Name: Samantha 's review of A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
Item: A Desolation Called Peace
Rating: 5
Author: Samantha

Arkady Martine

"[An] all around brilliant space opera, I absolutely love it."—Ann Leckie, on A Memory Called Empire A Desolation Called Peace is the spectacular space opera sequel to Arkady Martine's genre-reinventing, Hugo Award-winning debut, A Memory Called Empire. An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is running out of options. In a desperate attempt at diplomacy with the mysterious invaders, the fleet captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass—still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire—face the impossible task of trying to communicate with a hostile entity. Their failure will guarantee millions of deaths in an endless war. Their success might prevent Teixcalaan’s destruction—and allow the empire to continue its rapacious expansion. Or it might create something far stranger . . . At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A Desolation Called Peace

Conor Levey

A Desolation Called Peace is the spectacular space opera sequel to A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, winner of the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel. An alien terror could spell our end. An alien threat lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is supposed to win a war against it. In a desperate attempt to find a diplomatic solution, the fleet captain has sent for an envoy to contact the mysterious invaders. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass – both still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire – face an impossible task: they must attempt to negotiate with a hostile entity, without inadvertently triggering the destruction of themselves and the Empire. Whether they succeed or fail could change the face of Teixcalaan forever. ‘All-round brilliant space opera, I absolutely loved it’ Ann Leckie on A Memory Called Empire ‘A cutting, beautiful, human adventure . . . The best SF novel I’ve read in the last five years’ Yoon Ha Lee on A Memory Called Empire

i don't think i'm smart enough to untangle all the themes of this book but i will certainly be thinking about it for a good while. i think it's even better than the first one. the stakes are higher, while readers get to delve even deeper into the character and culture and complexities of the world. 

Samantha 

Alba Ramos

oh. oh WOW. very definitely my favourite scifi series currently; such an intelligent and evocative exploration of memory and personhood and culture and empire and civilisation and language and connectivity, how they are all the same but different, every element thematically perfect, GOD my brain is spinning.

"Language is not so transparent, but we are sometimes known, even so. If we are lucky." crying

Prashanth Srivatsa

An excellent conclusion to the duology. Martine stretches the imperial concept of 'you', and pits it against the strange-yet-familiar concept of 'we' in an ever-deepening exploration of language, identity, and the limits and morals of empire. As thought-provoking as it was fun!

A Desolation Called Peace is the spectacular space opera sequel to A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, winner of the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel. An alien terror could spell our end. An alien threat lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is supposed to win a war against it. In a desperate attempt to find a diplomatic solution, the fleet captain has sent for an envoy to contact the mysterious invaders. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass - both still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire - face an impossible task: they must attempt to negotiate with a hostile entity, without inadvertently triggering the destruction of themselves and the Empire. Whether they succeed or fail could change the face of Teixcalaan forever. 'All-round brilliant space opera, I absolutely loved it' - Ann Leckie on A Memory Called Empire 'A cutting, beautiful, human adventure . . . The best SF novel I've read in the last five years' - Yoon Ha Lee on A Memory Called Empire A Desolation Called Peace is the second book in the Teixcalaan duology by Arkady Martine.

Cindy Lieberman

Wartime adventures (in space) bring our heroines back together as they struggle to communicate with the species their people are battling - a species that appears to wantonly and wastefully destroy planets without caring about the lives lost. Cool alien autopsy plus The Boy/Clone Who Would Be Emperor steps up.

Janice Hopper

Quite a nice sequel to A Memory Called Empire. Perhaps not quite as focused as the first book, and the ending comes a little quickly.

There's an new alien species warring against the Teixcalaan empire. They don't seem to speak a language that anyone can understand. In fact, just hearing the sounds of the language induces nausea and severe discomfort in humans. 

Mahit Dzmarr and Three Seagrass from the first book end up being called in to try to communicate with the aliens. I thought it was suspiciously easy for them to figure out a way to communicate (after they'd taken a load of anti-emetics.) But whatever.

What does it mean to be human? To be alien? To be barbarian? Can we really communicate?

Excellent writing. Audio narration was ok.

