Review of Martine’s A Desolation Called Peace

A Desolation Called Peace

Arkady Martine

London: Tor, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-5290-0164-8

496 pp.

We let A Memory Called Empire with the Teixcalaanli polis in crisis [SPOILERS FOLLOW]: an attempted coup had been narrowly avoided but the threat of interstellar war had become apparent. In the second and concluding part of this duology (which itself seems a strange thing – how many authors are able to restrict themselves to just two books for a series?), we return to the heart of the action. Our focus is placed on the supposed barbarian Mahit Dzmare and her empire friend and sponsor Three Seagrass, together with the new emperor and presumed heir, as well as several prominent people in the emerging war with the aliens. As is often the case with the sequel to a high-concept opening novel, the action has broadened the premises of the world and the original vision is somewhat darkened. The first book had an inward focus, specifically on the interior of Mahit who, in common with leading members of her native space station, contains the consciousness of her predecessors in her own mind. In this second book, the action becomes principally external and is based on the ability of the protagonists to communicate with the aliens and prevent the spread of a devastating war. The book ends with a satisfying-enough conclusion but if I had got to the end and found ‘The story will conclude in the third part’ I would not have been surprised.

These two books are both very well-written and plotted and lead to a page-turning experience. They also further knowledge of queer issues within literature for the general reader. This is of course true on the perhaps superficial level that our heroine Mahit is gay and so too might be her friend Three Seagrass – or at least she is open to a same sex relationship. However, the deeper themes relate both to difficulties outsiders have in becoming accepted in another society and the nature of identity in a person with perhaps contradictory forms of thinking. As is usually the case in examples of good literature, these dilemmas are reflected in the progress of the other characters, some of which have similar or parallel issues in their own lives and others who are, so to speak, monolithic in their personalities. This is managed well – Martine, at least according to the afterword, is a generous author who is willing to allow numerous other people to read her work and to incorporate their comments into newer versions. This is the nature of contemporary fiction, I suppose, in a world of hyper-connectivity, especially in a world in which so many people were obliged to isolate themselves at home for so long and so reached for different ways to communicate with other people. This, at least in some cases, appears to have contributed to the formation of self-supporting communities which have been able to construct and maintain positive communication networks. Not every such effort has produced positive results but that is inevitable. Let us hope that there are some benefits that can be celebrated from that terrible time (unless you worked at 10, Downing Street, of course).

The Teixcalaanli people communicate among themselves in the medium of poetry (although there is not so much of this in the second book) and this helps to condition how they see themselves, their society and its history. Atrocities of the past are acknowledged because they exist in language and form which everyone who speaks the language well enough can access. It is rather a contrast to the situation in my own home country of the UK where pioneering work is being undertaken to reveal the history of the empire and the role of slavery in developing that empire and its relationship with leading British institutions such as the monarchy. Reactionary interests of course strike back against this new knowledge which challenges their claim to legitimacy and hence power, money and influence. Instead, they seek to maintain a sense of British exceptionalism burnished by ignorance. This is quite apparent in that virtually nothing about the Empire is taught in schools. It is relevant to think about this here because one of Martine’s main themes in these books is the nature of Empire and its impact on peripheral societies. On a whim, Mahit buys a graphic novel from a kiosk on her home Lsel and when Three Seagrass happens upon it, she is astonished at the different form of expression that she finds and how different it is from modes of discourse in the city-world. Mahit, of course, has been dealing with these contending forms throughout her life but has kept them from her Teixcalaanli friends and colleagues for fear of being treated as even more of a barbarian that she already is. I look forward to seeing what Arkady Martine does next and whether she will continue to explore these themes in different ways. Her afterword in this book suggests that the act of writing fiction is not easy for her and a note at her publisher’s website indicates that she has quite a full working life as well, so maybe I will have to wait for a while for another novel.

John Walsh, Krirk University, May, 2023

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