A review by manuphoto
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

adventurous emotional medium-paced

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

4.0

Arkady Martine took a risk with this novel. She kept the framework of her first book, but decided to look outward instead of inward. Hence, we see a lot less of Teixcalaan but we are indeed treated to a story of war, espionage, first contact, and hot sex. Question is: does it work?

In one word: yes. The structure here is a lot more complex than in A Memory Called Empire. Instead of following ambassador Mahit most of the time, we follow her, Three Seagrass, the emperor, the heir to the empire, and a fleet captain. They alternate perspective regularly. Martine manages to make that effortless; I was never confused by the setting. I always knew which storyline I was following, who was guiding me, and what aspect of the story mattered at that juncture.

Despite this added complexity, I actually found the novel better structured than its predecessor. Everything felt tighter, more important. It didn’t suffer from the weird pacing issues that afflicted part of AMCE.

The plot itself is good, although the real focus of the story is in its characters. Yes, there are aliens, a first contact plot (quite well done too!), but we mostly care about what happens to our main protagonists. As for the rest of the known universe… we’ll see.

I can see that as being a bit off-putting for some readers who would like to know more about these aliens. To me, they are basically plot devices. They are neither really interesting nor original. I’ve read enough sci-fi by now to not be that easily wowed by strange aliens. I have to say that Martine did a good job in recognizing the difficulty of communicating with aliens. She acknowledged that the sheer concept of language ought to be different, and that establishing common ground should be difficult (looking at you Axiom’s End...). Despite this, it’s not the real focus of the story.

Also, the whole biological aspect, which becomes a major plot device in the middle of the book, just doesn’t work. It's barely an easy, TV-like scenario. It’s a minor gripe, but still, it can be distracting.

I don’t want to spoil anything, so I won’t go into details, but overall, I quite enjoyed this one despite the science in it being bad. It’d be a bigger issue if the book focused more on that, but it doesn’t, so it’s OK I guess. I was still happy to find out what would happen with the main characters and Teixcalaan (and to a lesser extent, Lsel Station). Martine’s prose made this very readable, something that we shouldn’t overlook. A solid if not stellar Hugo winner.