Paige mandia 

im still reeling so i don’t have tooooo much to say on this one. just out here processing man. 

what i will say is this is a phenomenal sequel. it so expertly expands upon what was set up in the first book without feeling repetitive at all. the setting is completely different, and we get multiple narrators this time. the chapters are really long, but the pov switches every few pages so it helps the pace move along. and all of the narrators, imo, are a joy to read from. it’s so intriguing getting to see each character work at their own political / emotional agenda. 

this novel beautifully tackles language, identity, and culture. it’s just so well written, and absolutely one of the most satisfying conclusions to a story ive ever read. 

id recommend this novel to anyone interested in identity politics, sharp narrators, and raw sci-fi. also there’s kittens in this one soooo!!! it was a joy to read and i absolutely see why memory won the 2020 hugo award.

Naty Corbett

Wow. Just wow. I could not put this book down. Arkady Martine manages to keep increasing the tension while stringing the story along adding complications here and there that don't seem forced like in some other books.
I would be so happy if we get a third installment in the series but am also content if Mahit and Three Seagrass's stories end here

This book builds upon its predecessor in powerful ways and is so good.

It ends too quickly. Too many mysterious things are never picked up again. The central conflict resolved too smoothly. All of this would be okay if there was a third book coming, but as I understand it, this particular story arc is “done” (

https://reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/p301w5/_/h8nkprt/?context=1

). In that light, I’m left slightly disappointed and wanting more.

Aaron Bach

This book builds upon its predecessor in powerful ways and is so good.

Why am I knocking off a star?

SPOILER BELOW

It ends too quickly. Too many mysterious things are never picked up again. The central conflict resolved too smoothly. All of this would be okay if there was a third book coming, but as I understand it, this particular story arc is “done” (https://reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/p301w5/_/h8nkprt/?context=1). In that light, I’m left slightly disappointed and wanting more.

"[An] all around brilliant space opera, I absolutely love it."—Ann Leckie, on A Memory Called Empire A Desolation Called Peace is the spectacular space opera sequel to Arkady Martine's genre-reinventing Hugo and Nebula finalist debut, A Memory Called Empire. An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is running out of options. In a desperate attempt at diplomacy with the mysterious invaders, the fleet captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass—still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire—face the impossible task of trying to communicate with a hostile entity. Whether they succeed or fail could change the fate of Teixcalaan forever.

Fraser Simons

The consequences of the actions undertaken in the first book handled here are really great. It’s fairly nuanced. Perhaps too granular for my tastes, with the plot beats taking long enough that I noticed the length of the book quite often. Perhaps if I had clicked a bit more with the voice I wouldn’t have minded so much. 

But for whatever reason, perhaps the sheer novelty of the setting and characters in the first book being foregone and the larger reveal being a kind of sci-fi staple—though handled better than most books that invoke the trope—I wasn’t quite as invested in this one. 

I did really like where the larger plot went from the first one and I do feel like it met my fairly large expectations, coming from the first.

Logan Keith

I find it rare for a second book in a series to be better than the first, simply because it’s not new and exciting. However, this is one of the rare cases where the second book was head and shoulders better then the first. The pacing of the book was better, the action was better, and the writing was more clear. Overall, I really enjoyed this book, but you have to read the first one to enjoy it.

Great stuff, would def recommend the duology. I feel like complex/diplomatic scifi's big achilles heel is putting in too many pov's (and fantasy, it's like the GRRM-ification of SFF lol. red rising's later books are suffering from this Badly and i hope that gets fixed but im not optimistic) — 

i feel like book 1 was the sweet spot and there were a few too many povs in this one. Add one new one aside from just Mahit, sure, but I feel like this book could have been Mahit POV + Nine H. POV and been just as solid, if not more. A minor gripe with a great series.

Lauren Sullivan

Content warnings: (view spoiler)[sci-fi violence (including death), PTSD, grief, threat of medical experimentation and/or death (hide spoiler)]

A Memory Called Empire absolutely blew me away, and this book is no different. It continues the first book’s exploration of identify, memory and society, with the addition of a completely alien species and the need to avert total war. So, you know, no pressure, Mahit.

“She thought of Eleven Lathe, her poetic model, her hero, writing Dispatches from the Numinous Frontier out alone amongst his aliens, the Ebrekti. Could she do worse? Certainly, but perhaps not much worse—and then, gleeful and bitter, she thought, Fuck you, watch me try, in Twelve Azalea’s eternally silenced voice.”

