Hugos 2020: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

Trade paperback, 464 pages
Published 2020 (originally 2019)
Acquired April 2020
Read May 2020

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

I enjoyed this from the start. Me being me, I was immediately classifying it in terms of genre: it reminds me of both the Imperial Radch and Baru Cormorant books in its attention to the functioning of empire. These books aren't about empires as military juggernauts (though that's in there), but as political and cultural forces. A friend read Ancillary Justice and The Traitor Baru Cormorant and pointed out they were both about "evil meritocracies"; A Memory Called Empire is about one as well! The focus on empire isn't the only similarity (both even feature empires with elaborate tea ceremonies, and a language where the name of the empire is synonymous with civilization), as there's an interesting correlation between the leaders of both empire, even. The acknowledgements say that this book was begun in 2014; Ancillary Justice came out in 2013. I say all this not to criticize A Memory Called Empire, but to triangulate it. I think these books are all doing something that really appeals to me, and clearly also appeals to readers, taking many of the tropes of sf, but invigorating them with new life by thinking through their complexities. (I need a name for this subgenre, which I would also add The Goblin Emperor and the Hexarchate books to. It obviously connects to space opera, but is not limited to it. "Imperial sf" seems to be taken. "Post-imperial sf"?) A Memory Called Empire is also interested in the production and consumption of narratives, something I've seen in other recent sf (it comes up a lot in the Murderbot stories, for example, and I seem to recall there's something of it in the Wayfarers novels, too), which feels natural in a genre landscape where many writers would have been involved heavily in media fandom. And, like in The City of the Middle of the Night, there's a big focus on the languages of the different cultures, and how they shape thought: one has a lot of case markers.

Mahit Dzmare is the ambassador from the tiny polity of Lsel Station to the homeworld of the powerful Teixcalaanli Empire. But even though Teixcalaan's might threatens her station's sovereignty, she's grown up reading poetry and novels and watching tv shows from Teixcalaan. She loves and is fascinated it, even as she understands its dangers-- but reading about it is no substitute for being there. This was one of my favorite parts of Memory: empire is cruel, but also seductive, and it provides great stories. In the nineteenth century you would have grown up reading about the virtues of Rome even if Rome's virtues actually weren't your nation's virtues. I really liked the book's attention to the nuances of empire; as I said above, it really feels as though it builds on Ancillary Justice in terms of that.

I enjoyed it from the start, but it got better as it went. It's a good political thriller (and it makes sense); it has some neat sf ideas; it has strong worldbuilding (the Teixcalaanli naming system is fun, even if I kept getting distracted by the name "Six Direction" at first). It gets you invested in its characters and their struggles. Mahit is a great, believable protagonist, but I had a soft spot for Twelve Azalea, a friend of Mahit's cultural liaison, a goofy guy who comes through in a pinch. Some aspects of the climax really got me emotionally, and by the end, I loved it, and I can't wait for book two (which isn't out until March 2021 in hardcover, so God knows when it will hit paperback).