"Nothing touched by the Empire stays clean."

Gonna try something new with this book (and going forward?) where I provide some similar feeling books/themes up front. Read if you like:

the political/social bits of Ann Leckie / Ancillary Justice unique/intricate naming systems like from Yoon Ha Lee / Ninefox Gambit extensive linguistical discussion in spaaaaaaaaace

Mahit Dzmare is an ambassador from Lsel Station sent to the Teixcalaanli Empire to replace the previous ambassador who hasn't checked in with Lsel Station in years. In fact, Mahit comes armed with a brain device containing the ambassador's memories (the same device all stationers come with, containing their ancestors memories), and it's 15 years out of date. Turns out the previous ambassador, Yskandr, is dead, and Mahit's brain device starts malfunctioning almost out of the gate. She arrives in Teixcalaan at a poor time, however, as the emperor is getting up there in years and there's an imminent power struggle between the three candidates for the throne. So while Mahit is trying to investigate the cause of the previous ambassador's death (foul play involved), she also finds herself in the middle of an impending civil war, and the constant threat of Lsel Station being assimilated by this larger culture.

Okay so right out of the gate, I'm either going to scare you away from reading this or intrigue you more. If person names like "Three Seagrass", "Five Agate", "Twelve Azalea", and "Two Lightning" don't bother you, you'll probably do fine. I thought the naming convention of Teixcalaanli names was interesting but hard for me to grasp and remember who was who. There's also extensive linguistics discussion in this book, mostly about Teixcalaanli language and poetry conventions, none of which I really did much with mentally. Finally, this is way more of a political thriller in a sci-fi setting than it is a sci-fi book, I think. With Mahit being an ambassador, we get a lot of clandestine meetings with various political figures and scenes involving Mahit and Three Seagrass discussing the political affiliations of various Teixcalaanli people that make an appearance in the story.

Despite all of that, I actually mostly enjoyed this book when I just let it happen. The world is interesting, though I wish the pacing had been a bit more spread out. The entirety of the book feels like it takes place in less than a week, and somehow despite that still feels like it has a slow beginning. There's a lot of discussions, mentally and between Mahit and Three Seagrass about various topics like cultural assimilation, the role memories play in personhood, racial and social divides, and more. It almost felt like as soon as things actually started happening plot-wise, we were already halfway through the book. The ending is short but satisfying, I think. Mahit has some massive plot armor.

A mostly enjoyable book, but I don't think it's for everyone.