The story picks up a few months after the events of A Memory Called Empire, with Mahit back on Lsel Station. I initially had some trepidation that the book started with a character other than her, but as the plot unfolded, I forgot about that completely. Unlike the first book, which was solely from Mahit’s point of view, this one also has Three Seagrass, now part of the Information Ministry; Nine Hibiscus, the new yaotlek tasked with dealing with the alien threat on Teixcalaan’s borders; and Eight Antidote, the eleven year old heir to the throne. Each character is dealing with separate and immediate problems. Nine Hibiscus needs to figure out how to stop the alien invaders while simultaneously dealing with a possible insurrection within her fleet. Three Seagrass, still reeling from the death of her best friend, answers Nine Hibiscus’ request for an Information Ministry specialist to come try to communicate with the aliens. Mahit doesn’t want the Stationers to find out about her highly illegal and possibly-still-sabotaged imago, and is dealing with the double (triple) vertigo of no longer feeling at home on the Station. And Eight Antidote, no longer a baby according to himself, is trying to find his new place in the palace with Nineteen Adze as emperor.

“The self that experienced and the self that evaluated, wondered, Is this when I feel real? Is this when I feel like a civilized person?
And the self that sounded like Yskandr, dark and amused: Is this when I forget what being a Stationer feels like? How about now? Now? Are we still Mahit Dzmare?”

The four points of view weave around each other: the Teixcalaanli fleet commander devoted to her empire, the Teixcalaanli woman who can’t help setting her teeth against a new problem, the woman who’s not even sure who she is any longer except she’s not Teixcalaanli and not a Stationer, and the child learning how to become an emperor. It was immensely satisfying and a masterful way to show various sides of the conflict, how each of the characters was trying to do their best (or what they think of as best) to in a sea of impossibly hard choices. I thought I was fully prepared for how agonizing the viewpoints of Three Seagrass and Mahit would be, especially in regards to each other (I was not), but I was unexpectedly completely swamped by Eight Antidote’s mix of intelligence, audacity and the last vestiges of childlike naivety. And then there’s Nine Hibiscus, who’s trying to deal with an insurrection and murderous rampaging aliens and now an Information Ministry spook and her pet barbarian, not to mention an infestation of cats in the air ducts. She’s clever and loyal and so Teixcalaanli it’s a stark contrast to the others.

“[Exile isn’t something self-imposed.]
He was wrong about that, Mahit thought, exile happened in the heart and the mind long before it happened to the body that moved in space, across borders[.]”

What Mahit is dealing with on the personal level – the possibility of a relationship with Three Seagrass – is the same thing that Lsel Station is dealing with: assimilation versus isolation. Lsel Station is, in some ways, no better than the empire. There are factions that want to pretend that the Empire never found them, but that’s an impossibility, especially to Mahit, whose life has been formed around Teixcalaanli literature. Even with that – and all the self awareness of being in love with a culture that’s trying to devour your own – Mahit is a barbarian to the Teixcalaanlitzlim, even to Three Seagrass, and barely qualifies as human to others. But the mysterious aliens are even worse, and it’s a political brangle as to whether they’ll try to communicate with them, as Nine Hibiscus intends, or just continue trying to destroy them. It’s hard not to see the parallels to Lsel and Mahit, and it’s done so expertly. The writing veers from terrifying to lyrical to hilarious (Yskandr, of course), effortlessly picking up threads from the previous book and expanding on them. It’s dense but in an immensely, immersively satisfying way, and the pacing was perfect.

“Language is not so transparent, but we are sometimes known, even so. If we are lucky.”

Nothing like ripping your heart out with one of the last lines of the book. I really hope this isn’t the end of the series, and I especially want more of the graphic novel from Lsel Station that’s quoted at the beginning of some of the chapters. Whatever this author chooses to do in the future, I will be following her closely.

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Jennifer

This is going to be a brief review to avoid potential spoilers to anyone who haven't read A Memory Called Empire. Long story short, I really enjoyed the sequel A Desolation Called Peace: I think this book answered a lot of unanswered questions from the cliffhanger at the end of its precedessor and provided a rather satisfying resolution to close the duology.

One thing that I typically pay attention to in a high fantasy sequel is how the worldbuilding details (provided in the opening novels) paved way to character & plot developments. Personally I think the worldbuilding details provided in A Memory Called Empire set a solid foundation in that drives the societal / structural changes that arise from the political uprising in A Desolation Called Peace. If I had to try extra hard to juggle between learning the worldbuilding and making sense of what's happening in the first book, luckily the sequel allowed me to quickly sink my teeth into the bottom line of the political intrigue. In the process, I had the opportunity to get to know the characters at a deeper level.

