A review by syllareads
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense slow-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? It's complicated

5.0

 It felt good to say. To be vicious in her own despair, to display the wound of her desire in full: No, I will not be Teixcalaanli, I am incapable, I know, let me hold the bleeding lips of this injury open for you to see the raw hurt inside.

"A Desolation called Peace" is the second book in the Teixcalaanli-Duology by Arkady Martine and it shattered me to the bone.

Unlike book 1 ("A Memory called Empire") we do not only follow one POV but four: Mahit Dzmare, former Ambassador from Lsel Station, Nine Hibiscus, yaotlek (Fleet captain) to Emperor Nineteen Adze, Three Seagrass, former cultural liaison to one Lsel Ambassador, and Eight Antidote, the 90%-clone of the late Emperor Six Directions, an 11-year-old boy we got to know somewhat in book 1. Out of these four, the only new character is Nine Hibiscus, a soldier through and through who had to make some hard choices over the course of this book which I do not envy her for.

I loved all four of these perspectives. The way they intermingled, glanced at the same concept through different eyes, and minds, and memories, the way they didn't intermingle, the way they scratched and bit and tore at each other, loving and hating and wanting all the time. But the one who stole my heart perhaps the most, especially towards the end, was the perspective of an 11-year-old boy whose innocence was so thoroughly taken from him and who, despite everything, rose to a challenge he would have never seen coming shortly before that.
I cannot adequately explain how much I loved Eight Antidote in this, but I will leave a paragraph here that might do it for me

And if this was what being in the Fleet was really like, he was sorry for wanting it. Sorry for wanting to dance ships into being in a simulation room. Sorry for wanting to solve all the puzzles of command. Sorry for not thinking about how Shard pilots might scream when their fellow pilots died. 
If he cried, he'd be overheard.
So he didn't.

I again cannot even begin to think of sentences that would explain how much Martine's prose rips me to shreds so I can only people who liked the first book beg: Please continue this. Some things have changed, it's true, but book 2 is as much a masterpiece as book 1 was, in its own regards.

5 easy, overwhelming, overwhelmed stars.


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