warning: this review contains spoilers.

the Teixcalaan (pronounce it however you want) series is a 2-book series in the space science fiction genre. the genre itself is appealing to me and i couldn’t pass a chance to read this.

This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever fallen in love with a culture that was devouring their own.

Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

the first book starts off with the main character Mahit Dzmare, an ambassador from a space station to the hegemonic empire of Teixcalaan landing in the main city, known as the jewel of the world. her predecessor has died in suspicious circumstances and the empire urgently requested a new ambassador. Mahit undergoes 3 months of training to ready herself for this post that she has dreamed of for years. her youth has been spent in preparing for this moment. learning the empire’s language, the culture, the literature. she’s also asked to find out what she can about what exactly happened to her predecessor, a young version of whom is now in her head.

what was that? what do you mean by he’s in her head? so what’s going on here is that the space station that is Mahit’s home has long since developed a technology that preserves peoples’ memories using micro-chips inserted at the base of the neck. this tech is sacred to the station. the chips are passed down generations with compatible people so the memories and previous lessons are not lost. the station itself has its own culture and language and ways of living that they’ve preserved for generations, while avoiding being colonized by the empire.

Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe; it gives life back to those who no longer exist.

Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

Mahit has the memories of her predecessor but not the latest ones. that guy never came back to the station to store his updated memories. so Mahit feels quite lost with her memories being out-of-date by almost a decade. who knows the kind of political climate she’s stepping into? is she going to be in danger because of her position? she is partnered with an envoy named Three Seagrass to help her out with her new responsibilities. the empire’s naming system has two parts: a number and a noun after. names are quite telling of someone’s position in society. when Mahit was a student, she’d think of such names for herself.

Three Seagrass is a woman small in stature and seemingly delicate but packs a punch. she’s supposed to be smart, quick-witted, and adept in understanding and playing political games. she’s also a poet, the empire’s language is poetry. Mahit finds herself floating in the in-between. seduced by a culture and language not her own and feeling out of place in the jewel of the world, while also not being stationer enough to now feel at-home on the station. the diaspora’s dilemma.

and that’s the theme of these books. underneath all the politics and scheming happening in the plot is a woman enamored by the colonizer’s tongue. underneath her political attempts are feelings of loneliness and frustration. she speaks the empire’s language fluently, she’s the ambassador for a reason. but she realizes that no matter how well she speaks the language, she could never belong there. there will always be a gap between her understanding and the exact context, connotation, and references that are natural to those of Teixcalaan, such as Three Seagrass. there’s jealousy. Mahit thought she understood the language, the words, and structure, but the people use the language in a completely different way that Mahit never thought of. she’s also feeling more lost due to the situation with her predecessor and her incomplete memories. there’s something afoot in the ministries and she’s tossed to the wolves with little preparation.

The Empire, the world. One and the same. And if they were not yet so: make them so, for this is the right and correct will of the stars.

Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

however, she can hold her own well enough, despite everything. and Three Seagrass turns out to be a more than an envoy for her. for the rest of the first book, we see them navigating a coup attempt and unraveling the previous ambassador’s circumstances, among other things. we learn more about the worlds as the author spins the story further.

in the second book, the perspectives shift. it’s not only through Mahit’s eyes we see the world, but also through Three Seagrass, the next-in-line young emperor, and Nine Hibiscus, a captain of the space force. the world of this story expands and shifts as we encounter aliens in the form of tall beings with synced and communal memories. more than an individual and more than one whole being. they are a threat to the empire as they destroy anything within sight and are hard to grasp. their speech makes humans feel nauseous. somehow, Mahit and Three Seagrass now find themselves an interpreters and linguists and hope to negotiate with the aliens. i found this turn of events a bit strange. there wasn’t much in the previous story that pointed toward either of them being inclined towards translation, so it felt out of place to me.

talking about both books and the story as a whole, it certainly is quite fascinating to consider aliens that behave this way and how their sounds affect humans. it’s a clever piece of imagination that i never considered or came across till now. while the major theme of the story is fascination with the colonial culture that devours all, there’s also running themes of humanity and individuals. in this context, anyone within the colonial empire is a person and others are barbarians, and will always remain so. the empire conquers others so as to bring them civilization and if it benefits the empire in the form of labor and resources, so what. Mahit’s body modifications in the form of memory implants are seen as something inhuman, barbaric as barbarians are.

it’s interesting to look at what’s happening here. who is Mahit? how much of it is her and how much is her predecessor? we can see it clearly enough, there is distinction between the 2 or 3 three people residing in the body of Mahit. to Three Seagrass though, it’s inconceivable. with the aliens in the picture, no individual exists. but humans are individuals with different perspectives and lives, who contribute individually to the whole.

You pump the dead full of chemicals and refuse to let anything rot—people or ideas or … or bad poetry, of which there is in fact some, even in perfectly metrical verse,” said Mahit. “Forgive me if I disagree with you on emulation. Teixcalaan is all about emulating what should already be dead.”

“Are you Yskandr, or are you Mahit?” Three Seagrass asked, and that did seem to be the crux of it: Was she Yskandr, without him? Was there even such a thing as Mahit Dzmare, in the context of a Teixcalaanli city, a Teixcalaanli language, Teixcalaanli politics infecting her all through, like an imago she wasn’t suited for, tendrils of memory and experience growing into her like the infiltrates of some fast-growing fungus.

Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

in the second book, Mahit and Three Seagrass have an argument that was clearly bound to happen. Mahit feels like an other and Teixcalaan and its people never fail to remark on that every time, that she’s a barbarian and cannot be trusted. throughout the first book, she has felt lonely and yearned for a friend and she is happy to have Three Seagrass beside her. yet, she cannot belong to the empire and, by the end of the second book, she’s exiled from her station home.

it would be remiss not to talk about the language of the books. the Teixcalaan language is one of poetic communication in poetic forms. the author shines in many places with poems and rich analogies. however, the author also writes with interruptions in between sentences—like this with em dashes or commas or within brackets—which can be annoying at times. i’d have to go back to the beginning of the sentences to recall what was happening. this pattern was used more often than I would like and would break the flow of the story for me.

talking about the characters, i like Mahit well enough, but i found myself not liking Three Seagrass all that much. i can’t point to a particular reason yet, maybe it’s just vibes. the characters i like best are Twelve Azalea (or Petal) and Twenty Cicada (or Swarm). i wish we could have seen more of them. Petal, gone too soon, was funny and Swarm has depth. i would have liked to see Petal more, i missed him in the second book.

though i have my complaints, the books are an interesting read overall. i wonder what my Teixcalaanli name would be. I can’t choose between Five Fern, Seven Sunflower, and Nine Nightshade.