.

I wouldn't recommend reading these books out of order. While the plots are not closely intertwined, the characters who recur certainly are.

I read this as an audiobook unlike the first in the series which I consumed as an ebook, and I think this heightened the differences I felt between them. It had more examples of shared minds on the grand scale as opposed to the small scale sharing of the Stationer imago technology we learned about in the first book, by the aliens, by the Teixcalaanli shard pilots, and by their Sunlit police force. It is a mixed subject, with its obvious frightening aspects but also glimpses of how it can enrich lives too and provide a communal meaning to a group. The first part of this book portrays the villainy of the Lsel station directorate up close as the precipitating event for the characters' flight out to the battle zone, and it crops up again at the end. Charges of spying by Mahit are not new, but supporting evidence of those loyalties is. The settings are in space more often than on planets as they were in book one, although they do not feature the microgravity experience at all.

I was fine with the planet side subplots, though I didn't really understand the palace intrigue fully. It was clear that hiding information is an important motif both on the personal level and institutionally. I also don't completely understand where the aliens' motivations lay, such as why exactly they had slaughtered everyone on a colony planet even though it didn't benefit them. Maybe it was a mistake on their part? I'm not sure. The tension leading up to the climax was undercut for me because I never really believed that the atrocity being advocated would actually get carried out.

I can understand that the author's style, which emphasis the interior lives of the characters so much, might not be what everyone prefers. It is a book where no one in the halls of power say anything without calculation, in their own mind or that of an image riding along, and what a person says to you and does not say is subjected to deep analysis, even when a person is in the throes of death. Rarely does anyone say a line of dialogue without a heavy dose of premeditation, which plays well for readers that are that way by temperament too, maybe not for everybody. I will be looking forward to the next thing coming from her along with the fans, however, whether it is set in this universe or something completely new.