2020/96: A Memory Called Empire -- Arkady Martine

...each and every one of those captains has led troops down into a new system, carrying all the poison gifts she can muster: trade agreements and poetry, taxes and the promise of protection, black-muzzled energy weapons and the sweeping architecture of a new governor’s palace built around the open many-rayed heart of a sun temple. [p. 11]

Mahit Dzmare, the new ambassador from small, independent Lsel Station to the huge and powerful Teixcalaanli Empire, has been an admirer of all things Teixcalaanli since childhood. With the imago, or memory-dump, of the previous ambassador Yskandr Aghavn embedded in her brain-stem, she is beginning to understand the Byzantine complexities of the Empire. But Yskandr's imago is fifteen years out of date, and Yskandr himself has vanished. Mahit has to negotiate her new role, and work out whether her guide and assistant, Three Seagrass, really has Mahit's interests at heart.

A Memory Called Empire is a dazzling novel, overflowing with ideas and world-building and fascinating characters. It's easy enough to read as a murder mystery, or as complex diplomatic tale of shifting allegiance, issues of inheritance, and the threat of subsumption into a vast unstoppable Empire: but there is also a detailed exploration of how Teixcalaanli society is shaped by its artworks (Mahit is a great admirer of Teixcalaanli poetry), its naming conventions, and the embedded remnants of its ancient past -- sun-worship, blood sacrifice, 'like something from the oldest epics'. 

Mahit is a delightful protagonist: she's treated as a barbarian by the Teixcalaanli, but she's educated, quick-witted and competent. I would have liked more Yskandr -- I confess that the whole notion of sharing one's mind with someone else's memories intrigues me mightily -- but I think if he'd been the focus of the novel, it would have been quite a different story. (Though there would have been at least as much queer representation, culture-clash and spy jinks.) 

 I'll need to reread this before I read the second novel, A Desolation Called Peace (due March 2021): that will not be a hardship, and I expect to discover new aspects and resonances that I've missed on first reading.