skybridge

babewiththepower.bsky.social · @babewiththepower.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated A Memory Called Empire 6/10

I've been going through Hugo winners which brought me to this series. The world building is very creative coming from the writer's historian background. I can appreciate it while at the same time I can say it made the reading of the naming convention of people and places a bit of work to get through and keep straight. There was a lot of setting up of the political groundwork for the universe and series, so if you're expecting a lot of action this book wouldn't be for you. I thought the idea of the neurological implants was great, but it was set up at the very beginning only to spend most of the book as a useless tool. That is until another implant entered the scene and then finally some real knowledge was coming through to get the plot moving. That didn't really happen until chapter 15 or 16 out of the 22 chapters, so as I said, expect a fairly slow story. I don't know if it's very good that the character I found most compelling, Yskandr, is actually dead rather than the main character, Mahit, from whom the POV the book takes. But the novel ended interestingly with the state of the empire and the emperor certainly surprised at the end as well. I think it was a good set up for the world and hopefully the next book spends less time on setup.

#book

Published 2026-08-18 17:59 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere