/lit/ - Literature

is this tr*nny fiction?

A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan #1) - Arkady Martine
Vastly different books may arrive at the same rating because that's the nature of such a reductive system. Sometimes the book has great high and lows in roughly equal measures and other times a book will be entirely decent throughout with neither highs nor lows. This book is an example of the latter. I'd sum it up with a single word: "plodding". There was never any risk of me of dropping it, but there was also a distinct lack of enthusiasm with reading it. This won the 2020 Hugo, which I don't understand, but also don't think was a terrible choice, relative to the others. Gideon The Ninth ought to have won of the finalists. While the two books are rather different overall, they share various specific ideas and stylistic choices.
The title and cover are rather nice, but the content leaves much to be desired. About 75% of the novel is the protagonist talking with people and learning what it means to be the ambassador, similar to the Goblin Emperor learning to be emperor for most of the book, which she would already know if not for the malfunctioning of her embedded personality. Initially I felt revulsion at the idea of implanted personalities, which to me is a sort of mind horror analogous to body horror, but over the course of the book with greater understanding I came to appreciate its functional pragmatism and its cultural restrictions.
The characters severely strained my credulity as being appropriate for their age and position, but perhaps I simply had the wrong expectations in terms of seriousness. This may be because it's stated that the citizens of Teixcalaan are often actively trying to emulate characters from both their fiction and historical record. It's like a mild version of chuunibyou on a societal level. If instead this was "Two high school students and a transfer student get into various hijinks with the government that could determine the fate of the world!" they wouldn't be out of place.
The dedication reads: "This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever fallen in love with a culture that was devouring their own." As an American of the majority culture, it's difficult for me to properly understand this feeling. The author surely made an attempt, but I don't feel as though it deepened my understanding of how this must feel.
For those whom it may interest, this is a "lesbian SF author writes mildly queer SF", but it never progresses far and ends up as these stories I've read tend to in terms of relationships, which I am yet to understand why it is as it is.

Will I read the next book? Possibly, but it'd be rather low priority as there are far more worthwhile series to read.
Rating: 3/5

This review from a fellow /sffg/ member is an excellent summary of the novel that I almost entirely agree with, though you probably shouldn't read the spoilers if you intend to read the book: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3559689208

Yeah alright, it was good. You did it /sffg/. Out of 4 recommendations, 1 good one. I don't have much to say about it. I want more, so that must mean I liked it.
I don't know if it's this mega prize worthy book like what people are claiming online. To me, this should be the minimum quality standard out of any book. But reading reviews, you would think the author was the second coming of Frank Herbert.
The only thing I can think to criticize, was the use of "fuck". It just came across as tasteless. I'm not someone who shies away from language. But it just so happens that the use of fuck in this book was odd and glaring.
Also, I was expecting the citizens of Teixcalaan to be more different than those of Lsel. But Teixcalaanli ended up being just slightly OCD versions of normal humans. There was a lot of talk of differences, but in the end, it was mostly superficial things. Which perhaps was the point? I don't know.

I don't like that there is no fan art, or visual material for the characters. Which I guess is to be expected from a new book. The fan culture isn't developed yet. But I would really like to know what the characters look like in full. Or at least a collection of character descriptions, so I can remember what they're supposed to look like after they were described once back in an early chapter.

I might start doing this myself in fact. Keeping note of character descriptions so I can reference them later. Does anyone else do this?