My review:????
A Desolation Called Peace is the sequel to A Memory Called Empire, and it’s a duology. I haven’t heard of that before for books, but it makes sense.
This starts 3 months after the previous book, and Mahit has returned to the Isel station, and is feeling homesick for Teixcala, and the whirlwind week she had there, and for Three Seagrass.
Three Seagrass is still on Teixcala, feeling out of sorts, and hasn’t written poetry for the last 3 months.
Teixcala has a new Emperor, Nineteen Adze, who is already in the middle of a war with the aliens that Mahit pointed out just before the death of the previous Emperor.
The aliens are rampaging through Teixcalaan space, and they’ve just got a recording of the noise they make – is that a language? Three Seagrass wants to investigate and help, and knows who she can take with her to help with barbarian languages – another barbarian.
This is a sci-fi book, full of court intrigue, with characters uncertain who they can trust, or what their real motives are. Eight Antidote, the heir to the Emperor, and the ninety percent clone of the previous Emperor is 11 years old, and running around being a spy, which gives you insight into a lot more places than you would get with an adult. I very much enjoyed my time in Teixcala, and enjoyed the conclusion to the story.
A Desolation Called Peace was published on 4th March, and is available to buy from Amazon, Waterstones and Bookshop.org.
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I was given this book in exchange for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley, to Arkady Martine and Pan MacMillan.