Reviews with content warning for Suicide - A Memory Called Empire

Huge disappointment. I've wanted to read this book for years - I love the name and thought the concept was interesting. Unfortunately, I found the writing poorly paced, and filled with overly complicated terminology (yes I know it's sci-fi, yes, there is a glossary, but it's unhelpful when things are irrelevant to the plot). I'm not someone who fixates on writing styles - unless it's really good or really poor, I found the writing to be so distracting, all 'telling' and no showing, my eyes couldn't help but jump across the pages - and I found myself not lacking any critical information for doing so.

The premise of the novel is a murder mystery and political drama. This should be a novel filled with tension, betrayal and characters oozing with personality to make up for the lack of other plot. Well, it's not.

Our protagonist Mahit, is a foreigner to a vast and dangerous empire - or so we are told, and barely shown. As an ambassador, coming onto a new planet after her predecessor was murdered - Mahit should be left isolated and in a precious position. She only has the out-of-date memories and voice of Yskander, her predecessor in her head. Instead, she has the perfect allies right beside her - an assistant who loves 'aliens', an anti-establishment ministry of information worker and the equivalent of the emperor's 'knight' all become her allies within the first few chapters. She willingly gives up her (and her country's!) deepest secrets to these allies - and never suffers any consequences for it. Yes, her life is at risk a few times, but these allies always swoop in and rescue her, and again nothing ever changes. Her political enemies can never really hurt or scare her - as she always has the right information to sway an emperor or his most loyal and powerful 'knight'. There is also a budding romance between Mahit and another character - this as well, we are told we should see. There is never any tension on the pages. Yet a minor romance gets a bit, a bit of depth to it but never enough.

The romance between Yskander and Nineteen Adze, the Knight, and the Emperor himself - has more emotional depth. It's a sparse few lines in the novel, yet it's extremely vital to the plot. Again, we are told, that Mahit and Yskander's memories/personalities should fuse, she should love who he does, yet when faced with his love, with someone who let him die, Mahit can easily turn off Yskander's feelings. Why? Because.

Worst of all, this novel claims to be about the alluring power of an empire - even when it's threatening to swallow up your own culture. This too is handled so poorly. Mahit loves Teixcalaan - but why? She claims to love the language but sucks at poetry (the main way messages are sent). Sorry I can't think of any other examples - probably because they were so poorly explained or just weren't there! The city/culture itself is so poorly described I could scream. This is what I know of it: poetry, advanced technology, vaguely drawing upon ancient non-western empires - oh but don't worry, of course, our protagonist is 'white', of course, this is what, a poor example of...subversion??? Look this time the brown people have the empire! As if this hasn't existed in history? (all empires are bad, this is not a new concept lol). As if this is appropriate for a White European/American author to explore? We're told Teixcalaan doesn't dabble in neuroscience - but why? there should be a REASON beyond it giving an advantage to Mahit. A cultural, religious, financial, moral reason for this- nope nothing. The little snippets at the beginning of the chapters that are meant to give us insight into Teixcalaan's culture also fail - their humour is basically ours, their star-crossed lovers - ours. Nothing is fascinating about this world, it's all fake and dressed up in fancy words. Mahit never has to make a difficult decision of loyalty between this culture she's in love with and her own - even her moments of "Oh poor me I'll never be a citizen" have no emotional resonance for me as someone who was brought up with two very different and clashing cultures.

Overall a huge waste of my time and filled with unfulfilled promises.

Content Warnings

trashgobby's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous informative mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Content Warnings

hybridhavoc's review against another edition

Go to review page

hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This is a fantastic book. I'm not typically a big fan of politics and diplomacy in stories, but wrapping the whole thing in a murder mystery I think really helped with the onboarding. The most fascinating facet has to be the cultural.

Content Warnings

sersi's review

Go to review page

challenging emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

acmack's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

The last third of the book sold me on the story. I thought it was academically interesting from jump (philosophical musings on the concept of self, cyborgs, and death are my catnip), but the plot was a bit slow and I couldn't see how some of it mattered. But when the beat drops so to speak, it's quite lovely.

Content Warnings

winter_meadow's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

onthesamepage's review

Go to review page

mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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.

I put off this book for a long time because, based on how people were talking about it, I expected it to be a pretty complex hard scifi. But it really isn't. I would say it is hard scifi, but I was surprised by how readable it was. The concepts are all adequately explained without it feeling like infodumping. There are a lot of new terms, and there is a comprehensive glossary that explains all of them, but I honestly never referred to it. Everything I needed to know was explained within the text, or easy enough to guess from the context.

I think it also helps that the story engine is familiar and simple: a murder mystery instead of something that relies on knowledge of the world to understand. And through the investigation into the murder of an ambassador, we discover how the empire works, and what the politics entail. I thought it was incredibly effective.

So perfectly imperial, to have messages made of light and encrypted with poetry, and require a physical object for propriety’s sake. Such a waste of resources. Time and energy and material. She could wish it didn’t delight her.

The concept of the imago-machines was a really good hook, and it also served to immediately make me feel sympathy for Mahit, who finds herself in the midst of the political games set up by her now murdered predecessor, without the tools she expected to have on hand to deal with it. It's easy to care about her and Yskandr, as well as Three Seagrass and Twelve Azalea, whose existing friendship, complete with cute nicknames and banter, made them easy to like.

Even though they are colonisers.

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.

I think that's the only thing that was really lacking for me in this story. Both Mahit and Yskandr have a love for Teixcalaan, even though they know that the Empire will always want to expand, and consume everything in its path. The Empire considers them to be barbarians, which they are fully aware of, but it doesn't change their desire to belong there and be part of the empire instead of falling outside of it. I was hoping for more pushback against colonisation—there are parts that hint at it, and it's not that Mahit isn't aware of it, which makes her personal struggle interesting and compelling. It's something I hope the author explores more in the sequel.

Content Warnings

quarkie's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

The major themes I took from this book were: an exploration of how cultures may differently define the "self", the feelings associated with accepting or rejecting a colonizing culture (as well as being accepted by or being rejected by that culture), and how quickly alliances and motivations can change based on changing circumstances and relationships.

What I liked: I thought the concepts of imago machines and a poetry-based political system were fascinating. I wanted to keep reading in order to find out more about the world. The characters were all written to be strong and individual.

What I didn't like: I'm not sure if it's because I wasn't paying close enough attention, but I found the plot to be a bit incoherent at times. I couldn't isolate the precise motivations of each character, as they seemed to be changing over time. Some plot points would come up, and then never come up again, or come up at a point where they no longer really matter since the situation had since changed. Maybe this was on purpose, to reflect the changing political circumstances, but it led to a slightly less-than-satisfying read. The main character kept coming back to two main points (her missing imago machine and her relationship with the Teixcalaani culture) so often that it felt a bit ham-fisted.

Overall, I think it's an interesting concept that could have been executed slightly better. Still a wholly worth-while read.

Content Warnings

More...