A Memory Called Empire

 A Memory Called Empire

By Arkady Martine

 

Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining Station, has died. But no one will admit that his death wasn't an accident―or that Mahit might be next to die, during a time of political instability in the highest echelons of the imperial court.

Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan's unceasing expansion―all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret―one that might spell the end of her Station and her way of life―or rescue it from annihilation.

It was hard to read a book about a government coup, of riots and police checkpoints, and factions and succession this week.  I lost my taste for it.  Not quite as exciting when it's your own government, and your own riots and your own stability and permanence which is called into question.  This week I kept thinking of Thirteen Days (which my memory says I saw in the theater as a high school student - which is both baffling since I cannot imagine that to be a school sanctioned trip, nor do I remember anyone else being present, and yet...? The vagaries of memory.  Martine doesn't really address this in the book, but does the imago basically give the bearers eidetic memory powers - that is, once "uploaded", does any experience of feeling truly fade? How could it, if it is meant to preserve both personality and information?  And yet, my personality at age 26 would be very different from my personality at age 42.  Does keeping the memories intact stunt development and learning, as you constantly must reconcile past actions with the present?) in which we teetered on the precipice of war, basically trusting that: "You're a good man; your brother is a good man. I assure you there are other good men. Let us hope the will of good men is enough to counter the terrible strength of this thing that was put in motion."  And what happens when the will of good men is not enough?

I suppose that's a benefit of reading books, that you get to digest and analyze situations without having to relive them, that you can use the book and the story to relieve your emotions and cleanse.  I am angry, and sad, and worried, and a book about an alien ambassador investigating the murder of her predecessor shouldn't come this close to home.  

I wasn't quite engaged even before I got to that part - it's a tough book to get into, as it throws a lot of sci-fi names at you right off the bat, and yes, I know the author studied and lived in Armenia and it is close to her heart, but why you gotta pick "Teixcalaan" as the root of like, every social descriptor is beyond me.  And the naming scriptures were... I dunno, it did lead to the one moment of genuine levity in the book, but I had to keep looking up people in the directory because I needed to know Eight Antidote versus Eight Loop versus Ten Pearl and that Six Direction is a person but Six Outreaching Palms is a department. That being said, did the following make it all worth it? I think yes, by a slim margin:

But Three Seagrass handed her the next infofiche stick, which turned out to be a thoroughly distracting mess concerning import fees on a shipping manifest that would have taken half an hour to sort out had it been answered when Yskandr had been alive.  It took nearly three times that long for Mahit to solve, considering one of the parties had left the planet - that was the Stationer - and another had married into citizenship and changed his name during the lag time.  Mahit made Three Seagrass hunt down the new-made Teixcalaanlitzlim under his new name and issue him a formal summons to the Judicial Department of Interstellar Trade Licensing.

"Just make sure he shows up to pay the import fees on the cargo he bought from one of my Station's citizens, whatever his name is," Mahit told her.

The name the man had chosen, it turned out, was Thirty-Six All-Terrain Tundra Vehicle, a revelation that produced in both Mahit and Three Seagrass a kind of stunned silence.

"No one would actually name a child that," Three Seagrass complained after a moment. "He has no taste. Even if his parents or his creche was from a low temperature planet with a lot of tundra in need of all-terrain vehicles."

And yet, I was also peeved, since I was misled to think that more actual, laugh-out-loud moments might be waiting.  They were not.  I guess I just couldn't really get into the style of the book, where Mahit, the new ambassador, ostensibly makes super clever connections and picks up patterns, but then it has to be spoonfed to us, the readers, because we don't know enough about the world to make the connections ourselves. I had to re-read the part where she realizes that the previous Ambassador offered the imago technology to the current Teixcalaan emperor two or three times before I figured out how she made the mental connection, so it wasn't really an "Aha!" moment so much as it was a cranky, "I guess if you say so."  Which is, you know, fine, too, but I don't think it was what the author was going for.  

I also took issue with the various plots - yes most of them roll up by the end, but we're given almost immediately both an internal Lsel Station disagreement and a sabotaged imago right along with murder and empire-politics, and while yes, the sabotage was necessary for plot reasons (because otherwise Yskandr would have just told her what was going on, I assume, and this would have been a much shorter book), honestly, the Lsel Station drama was never really adequately explained for me - so Faction One was holding information about the alien force in its pocket for back-up, and meanwhile Faction Two wanted to sabotage the new ambassador because... they felt the prior ambassador was too friendly with the Empire, even though they specifically picked for the new ambassador someone who had the same Empire -affinities that the previous ambassador had? And meanwhile, no one's told either ambassador about the alien threat, so he's making nice with the Empire as the only way to save the Station? Seems like one plotline too many.  Also, how is your ambassador supposed to make effective choices if you don't tell him (or anyone else in government, apparently) about the hulking menace perched on the outer edge of your space? I mean, how long were you planning to sit on that one?  When they're outside your door with pitchforks?

So basically: Yskandr, the previous ambassador, felt the only way to preserve Lsel as an independent nation would be to preserve peace in the body mind of the current Emperor via technology commonly used on their station (but that is apparently supposed to be a big secret?) and the Emperor's advisors murdered the ambassador because they felt that was immoral (and these were the advisors who supposedly liked the emperor - even though it seems like the ones who didn't would have more cause to eliminate someone who could purportedly extend his rule) and meanwhile Lsel is sitting on a huge distraction to all of this which can't be detonated immediately because (a) the ambassador was murdered (and wasn't told anyway) and (b) the new ambassador doesn't have a damn clue about what's going on because a different Lsel faction decided to hamstring the person they sent out to deal with the mess and (c) neither Lsel faction knows what the other did, so no one can fix it. 

Meanwhile, the people in the Empire have their own agendas, but I couldn't keep any of them straight, so I didn't bother.  I didn't particularly like any of them, since I wasn't sure who murdered the ambassador, and therefore didn't trust or like any of them until long past the point where I was obviously supposed to trust and like at least some of them.  Also other people try to murder the new ambassador but for different reasons that don't really make sense. Every sequence is also a rehash of how foreign their habits are and how much work it takes to fit in, and that's also exhausting (even if it is accurate). 

Anyway, apparently there is a sequel coming out in March, so maybe some of that gets discussed there, I don't know.  If we even have a country in March.