Quick-take: Extreme diplomacy.

Dan's Review

Mahit Dzmare is the new ambassador to the Teixcalaanli Empire. She is representing the Lsel Station. She acquired her new role due to the death of the previous ambassador, Yskander Aghavn,.

She arrives at the seat of power of Teixcalaan, also called the "Jewel of the World", with 2 goals:

1. Obtain/Extend favorable trade deals for Lsel.
2. Do not let Lsel be conquered/absorbed into the Teixcalaanli Empire

If I had to pick a pop culture analog for the Teixcalaanli, I would say they are a bit like Cardassian, except shorter and with a strong fondness of poetry. They use longform poetry for everything... as a party game, as a contest, and even for encryption ciphers! They are ambitious, very advanced, and will not be crossed, but they will honor their agreements with you. They prefer to fight you with words rather than fists. At least, that is how the upper echelon that Mahit finds herself in prefers. By the end of the book, I was pretty fond of Three Seagrass, Mahit's main Teixcalaanli counterpart. They name themselves in the style "Number Noun". The Number Nouns were interesting at the start, but I think it just made it harder for me to keep everything straight. Having important characters named Three, Six, Nineteen, etc. is just not distinct enough. To the author's credit, she always includes the last name to help when referring to them.

Dispersed between short action sequences are long, extended dialogues about political posturing and the internal struggle within Mahit to say the correct thing and behave in the correct manner during discussions with the empire's VIPs. I was kind of surprised. I typically do not care for this kind of inner political dialogue, but it was actually interesting. I did some research, and I found the author, Arkady Martine, is actually Dr. AnnaLinden Weller, whose specialty is the Byzantine empire (basically, Rome after Constantine moved the capital to Constantinople/Istanbul around 300 AD). I am also a fan of Rome. I could tell some of that study shining through.

I could probably also safely say that my speciality, software engineer, is world's apart from Armenian studies. I am accepting her word when the novel states that statement X is the correct response during this situation inside a royal court.

The last quarter of the book picked up with action. I believe Dr. Weller should've stuck with diplomacy. Mahit had been there less than a week, and we have gone from relative though strained peace to world-ending events? The timeline of the entire book is maybe 2 weeks, and she is already making bloodoaths and acquired loyal friends. I don't believe it.

Another negative. This book did the trope of giving the hero a superpower and then preventing her from reusing it. It did work out OK.

Score: 4/5. This book felt like a story of alien diplomacy with zero technobabble (which is a good thing). I'll be picking up book 2.