Sunday, March 14, 2021
reading: a desolation called peace
A Desolation Called Peace, Arkady Martine, Tor Books, March 2021.
The followup to A Memory Called Empire, which I read in November of last year. More overtly Space Opera in its plot mechanics and fantasy physics, but digs deeper into the first novel’s most interesting ideas, and pays off all over the place. Doubled themes of memory, language, theory-of-mind, small cultures surviving at great cost in the face of larger ones, cultures and polities transformed by what they attempt to subsume.
I have marginal notes like “this is so fucking good” in a couple of places. If this is a kind of thing you enjoy, you will very likely enjoy this instance of it.