Now back on Lsel, she is no longer ambassador but still feels acutely the confusion of juggling awarenesses in her mind with the clear political threat of two factions. Mahit herself is still struggling with the imago in her brain which overlays her own thinking, and sometimes physical actions, with those of her murdered predecessor Yskandr Aghavn. He becomes more and more adventurous as the story unfolds until he stumbles his way to a key role as the plot moves to its exciting climax. He is a kid, as everyone keeps reminding him, but he has to learn fast what it means to exercise power after he is made privy to critical conversations in the War Ministry.
This is another recurring theme: the difficulty, sometimes generated by internal doubt, sometimes by external politics – or both – that the main characters experience in their new roles.Įight Antidote is the eleven year-old heir to the throne, and adding his perspective is especially interesting.
Much like Mahit in An Empire Called Memory, who struggled to fit into her new role of ambassador to Teixcalaan, Nine Hibiscus feels a bit awkward in her role, so different from that of a captain of a single ship. Soon we learn about Nine Hibiscus, the newly appointed commander or yaotlek of the fleet sent to confront the aliens. That strikes close to all that Teixcalaan civilization holds dear – its respect for unadulterated human minds and their elaborate language and forms of communication in which song and poetry are essential. The Prelude poses all sorts of questions that can’t be answered until much later in the story, but at least we are warned that there is a very different kind of intelligence and concept of language at work among the aliens. This story begins in the mind of the aliens and at once we get a rough idea that they regard humans or other “meat” creatures as something clumsy, strange and mostly useless. And she does this through several perspectives, unlike A Memory Called Empire which limited us to Mahit’s point of view. Right from the opening of A Desolation Called Peace, Martine contrasts different ideas of language, personhood, and how minds work. And Mahit Dzamare has returned from her ambassadorship to Lsel where she faces a dangerous and uncertain future. The new emperor Nineteen Adze is taking charge in the capitol of the empire.
A Teixcalaan fleet of warships has passed through the gate near Lsel to confront an alien fleet that is thus far ominously invisible and silent.
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