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A review by mrbear
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
4.0
This feels like a pretty clear cut 4-star. The book (audiobook for me) had a lot of issues which bothered me a bit while reading:
1. The narrator said “lag range point” instead of “lagrange point”. Alright, this is petty, but it was jarring every time.
2. The characters were a bit.. simple? I felt like I knew who most of them were at the very beginning, and no one ever surprised much. Most of the “villains” were non-PoV characters, making it relatively clear who was intentionally being kept shady. Somehow, everything seems to revolve oddly around the POV characters as well, despite their relative unimportance amidst the vast scope of the story.
3. The internal dialogues you spend most of your time listening to are pretty basic.
4. The previous two things made the book feel very YA. Maybe it is, and I’m just over YA SF.
5. Apparently neurosurgery with totally unknown technology just works?
6. Nothing really concluded at the end.
Beyond that, some new interesting ideas, good names and terms (ezuazacat was a favorite of mine), and an interesting enough story. Probably more like a 3.5, but it accompanied me on enough runs so I feel a bit generous.
1. The narrator said “lag range point” instead of “lagrange point”. Alright, this is petty, but it was jarring every time.
2. The characters were a bit.. simple? I felt like I knew who most of them were at the very beginning, and no one ever surprised much. Most of the “villains” were non-PoV characters, making it relatively clear who was intentionally being kept shady. Somehow, everything seems to revolve oddly around the POV characters as well, despite their relative unimportance amidst the vast scope of the story.
3. The internal dialogues you spend most of your time listening to are pretty basic.
4. The previous two things made the book feel very YA. Maybe it is, and I’m just over YA SF.
5. Apparently neurosurgery with totally unknown technology just works?
6. Nothing really concluded at the end.
Beyond that, some new interesting ideas, good names and terms (ezuazacat was a favorite of mine), and an interesting enough story. Probably more like a 3.5, but it accompanied me on enough runs so I feel a bit generous.