A Desolation Called Peace Review
Oh this book. It was so good. Like, really good. But I didn’t have a lot of reading time for most of this book and so it was all 20-50 pages here and there until I got to the climax and I forced myself to make time. So I might be a little off on a few things just because of how disjointed my reading was this time. But in general, the book was totally good and you should Definitely pick up this series if you are into Sci-fi at all. I did review book 1 just a week or two ago here, so I’m not going to go into details about A Memory Called Empire except to highlight differences between the two books where that would be meaningful.
The first book takes place mostly on the city/planet Teixcalaan where the Empire is headquartered. This book, conversely, takes place mostly NOT on the planet but on Lsel Station and Weight for the Wheel, the flagship of the Empire’s military. There are a few important things which take place on Teixcalaan with Eight Antidote, the Imperial Heir, and his antics with the War ministry and the Information ministry but those are all secondary to what Mahit and Three Seagrass are doing at the front of the war.
But wait, wasn’t Mahit just going to stay away and live on Lsel at the end of book 1? Well, that didn’t go so well and so going back with Three Seagrass was much better of an option than staying on her nice happy Station. As long as she wants to avoid more brain surgeries, anyway. So when the yaotlek (top general basically) asked for someone from Information to try talking to the aliens before everyone died fighting, Three Seagrass got Mahit and they went to work. And yeah, attempting to talk to aliens that make vomit-inducing sounds to communicate is a lot of work. But eventually, with the help of the yaotlek’s adjutant Nineteen Cicada they were able to establish some basic communication. And we wait for book 3, sometime in the somewhat-distant future.
The first book focused a lot on Institutional Memory, and this book went even farther into that idea. When thoughts are communicated through language in the empire, it creates a shared sense of self. Add in Mahit’s imago-line memories that are chains to the past and you have a third. But these aliens communicate with some version of telepathy/instant group thought which is an even deeper shared sense of self. And the way all three play off of each other throughout the story is fabulous, with some characters learning for the first time that their way of creating Memory is not the only way. There are some other ideas about in group/out group bias, balance in the self/world, and a couple other smaller ideas that I hope we can see more of in the next book, but they were definitely not the focus here.
As for characters, they are great. Mahit learns a lot and gains more respect for some of the Empire’s procedures. Three Seagrass learns a lot about how much more human (or not) different peoples are which changes her viewpoints, and she has much more power in the relationship with Mahit, being the Envoy instead of the aide from book 1. Eight Antidote might be my favorite character in this though. As he learns exactly how much he doesn’t know, and the appropriate ways to go about increasing his knowledge and abilities he learns a lot more about himself and the people around him. It’s not quite coming-of-age yet, but that could definitely factor into the next book. He needs a lot of work if he’s actually going to be savvy enough to run the entire empire someday! But he’s started on that path, now.
This book feels much more than the first like part of a series, with more unanswered questions (for me) than we had at the end of book 1. It clearly has threads that can be picked up for future books, but thankfully it still didn’t end in a massive cliffhanger! I think, with reflection over the last week, that I generally prefer A Memory Called Empire to A Desolation Called Peace, but they are both quality books.
The only part that I didn’t appreciate in the story was the not-brief-enough-for-me sexual relationship between Three Seagrass and Mahit. Not because it’s bad or because they’re both women, but because I prefer not to have that level of sexual content in books that I read. And actually, I skipped as much of those two or three pages as I could. Hope I didn’t miss anything important there, but that’s generally what I do with most sex in books. (Have I mentioned that I love Sanderson in part because he DOESN’T do sex?) Really, I’d prefer a fade out type scene if anything at all but I understand that these are books for adults and technically by age that’s what I am. But because of this, I’d keep the book for adults over age 16 or 18, depending on how comfortable you (or your kids) are with that kind of content.
Honestly, it’s a great book with interesting worldbuilding, characters, and themes that make for a great story. So definitely check it out! Bet you’ll like it.