Even though A Desolation Called Peace is more about the aftermath of the political uprising rather than introducing a whole new worldbuilding to the readers, Arkady Martine still provided new unchartered territories of the Teixcalaan Empire that were not explored in the first novel. So to speak, this also provides readers a more expansive and global picture of the consequence of the political changes. I personally believe that the more expansive nature of the sequel sets up a firm yet sufficiently open-ended conclusion about the societal structure as well as human nature.

Again, I just want to provide a few quick disclaimers about A Desolation Called Peace:

- Prose: this sequel has the same writing style as A Memory Called Empire, so if you aren't a fan dense prose (with a lot of science & technical words) this is not going to change in A Desolation Called Peace
- Pacing: while there are more plots going on in this novel, it is still considered a slow-paced novel
- Content warnings: weapons, blood mention, murder, and violence

Disclaimers aside, A Desolation Called Peace is a solid ending to the intricate Teixcalaan duology. It's rich with political intrigue, depth, and worldbuilding details. To anyone who enjoys space opera with a lot of substance, this series is certainly worth checking out!

A Desolation Called Peace is the spectacular space opera sequel to A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, winner of the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel. An alien terror could spell our end. An alien threat lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is supposed to win a war against it. In a desperate attempt to find a diplomatic solution, the fleet captain has sent for an envoy to contact the mysterious invaders. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass - both still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire - face an impossible task: they must attempt to negotiate with a hostile entity, without inadvertently triggering the destruction of themselves and the Empire. Whether they succeed or fail could change the face of Teixcalaan forever. 'All-round brilliant space opera, I absolutely loved it' Ann Leckie on A Memory Called Empire 'A cutting, beautiful, human adventure . . . The best SF novel I've read in the last five years' Yoon Ha Lee on A Memory Called Empire

Pam Sartain

A Desolation Called Peace is the sequel to  A Memory Called Empire , and it's a duology.  I haven't heard of that before for books, but it makes sense.

This starts 3 months after the previous book, and Mahit has returned to the Isel station, and is feeling homesick for Teixcala, and the whirlwind week she had there, and for Three Seagrass.  

Three Seagrass is still on Teixcala, feeling out of sorts, and hasn't written poetry for the last 3 months.

Teixcala has a new Emperor, Nineteen Adze, who is already in the middle of a war with the aliens that Mahit pointed out just before the death of the previous Emperor.  

The aliens are rampaging through Teixcalaan space, and they've just got a recording of the noise they make - is that a language?  Three Seagrass wants to investigate and help, and knows who she can take with her to help with barbarian languages - another barbarian.

This is a sci-fi book, full of court intrigue, with characters uncertain who they can trust, or what their real motives are.  Eight Antidote, the heir to the Emperor, and the ninety percent clone of the previous Emperor is 11 years old, and running around being a spy, which gives you insight into a lot more places than you would get with an adult.  I very much enjoyed my time in Teixcala, and enjoyed the conclusion to the story.

 A Desolation Called Peace  was published on 4th March, and is available to buy from  Amazon , Waterstones and  Bookshop.org .

You can follow Arkady Martine on  Twitter ,  Instagram  and her  website .

I was given this book in exchange for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley, to Arkady Martine and  Pan MacMillan .

Ben Nathan

This gets two stars and a generous two. I thought it was a solid 3 at the start and then it just kept making the wrong choices (predictable, boring, cringe-inducing, you name it). But hey, let's start with the good before I write way too much about how I hated so many things (but that's going to be fun and cathartic). As you read my review, you may wonder why I didn't give it one star? Well, that's a special honor for those books that have offended me by being truly, unforgivably terrible with no good to speak of. This has at least some good, but it's very little.

There are spoilers, FYI...granted, I don't feel like I'm ruining this book because it's very very predictable (if you've read enough sci-fi in the last 20 years) and it's not good, so who cares if I tell you things.

The Good:
8-Antidote is a really fun character. Interesting though definitely the overused trope of prodigy child who is the only one with an understanding of what's going on. Also, the only one with actual morals that had any level of power.
The political intrigue/spying was well thought out and well done. Granted, doing it because you say you will and then not wanting to but still doing it with no actual reason to is really dumb. So dumb. Why not just stop? Why not tell someone what's happening? Oh, you might let them know you were on the wrong side before? WHO CARES?
Conversations within a single characters head. Three voices, one head, fun to read. Then it became 2 voices. Then it was really one voice and an echo. So it started well and then became a yawn. This is what I mean by every choice being made was the wrong one.

