Review: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (2019)

An intelligent look at colonialism wrapped in diplomatic intrigue.

A Memory Called Empire is the debut novel of Arkady Martine, and the winner of the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

The novel centers around Mahit Dzmare, a newly-chosen replacement ambassador that represents Lsel Station, a small independent polity on the edge of active space. She is ambassador to Teixcalaan, a behemoth empire that occupies a quarter of the galaxy. Teixcalaan’s power is such that they can easily take over Lsel Station on a whim, so the importance of the ambassadorial role in maintaining a fragile peace can not be overstated. Lsel Station has a secret to aid them: they have technology that can preserve the memories and personalities of others inside a host, called imagos. Mahit is given the imago (albeit fifteen years out of date) of Yskandr, the former Ambassador to Teixcalaan , whom she is summoned to replace.

When Mahit and her imago arrive on Teixcalaan, they are immediately thrown into a web of political scheming: Yskandr is dead (and managed to anger several powerful government officials beforehand), her imago is glitching, and the mighty empire teeters on the precipice of civil war due to a succession crisis. The plot unfolds as part mystery, part diplomatic thriller: Mahit investigates the reasons behind her predecessor’s death while becoming intertwined in the political intrigue he left behind.

AMCE is, above all else, smart. It’s a book that explores ideas about colonialism, technology, language, and culture while moving along plot and characterization. Teixcalaan is an empire that is part Byzantium and part Aztec, with a population as obsessed with narrative and epic poetry as it is with military expansion. They emphasize literary allusion and poetic structure in their day-to-day interactions, while political stars strive to emulate the great epic heroes. It’s a culture that drips with romanticism, easy to fall in love with - which is the problem. Martine states in the prologue:

“This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever fallen in love with a culture that was devouring their own.”

Mahit loves Teixcalaan. She is enamored with the culture, yearns to understand all the allusions and subtleties like a citizen would, and feels deep envy when she witnesses elite citizenry casually participate in a poetry slam at levels that seem impossible to her. It’s the reason she’s qualified for her job - yet she’s faced with the challenge of loving the very empire that threatens her home while she conducts a job where the sole responsibility is dissuading its hunger.

“That was the problem. Empire was empire—the part that seduced and the part that clamped down, jaws like a vise, and shook a planet until its neck was broken and it died.”

It’s a fascinating examination of colonialism from a perspective I’ve never considered before. Mahit isn’t alone in it, as her imago feels the same way (it really is the only way any foreigner could manage as an ambassador). Martine manages to weave this colonialism angle into the text throughout, alongside examinations of the imago technology (and its repercussions), and the political intrigue plot.

“The Empire, the world. One and the same. And if they were not yet so: make them so, for this is the right and correct will of the stars.”

Mahit struggles with her identity at multiple levels - she is an ambassador to an empire who wants to consume her home, yet she loves it. The imago technology makes herself not herself - she literally shares her brain and her body with the living memories of another. Identity, both inside Mahit and her role in society, is a major theme throughout, inviting questions like what it means to be you.

“Are you Yskandr, or are you Mahit?” Three Seagrass asked, and that did seem to be the crux of it: Was she Yskandr, without him? Was there even such a thing as Mahit Dzmare, in the context of a Teixcalaanli city, a Teixcalaanli language, Teixcalaanli politics infecting her all through, like an imago she wasn’t suited for, tendrils of memory and experience growing into her like the infiltrates of some fast-growing fungus.”

When I was reading, I repeatedly just found myself so impressed with what Martine accomplishes here. This is a fiercely intelligent book about ideas, with an engaging plot around it. The prose vacillates between weighty epic narration and the functional, blending together often in ways that made me pause and speak the passage out loud, just so I could hear it with an orator’s emphasis. It is eminently quotable and deep in places and moments where you don’t expect it to be.

“Here is the grand sweep of civilization’s paw, stretched against the black between the stars, a comfort to every ship’s captain when she looks out into the void and hopes not to see anything looking back. Here, in star-charts, the division of the universe into empire and otherwise, into the world and not the world.”

There were a few places where things didn’t quite fully come together (an AI subplot stands out as substantially weaker than the rest of the book), and places where things came together a little too cleanly. I’d have liked Mahit to have some time to soak in the Empire before things erupted - it would have given some more room for deeper world-building moments, and tighter bonds between the character relationships and the reader. Occasionally, you do see the debut from this debut novel creep in, but in quantities that are astoundingly low for a first book.

Despite some weaknesses, I couldn’t stop feeling deep admiration for this book and what Martine has achieved here, so they matter little. I’ll be reading everything she writes in the future.

You should read A Memory Called Empire if:

• You want an intellectual sci-fi that makes you think.

• You’re alright with conflict being resolved with words and schemes, not lasers or ships.

• You’re in the mood for some denser prose.

• You like the idea of exploring colonialism and identity with a science fiction political intrigue novel.

“In Teixcalaan, these things are ceaseless: star-charts and disembarkments. Here is all of Teixcalaanli space spread out in holograph above the strategy table on the warship Ascension’s Red Harvest, five jumpgates and two weeks’ sublight travel away from Teixcalaan’s city-planet capital, about to turn around and come home. The holograph is a cartographer’s version of serenity: all these glitter-pricked lights are planetary systems, and all of them are ours. This scene—some captain staring out at the holograph re-creation of empire, past the demarcated edge of the world—pick a border, pick a spoke of that great wheel that is Teixcalaan’s vision of itself, and find it repeated: a hundred such captains, a hundred such holographs.”