Monday, February 10, 2020

2020 book 31

Arkady Martine's A Memory of Empire
I've owned this book for a while, and heard tons of good things about it, but every time I started it I was like "I need to be able to concentrate more and really sink into this." And finally I was traveling, and I'm so glad I finally had the time to dive in, because it lived up to the hype. It's about a young woman from an independent space station, who is named ambassador to the mighty Empire after the previous ambassador is suddenly . . . unable to serve. And her society has a whole thing with shared memories, but her predecessor's are fifteen years out of date . . . so she's being thrown into a very dicey situation. Can she solve the mystery of what happened to her predecessor and also successfully navigate serious politics??? I love both those kinds of stories, so to have them come together with a bunch of compelling characters and fascinating world-building was definitely my jam. This was just really SATISFYING. I can't wait to read the next book in the series and see where things go. A.

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