The Bad (and this goes in levels because there is SO much bad in so many ways. For that reason, I will start with things that are just a little annoying and progress to the unforgivable):
1. Writing about liquor as if ice cold straight vodka is the pinnacle of drinking. Even vodka drinkers know this is the dumbest statement possible. There is a reason people who know nothing about booze just say the character drinks scotch and the peatier the better. Nobody is going to say "that's crazy" we'll just say "oh, that's scotch people for you" and shrug. Drinking vodka straight means you're either looking to get drunk because your world has gone wrong or you're an alcoholic.
2. "Oops my bad, you got me" is not how a person spying on an entire culture to create infighting reacts. That's unrealistic and stupid. Like most things in this book.
3. The sex scene was so incredibly cringe-inducing that it hurt. Had it just been that, I think I could have forgiven it as a sloppy foray into a type of writing that is incredibly difficult, but no there's more. There were constant references to said sex scene any time Mahit looks at 3-Seagrass. It was so very ew in how all of it was done. I had a shiver (in the worst way) down my spine every time this came up.
4. The complete lack of understanding of how anyone would approach a military situation or react to one. "They're kicking our ass" "Let's destroy a whole system, that will get them to agree to peace" is maybe the dumbest idea I've ever seen in a book. If you do that and they are more militarily advanced, they will kill you. All of you. Every single one. The emperor can't be that dumb and still lauded as a genius of intrigue and tactics at every step. It's infuriating. If a character is going to be intelligent, make them actually use their brain.
5. The fungus as a way to create a hive mind. Well, let's see. The first time the aliens speak inaudibly I thought "oh, telepathy but only between each other. Been done, but why not?" and then there's the fungus being seen and I thought "fun, they're actually a hive mind. But wait, if they're a hive mind, why do they have an audible language? They wouldn't need to." See what I'm saying? If you have one mind, why do you talk out loud? I don't talk out loud to myself to do things. "Hey Ben, can you pour yourself some water? Now drink it. You need the hydration. Hooray, we win!" Nope to the nope-iest. This is so incredibly beyond dumb I can't even. And mind you, this is the point of the main characters, to figure out how to communicate with them and they use the audible communications that shouldn't happen.
6. How the interactions with the aliens occur is both frustrating and dumb. First, they use the sounds they recorded and play them back in a very basic way that magically is enough to convince an alien force that is annihilating their military to say "yes, we should talk to them in this very specific way" though really there was no reason for it. But let's just say that's fine, then we can go to the bit where they use pictures and sounds to convey thought and the aliens just nod along. The problem isn't that this works it's that the aliens show absolutely no interest in learning our way of communication given what happens later. They say "don't eat us" and the aliens say "why not? you can make more" which says to me that the aliens think of us as either non-sentient or as what is essentially cattle. The oh my god so very colonialist view of how we approach aliens that happened here is SO FUCKED UP. We the humans are the only people that matter and the aliens that are more militarily (and let's face it, scientifically) advanced than we are that they have to prove to us that they are in fact people and not the other way around in order to broker peace. I mean, it's like a bunch of cattle saying to humans "I know you have guns but because you can't moo we will keep trying to gore you" and the humans saying "oh no, cows, you're amazing. Are you willing to accept us as your equals?" Just because they're aliens doesn't mean they're not people, but at the same time, just because we see ourselves as people doesn't mean that an alien species would see us in that way. It's the whitest of white ways of viewing outside cultures. How in the name of all that is holy is the Hugo community eating this up and not realizing this.
7. The incredible stupidity of how all things are handled by this empire. You are so advanced that you span across the galaxy, yet you meet with aliens and you can't spare more than a single linguist or analyst to talk to them? You don't have a team and software to attempt to decipher their language and actually interact with them? You actually say "it's not a language" definitively early on when it's clearly a language and used as such throughout the book? Do you not know what a language is? Then let's add in the fact that the 11 year old child is the only one in the entire galaxy that can figure out the whole fungus thing (that was incredibly obvious) and then he doesn't tell anyone and they figure it out way later. Just frustrating how dumb this gigantic empire is. I hate it when you're told people are smart and being written by someone that doesn't make anyone actually smart. It's like when when shows are written about comedy but then they're not funny.

Anyway, this book was not good. I did not enjoy it. I don't get the praise. I could keep going on, but I think stopping here is enough.

One more time...ew

Conor Levey &
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

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