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A review by lkedzie
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
3.0
It's like 3/4ths of an excellent book, or the fleshed-out outline of a trilogy.
The book picks up where the last one left off, more or less, with perilously independent Lsel Station's warnings of an incursion from a new brand of aliens leading the Empire of Teixcalaan to war with them, rather than invade Lsel.
Impressively, Teixcalaan already feels like an old sweater and is comfortable to get back into. I do not like world building. I feel that most people, readers and writers, misunderstand it, but I like this world because it understands empire in a way that most readers do not see, (which shows in some of the reviews), and in a way that most writers do not have the skills to touch.
The author's writing is as pithy and as clever as ever. She knows how to frame a scene; how to sell that scene to make it feel like the awesomest thing ever is always the thing that is happening.
Unlike the first book, this one has a more customary threaded narrative. Six Antidote, Imperial ?Heir?, is the best. I expected it to be the worst, complete with a loud sigh that my neighbors noted when I started into it, but the author takes a lot of the skills in her portrayal of the feelings of the prior protagonist's cultural and social push-pull of attraction and isolation and makes it sell the mindset of a child, negotiating the same but different, a chronological stranger in a strange land rather than a geographical one. It strains credulity at times, but like in a cool way.
The worst, equally surprisingly, is of Three Seagrass, Teixcalaan ?spy? and poetic wit. The problem here, I think, is that the interiority for Three Seagrass spoils some of the magic. It's like a re-write of Pride and Prejudice from D'arcy's POV. And I think that on some level the author realizes that, and understands how it would be to read the mind of Grumpy Pixie Dream Girl, and most of the time, does not know what to do, knowing that most choices are bad, except when her mentality is working as a foil to other character's, much like she served as a non-POV character. Keep in mind what she does is still as fun and brilliant. However, finding what she thinks about her actions, what her process is in getting there, does not move the ball forward.
The book is on cruise control for awesome until about the 3/4 mark, but the ending falls apart. There is either too much or too little, either it ought to have ended on a soft cliffhanger or elaborated out into a full other book. Different scenes are compellingly badass, but they do not hang together. Other parts are rushed, leading to a feeling of a lack of payoff to or results from the solution.
Still, if this is a sophomore slump, the author is going to have A Career.
The book picks up where the last one left off, more or less, with perilously independent Lsel Station's warnings of an incursion from a new brand of aliens leading the Empire of Teixcalaan to war with them, rather than invade Lsel.
Impressively, Teixcalaan already feels like an old sweater and is comfortable to get back into. I do not like world building. I feel that most people, readers and writers, misunderstand it, but I like this world because it understands empire in a way that most readers do not see, (which shows in some of the reviews), and in a way that most writers do not have the skills to touch.
The author's writing is as pithy and as clever as ever. She knows how to frame a scene; how to sell that scene to make it feel like the awesomest thing ever is always the thing that is happening.
Unlike the first book, this one has a more customary threaded narrative. Six Antidote, Imperial ?Heir?, is the best. I expected it to be the worst, complete with a loud sigh that my neighbors noted when I started into it, but the author takes a lot of the skills in her portrayal of the feelings of the prior protagonist's cultural and social push-pull of attraction and isolation and makes it sell the mindset of a child, negotiating the same but different, a chronological stranger in a strange land rather than a geographical one. It strains credulity at times, but like in a cool way.
The worst, equally surprisingly, is of Three Seagrass, Teixcalaan ?spy? and poetic wit. The problem here, I think, is that the interiority for Three Seagrass spoils some of the magic. It's like a re-write of Pride and Prejudice from D'arcy's POV. And I think that on some level the author realizes that, and understands how it would be to read the mind of Grumpy Pixie Dream Girl, and most of the time, does not know what to do, knowing that most choices are bad, except when her mentality is working as a foil to other character's, much like she served as a non-POV character. Keep in mind what she does is still as fun and brilliant. However, finding what she thinks about her actions, what her process is in getting there, does not move the ball forward.
The book is on cruise control for awesome until about the 3/4 mark, but the ending falls apart. There is either too much or too little, either it ought to have ended on a soft cliffhanger or elaborated out into a full other book. Different scenes are compellingly badass, but they do not hang together. Other parts are rushed, leading to a feeling of a lack of payoff to or results from the solution.
Still, if this is a sophomore slump, the author is going to have A Career.