A Desolation Called Peace

The sequel turns an empire’s problem into a translation problem: a fleet is facing an alien force it cannot communicate with, and the people sent to try are a diplomat and a bureaucrat rather than a war hero. It won the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Novel. The book takes seriously that first contact is a linguistics question before it is a military one — and that an empire whose administrative culture is literary may be unusually bad at it.

Context: B tier, “also worth reading,” volume two of the Teixcalaan entry, and the second of the two volumes the list names. Read after A Memory Called Empire.

Connections

• a16z Infra Reading List — the list this came from.
• Arkady Martine — the author.
• A Memory Called Empire — volume one, and the starting point.
• Identity · Power — the series’ two standing subjects.
• Science Fiction — the genre page.