A Review of A Memory Called Empire
Welcome! It seemed appropriate to kick off Loose Headcanon’s book reviews with an award-winning space opera. A Memory Called Empire won the Hugo Award for best novel in 2020, and racked up nominations from Nebula, Locus, Goodreads Awards Choice as well. Not bad for author Arkady Martine, considering it was her debut novel!
The question is, how does a book from a mostly unknown author win all this immediate and overwhelming praise? Is it hype? Or is Arkady Martine the next great voice in science fiction?
The novel is about Mahit Dzmare, an aspiring diplomat from a space station-dwelling society that resides next to the powerful Teixcalaan Empire. The mighty Teixcalaan contacted Mahit’s people and requested they send a new ambassador. Mahit, who is young and inexperienced, is sent into the vast foreign empire she’s been studying since she was a child. Sent by herself, with only vague instructions, the whole thing felt like a setup.
Yet, she does have one unique advantage: all the memories of her predecessor are recorded onto a neural interface called an imago. Her predecessor, Askandr, did not return to the station to have his memories recorded in 15 years, so she is working with an older model Askandr. Ideally the handoff is done when Askandr returned so that she’d know or have access to all the information she needed.
From the start, it is a grossly unfair situation in which to send a young civil servant with zero experience. Mahit arrives on the capital planet of the Teixcalaan Empire and learns Askandr is dead and there is reason to believe his death was not from natural causes. She is left entirely dependent on her Teixcalaan cultural liaison Three Seagrass, and the general goodwill of the Teixcalaani courtiers she meets within the imperial palace.
As far as space operas go, the premise possesses unique and interesting qualities. It is Mahit’s story, an ambassador from a backwater mining station that is desperate to maintain their independence from the mighty Texicalaanli. It involves a galactic empire, which populate science fiction like tribbles, but usually there’s a rebellion fighting against the all-powerful space Nazi regime. Not here. This is the story of a seemingly unimportant diplomat representing her people in an arrogant and expansionist empire that is, for the most part, indifferent towards her people.
The book stays with Mahit’s POV from first-person perspective. Despite a few bumps on the way, her character is an interesting mixture of unprepared helplessness with some guile and remarkable calm in crisis situations. As for her home, Lsel Station, the descriptions are vivid and appealing as a remote, station-borne people who have adapted to living in stations, learning to preserve resources and to elevate pilots as a profession of the highest regard.
The Teixcalaan Empire has some interesting quirks. Their political discourse is done through poetry, and personal names are numbers followed by a seemingly random object. The cultural liaison assigned to Mahit from the Teixcalaan Ministry of Information is named Three Seagrass. The powerful imperial advisor interested in the Lsel ambassador is named Nineteen Adze. The Emperor is Six Direction.
You’d think this might help differentiate the characters but the numbers and non-proper nouns actually caused some confusion. At times, it was difficult to remember who was a Minister, who was an heir to the throne, and who was just a courtier. Then there were the midlevel bureaucrats.
Overall, the world-building is strong, a prerequisite for any great space opera. The technology in the imperial capital included an AI that ran the whole city, down to the police force. The space travel, weaponry, and architecture all felt pretty familiar. The technology playing the biggest role in the story is the imago, which Mahit must explain numerous times. Despite the time committed to describing the imago, it seemed there was a missed opportunity to explore the ethical questions of such a technology.
Great world-building is a prerequisite but rarely makes a novel stand apart from the hundreds, maybe thousands, published every year. The question should always be: is it a great story? For that we’ll need to dig deeper.
WARNING! For those who haven’t read it, the next part of the review will have spoilers. You have been warned.
A good place to start is the protagonist. Mahit is a solid character. For a short period, she shares her mind and body with her imago, Askandr from fifteen years before. A malfunction in the imago takes Askandr out of the story in the early chapters, leaving only Mahit. It is just her for most of the novel.
She is intelligent and skilled, but not a prodigy. At times she is helpless in the face of an entire empire, unable to discern friend from foe. There are moments of vulnerability and weakness but they tend to pass quickly. Her resilience and determination are the qualities that draw you in at times. Other times, she demonstrates skills and abilities beyond someone with her background.
There are at least three attempts made on Mahit’s life. The trauma from such events, especially for someone with zero experience in such things, should’ve been severe. She certainly struggles with it at times but is always able to move on. After one attack, she is able to quickly switch gears and flirt with Three Seagrass while the man lies dead in front of them. Instead of demonstrating resilience, she comes off as a sociopath.
You expect plenty of cynicism and coldness in a story of court intrigue and political maneuvering but these people are still human beings. It is also a little baffling that Teixcalaanli assassins are so incompetent. Mahit, who has zero intelligence or self-defense skills, evades all of the attempts.
