RAVE REVIEW: Star Trek meets Ender's Game in Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan Duology [cc]
Hello and welcome to Amrita by the Book! my
name is Amrita, this is my booktube and today
i’m delighted to be discussing one of my
favorite books that i read last year and its
truly exceptional follow-up this year. i’m talking
of course about A Memory Called Empire that was
published last year – or maybe 2019? what is
time? who knows? but that was the first book
in the duology and then this year in March we will
see A Desolation Called Peace. now i was lucky to
be given an advance review copy by the publisher
and by Netgalley and i am so delighted that i got
to read this when i did because i’d been looking
forward to this ever since i finished the first
book last year. and um you guys, like even with
the weight of all my expectations this book is
fantastic! i love this book so much that i
was telling people how i had to slow down
because i was reading it too fast. like i
couldn’t stop myself from just devouring it
and i had to remind myself, no! savor it! i didn’t
want to get to the end but also i couldn’t wait
to get to the end. it was one of
loved it! now this is a spoiler free review mainly
because i don’t think it’s necessary for me to
discuss spoilers, like sometimes you can’t really
talk about a book or a series in depth unless
you give certain spoilers. i don’t think that’s
necessary in terms of these two books because
everything that i’m going to be talking about are
plot points that are part of the blurb so i’m not
giving anything away but i will be discussing the
themes that are present in this book so if that’s
something that bothers you then you should go
away, you should definitely pick up these two
books, read it, come back and then we can have
a discussion. but for other people who don’t mind
talking about themes and don’t consider that to
be spoilers – let’s talk about this series!
so the reason that i’m talking about the two
books together is because it’s really impossible
for me to discuss one without the other.
this is a true duology, which is pretty rare
as i’ve said before. like a lot of people use
duologies to talk about like two separate stories
but this is one of those where they are a perfect
whole, like you know, the first book interlocks
into the second book. like if you didn’t read
the first book, the second book wouldn’t have the
impact that it does and you wouldn’t understand
a lot of the history and the impetus behind
the actions of several of the characters,
so you really do need to read the first book
to get the background. and then in the second
book we move to the action and that’s how
it’s written. you know in the first book
we see the ambassador of this tiny space station
who goes into the heart of this neighboring empire
and she just has one brief which is to
make sure that her little space station
stays outside of the empire because the empire
is always hungry for more. and the only way that
the space station has survived for as long as
it has is by just feeding it enough to keep it
interested but away and by convincing them
that they really don’t have anything to like
drive the empire to colonize them because you
know that would be more bother than they’re worth.
and then this person her name is Mahit,
arrives at the heart of the empire,
the jewel of the world is what they call the
central city, and it is a completely different
world to anything that either you or i or she
has experienced and what we see is basically
not just a fish out of water experience and
also you know she’s there to investigate the
suspicious death of a predecessor so there’s
a murder mystery hanging over the whole thing
as well but also it’s this fascinating
look at somebody on the fringes of empire
interacting with the heart of the empire, and then
having this inner struggle about the aspirations
of colonialism. because that’s something that
i think a lot of books about colonization miss,
you know they focus upon things like resources and
about violence and all of these things are true,
you cannot have colonization without violence
and it is a physical violence but there is
another kind of violence that is cultural and
mental and emotional and that is what this book
really focuses on and it is fascinating. Mahit
understands that you know it is a bad thing
for the empire to want to take over her space
station and that her duty lies with the space
station and to ensure that they remain free of
the clutches of the empire but because she has
spent her entire life studying to be an ambassador
to these people, she’s also intimately acquainted
with their culture and the thing is that is how
colonization works. like it doesn’t just take
over territory like physical territory, it takes
over mental and emotional territory. so for me
for instance as an indian when i was reading it,
it really resonated with me because in india for
a very long time like starting in the early 19th
century the british had a very specific stated aim
of turning indians into brown englishmen albeit
inferior englishmen – because you know they just
couldn’t be bothered dealing with the complexities
of india and they thought that it would be
easier to just turn indians into englishmen
rather than englishmen spending all their time
trying to learn how to be indian. that’s how
the colonizing mind works. and this isn’t even
an india specific solution that they came up with:
this was something that they came up for the irish
and that they you know put to great effect
in scotland and wales as well which is why
if you speak to an irish person – i think the
irish are probably the maddest about it but
the scottish and the welsh also have this very
strong opinions about it – but there is a process
of cultural assimilation and holding up the
central culture of the empire or the colonizer
as aspirational and then sort of taunting or
even challenging the colonized to measure up
to the standards of the colonizer. and that is
what mahit goes through the entirety of the first
book because she is in this culture that she has
loved and she has studied and she is fluent in but
she is forever the Other. and she is reminded of
that all the time by all the people that she meets
that no matter how fluent she might be in their
culture, it is still their culture not hers.
it’s this mental jujitsu that is designed to keep
people in their place. now at the end of the first
book what happens is that Mahit is just sort of
desperately tap dancing to make sure that she can
keep her station safe, she can solve the murder of
a predecessor, and see that she doesn’t lose her
own self and her own identity because she’s been
seduced by this culture that she loves. and she
has to admit to herself that she does love this
culture even though she fears it and it’s honestly
such a complex portrayal. but the way that
she manages to bring everything to a close
is by pointing the empire’s attention away from
her station and towards this looming threat
on the fringes of their empire and that is this
other enemy that seems intent upon invading
the empire’s territory and they don’t know
anything about it except that they are lethal.
