A Memory Called Empire by Arkady MartineMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is an awesome science fiction novel--a serious work as well as a great read.
It's easy to see why this won the Hugo in 2020. It deals so well with big questions about politics and science and psychology at the same time that it tells a fantastic character-driven story. I was fully entertained by both aspects.
Mahit is the new ambassador from a small polity, Lsel, on the edge of a giant, powerful empire. Her home is a mining community in space, numbering only in the thousands and not connected to any planet, while the empire spans many worlds and exerts a huge cultural influence over all humans within and near their domain. It feels rather like maybe a thousand years ago with a giant China exerting political and economic hegemony over a much smaller Japan--if you imagine Japan to be just, say, Okinawa. It's an enormous imbalance. When Mahit arrives at the court of the empire, she finds her predecessor had been making deals of some sort to keep Lsel independent, but was murdered. It's Mahit's job to solve multiple mysteries while learning how to navigate the complex society.
Normally, she could count on the help of her predecessor's "imago," an implanted version of his memory and knowledge, but there is a problem, and she's left alone. This imago becomes central to the story as well as the theme, asking us (and the characters) to define identity and selfhood. The different cultures have different takes on this question, and that negotiation is an important part of the novel.
One of the book's great pleasures is seeing Mahit engaging with a culture and society that she loves as an outsider, getting to know and trust some of the people, while wishing that she could truly be one of them--inventing complex poetry, engaging in the intricacies of cultural practices, living the adventure and romance she had dreamed of back on her home space station. They call her a barbarian, and she tries not to take it to heart. Still, she feels it.
There's plenty of romantic drama and spy-style action, and I found the mix of all these things very entertaining as well as thought-provoking. It is super well rounded, and I join the whole SF world (practically!) in recommending it.
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