If you aren’t going to headhop around, focus on characters in a traditional narrative manner, and stay with the protagonist throughout, you need a central figure to hang your story on. In trying to find out who killed her predecessor, Mahit gets wrapped up in the tendrils of Imperial politics, with the fate of not only her home, but also the entire empire on the line. Her predecessor, it so happens, has perished in the course of his duties - a murder, in fact.

A Memory Called Empire is a dazzling space opera involving a Byzantine plot that immerses the reader in a fully realized world with a cast of interesting characters.Ī Memory called Empire follows the story of an ambassador named Mahit from the small space station Lsel who travels to the heart of a galactic Empire to replace her predecessor. This is A Memory Called Empire by debut novelist Arkady Martine. And for me, it succeeds where that other novel failed. This book steps into those shoes, attempting to capture that Dune magic, and walks miles in them. But for me, that novel fell down on a number of fronts and was an enormous disappointment.

The text showed that the author clearly was writing in conversation with Dune, trying to catch that magic about a big broad space opera by focusing on the life and times of a protagonist destined to have an enormous impact on their universe. Comparisons to Dune were explicitly made. Last year, I read a debut author’s space opera that was hyped by many as the Next Big Thing.

A memory called empire ending