haz_ 's review for:

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

3.5

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Hm the first half was slow and the second half was way more engaging. The world building to be honest was lacking. There’s all this talk of the empire and trying to keep Lsel independent but like Lsel barely gets fleshed out and there doesn’t seem to be any urgency, like the colonialism is touched on at the start but never again. The whole city and AI thing could have been expanded so much more. Also it was just so repetitive sometimes, like how many times do you need to tell the reader about Thirty Larkspur and his family connections to the patricians I promise you the reader will remember that from the first time it was brought up. 

I didn’t like Mahit that much as a main character. There was so much “woe is me I have no friends” “woe is me I’m not Teixcalaanli“ it was annoying like get it together or rather I’d rather be shown those things rather than Mahit just saying them which made her a little insufferable. 

The romance was absurd and genuinely was not built up at all, like there was barely any chemistry between Mahit and Three Seagrass.