In one attack, a bomb detonates only a few yards from her and Three Seagrass. In another, her hand is severely burned by acid. Throughout this, she gets little sleep and, as far as I can tell, no futuristic medical intervention that instantly heals these wounds. In yet another attack, she incredibly fights off a Teixcalaanli soldier, with her severely burned hand, and kills him. It is difficult to believe Mahit is capable of this kind of self-defense, despite having some unique Lsel adaptations.
Martine throws a curveball by having Mahit’s imago completely break down within the first 50 pages. In that time, it is explained and demonstrated that the personality in the imago, based on Mahit’s predecessor, can influence her endocrine system and occasionally take control of her body.
Early in the novel, it is obvious the story will center on the imago. The all powerful Teixcalaan Empire lacks this technology and are largely unaware of its existence. It is a Lsel state secret, although it seems pretty obvious that at least imperial advisor Nineteen Adze knows about them before she admits it towards the middle of the novel. The imago is the reason Lsel Station matters at all, at least, at first. The emperor wants it because he believes it may be the key to immortality.
Strangely, no one else in the empire seems that interested in its potential. Most want knowledge of its existence destroyed or just kept to themselves as a hook.
Is it really just memories? No, it isn’t. As the two personalities blend, they unify with the end result inevitably becoming an enhanced Mahit, not Mahskandr, or Askandhit. Her explanations don’t seem to match up with her own experiences with the technology. It sounds like it is his personality, and can experience the real world like any sentient being.
The book constantly wants to avoid exploring the question of imago sentience by trying to persuade the reader that it just isn’t sentient or that it naturally combines to make a new unified personality. The experience of the imago personality and whether it suffers or has feelings of its own towards its existence isn’t really explored much, which was disappointing.
In another miraculous aspect of this technology developed by miners on a remote station, it also records the individual’s memories, like dead Askandr. Civil servant Twelve Azalea suggests they extract the imago from dead Askandr, which is a cultural taboo on Lsel, but ultimately Mahit has no choice. This imago transplant is a pretty obvious solution and does largely resolve the political and murder mystery that drove the story to that point. The only excitement left is getting that information to Emperor One Direction…wait, no Six Direction.
It is fortunate the plot turned in that one direction. The first third to half of the novel is mostly a blow-by-blow analysis of Mahit’s conversations with Teixcalaan courtiers. Her internal commentary is insightful but the dialogue itself starts to wear by the middle of the novel.
The attraction between Mahit and Three Seagrass felt organic and really helped drive through some of the dryer parts of the novel. Three Seagrass also has strong chemistry with her friend Twelve Azalea. The trio become more compelling towards the end, overcoming the early bumps in the narrative flow.
The biggest issue with the novel is the deus ex machina that appears near the end. The imago of dead Askandr helps Mahit decode a message from her government warning of a mysterious alien race operating on the periphery of the empire. They were discovered by Lsel Station pilots but are unknown to the empire. This is the information Mahit uses to persuade the emperor to end his annexation of Lsel Station.
Askandr’s murder has nothing to do with the alien threat. His demise was tied into his involvement in palace intrigue and the conflict over succession. The Emperor’s interest in the imago threatened those who wished to succeed him, and thus Askandr had to go. None of this had anything to do with the alien threat that inevitably preserved Lsel’s independence and possibly saved Mahit’s life.
The Texicalaanli rules of expansion prohibit an Emperor from engaging in warfare if there is an existing threat or if the security of the Empire is at risk. Thus the Emperor’s plan to annex Lsel Station must be put on hold. There was subtle hints at something on the frontier but the alien threat appears with no real connection to the events of the first two-thirds of the novel. It saves Mahit and Lsel Station and, to me, was a little too convenient.
The large number of female characters, or characters referred to with she/her pronoun also stands out in the historically male-dominated space opera genre. Science fiction novels with more gender balance and/or representation are breaking through to commercial success, healthy fandoms, and critical acclaim. To be clear, there is no hint of an agenda in this novel. All of it is consistent with the world and feels organic. It’s best recent comparison is Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice.
While I enjoyed A Memory Called Empire, I would say Ancillary Justice still has the edge. Ann Leckie’s brilliant novel has most of the same strengths but flowed better and never really threatened the suspension of disbelief. Both set up sequels without relying on anticipation to maintain reader interest, standing strong on their own.
A Memory Called Empire deserves much of the critical acclaim and attention it has received. Is it was the best speculative fiction novel of 2019? I wouldn’t go that far. It certainly stands out in a number of ways but has its issues as well. I look forward to the sequel.