so that’s where we leave things at the end of the
first book. now we switch to the second book which
i don’t know like i keep thinking of it as Star
Trek (edited) meets Ender’s Game (edited) but with like
deeper philosophical pinnings. like in feel it is
a completely different novel from the first one.
the first one was a murder mystery, it was a
fish out of water story, it was about this person
trying to come to terms with themselves… like
it was a very interior kind of novel and then
in this one it’s just action! action! action!
and it starts with the audience or the reader
being introduced to the mind of the enemy
and i won’t tell you what that is but it is
fantastic! like i read that first interlude and
i was absolutely sold. like my eyes just dilated
because i was just like this is insanely
great! so now there is a problem between
these two empires right? like they need to find
a way to talk to each other but they are not just
culturally divergent they are absolutely different
from each other. like everything about them is
absolutely foreign to each other. they don’t know
even how to talk to each other or what the other
person looks like so they get Mahit and this other
person called Three Seagrass who was her minder
in the previous novel and is now working for
the ministry of information, and they get the
two of them to come out to the frontier where
you know they’ve been having these skirmishes
and they want them to facilitate a first contact
meeting. so now the story has three tracks:
there is one that is happening in the heart of the
empire back in the jewel of the crown where there
is palace intrigue, there is politics, there’s all
these things that are happening in terms of the
empire. then there is mahit and three seagrass
who have a relationship between them but also
they’re trying to figure out how to talk to these
aliens and also mahit has this whole other story
about you know what is happening on her station
and how her station is slowly trying to pull more
deeper into isolationism and how that impacts
her and her culture. and then the third track is
the war itself you know because these two
people are fighting and there are all these
imperatives at play so obviously there’s tons
of action going on you know. it’s all very like
pew! pew! pew! but even in the middle of all
this, martine pulls off this incredible feat
in that when we start the novel we are looking
at these two cultures that are completely
different and it starts with a meditation on
language and language being you know culture,
language being ideas, i’ve spoken about this
before and martine just really leans into that.
and then as the story progresses even though
we don’t really know what is happening
on the other end like what is happening
you know in the home world of the aliens,
when we start comparing the actions and the ideas
and the impulses of the people that we do know of,
what is happening in the empire, and we start
comparing them to the actions of the aliens and
the few glimpses that we get of what the aliens
are thinking, we begin to see that the two of
them are really not that different. they’re really
just two sides of a mirror. they’re both jockeying
for the same things, they are both reacting
in the same ways, it is just that they are so
divergent in terms of Being that it looks very
different when it is received on the other end,
but otherwise they have so much in common and that
is both terrifying and it is exhilarating because
you see how common some things can be and how
easy it is to misunderstand… and actually not
to understand at all. two of the other themes that
we see running throughout both these books but
explode in very different ways: the first is
the importance of memory. so in the first book
you know mahit is in search for her predecessor’s
memory and that makes sense within the plot of the
novel, and then in the second book we see the
different ways that you know the aliens process
memory, we are talking about institutional
memory, we are talking about individual memory
and we are seeing how all three of them intersect
and interplay in various situations and it is
fascinating! and then there is this thread that
runs through both books and it becomes more and
more clear as we go through the first book and
it becomes text from subtext in the second book
which is, what constitutes a person? what do we
mean when we say that this is a person and we see
mahit struggle with that. with being a barbarian
so to speak and how that colors her relationship
with not just the people in the empire that she’s
working with but also the people back home and how
they view her because of her affinity towards the
empire. and then on a larger scale we have this
dialogue between these two cultures, between these
two empires about what is a person and because
they have very different ideas of personhood
and that is one of their cultural differences.
it is intense and it blew my mind so many
times and i loved it like a crazy person.
each of the characters in these books like you
know you see some of them in the first book and
not all of them make it into the second book
but the ones that do and the new ones that
are introduced, they each contribute so much to
the arc of the story. i don’t think there’s a
single character, even the character of this
child and that child is just heartbreaking
but he’s also like a total badass and i really
like this child. i don’t always like children in
my media but this kid was amazing. and they each
contribute so much to this complicated fabric that
is being woven. it is great. and it also sets up
all these relationships between these characters
and it keeps asking the question you know what is
love? because this is not a novel in which people
say like oh i love you blah blah blah, like that’s
not what this novel is but this is a novel that
routinely stops people in their tracks and asks
them what does love mean to them? is it loyalty,
is it fetishization, is it sacrifice, is it
innovation, what is it? and sooner or later each
person in the cast has to answer that question for
themselves and every single time it blew my mind.
this book really combines the meditative
and philosophical feel of classic science
fiction with the more pulsating action feel of
mainstream fare. the first book is really kind of
not slow, i wouldn’t say it’s slow but it really
does set the stage and you’re not aware of that
until you really launch into the second book
because the second book just takes off! and
i was trying to think about who i would recommend
this to and i think perhaps i might recommend this
to a wide variety of people because there are some
books that really just work for a very specific
audience you know but i feel like this is a book
that would work for people who like literature.
like if you like literary fiction then this is a
duology that would really work for you and then
if you love science fiction this is definitely
a duology that should work for you. but this is
definitely a series that is meant for people who
like to think and who like to put in the work not
in terms of prose, like the prose is very easy but
in terms of concept, in terms of world building,
in terms of what the book is trying to say. so it
really does occupy your brain and i don’t think i
finished feeling it all out and i don’t think
i will for a while yet. i think i’m going to
think about this for years to come, i’m going to
reread this and i’m going to enjoy every single
bit of it and i’m going to recommend this book for
years to come, so if you’re in the market for a
new science fiction read, if you’ve never read a
science fiction book but you’re thinking that you
might want to, then this is the series for you.
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