This is like science fiction for people who like sex in the city and excessive word and page fillers. Do not waste your time

I enjoyed this very much. The writing was truly gripping - it was hard for me to put down. While some of the character development was a little opaque, the story is compelling and propulsive. I was very sad for it to end which, in my view, is the highest compliment you can give to an author.

There’s a ton of political intrigue and introspection to get through here, and the characters feel a bit unreal to me, but the concept is fascinating.

Very hard to get into, it wasn’t until nearly chapter 16 that it started to capture my interest. If I’d not spent $12 on it I may have given up before then.

The beginning is a lot to swallow, but once you get it down you are rewarded with beautiful prose, political intrigue, and a truly fantastic story.

A tiny lens into a grippingly massive world, but the tiny lens is more than you could have ever asked for

It's been a long time since I read a sci-fi novel that sucked me in and warmed me in its world. The protagonist, Mahit, is a young woman obsessed with the culture, language and poetry of the empire next door. She is swept up into being the amdassador for her tiny space station city-state after the incumbent dies, and is dropped, unprepared and alone into the politics and violence of a dynasty caught on the edge of succession and war. Love it! Sophisticated, compelling, fascinating and well balanced.

Somewhere close to a political thriller amid a well built galactic environment. It carries chaos that any action film would envy. The primary draw is without a doubt the world building that is laced so well into the story telling that it is not mere exposition. Instead you discover the world alongside the protagonist who like the reader is finding themselves in a new alien society, alien culture, searching desperately for answers understanding, allies, and even enemies. An exceptional look at self as individualistic, self as community, self as the transition between worlds. To say nothing on relations.

A Memory Called Empire is a Hugo Award-winning space opera. Full of politics, secrets, and a desperate need to maintain diplomacy, A Memory Called Empire follows the story of Mahit Dzmare, an ambassador from the Lsel Station to the Teixcalaanli Empire. Mahit carries in her brain an imago machine that connects her with the memories, thoughts, and feelings of her predecessor. Her imago machine is not updated to the last known memories of her predecessor, and Mahit needs to navigate the world of Teixcalaan with limited knowledge. It’s hard to navigate a place where she isn’t a native speaker and there are many illusions and underlying references in speech and poetry. Mahit tries to avoid the fate of her predecessor from becoming her fate as well, tries to control the fate of Lsel Station from far away Teixcalaan, and she finds herself (and her predecessor) in the middle of a political struggle. The reader will never know from the beginning of the book exactly where this is going to lead. This is a very exciting read!

The story was not bad. The prose was irritating to me at times, and that is quite possibly because of my age: there are italicized words ALL OVER THE STORY. Also, in an attempt to sound “stream-of-consciousness-like,” there are these incredibly long sentences with breaks and tangents and parenthetical sub-thoughts that make it seem like I’m reading what we believe a twenty-something OUGHT to sound like.