Thread by @QOrigins

Quick book rec:

@ArkadyMartine's "A Memory Called Empire."

I would almost never recommend a Kindle book this pricy (and libraries ARE a thing), but folks, it is worth every penny.

Will do an actual review later (off topic? Wildly! Can you stop me? No!)

amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07C7B…

Also: while writing that tweet, I was delighted to find out that @ArkadyMartine is a Byzantinist.

Partly 'cause it means I might someday get to see her gloss on one of my favorite historical figures, Basil I.

Partly 'cause I hope she and @HNTurtledove are pals.

But mostly...

Her close study of how the Byzantine empire worked has clearly informed her *fictional* empire, and helped her build a world where -- and this is really the heart of her achievement -- the culture she spends most of her time writing about *works like an empire does*.

There is a geopolitical environment like that of a real empire -- smaller independent and quasi-independent states on the periphery of empire.

There's a POLITICAL environment like that of a real empire, too: the court and courtiers matter *immensely*. Bureaucrats do too.

And, most impressive, *all of that flows from a CULTURAL environment that's recognizably imperial* (and, now that I think of it, more than a little bit Byzantine in terms of the citizens' avenues did political participation -- but I shouldn't spoil that).

Anyway, my point is:

You're not going to *notice* how carefully and thoughtfully @ArkadyMartine built this world.

The culture *makes sense*. The characters *embody* that culture (or have other complex relationships with it), while still being people -- they're *folks*, not cardboard cutouts.

And all along you'll be going "Wait, these are space Mesoamericans, right? Where are the sacrifices? Where is... why don't they govern by spectacle and violence?"

But as you read, you'll realize that they DO. The spectacle happens in the capital; the violence, in the provinces.

And also, of course, in parts of the imperial society that are far less privileged than the court.

Also, they're not straight-up space Aztecs bc you need WAY more bureaucracy to run a space empire than an Earth empire. And bureaucracy needs stability, not spectacle.

This has been enormously TL;DR and has turned INTO my review, but in short: @ArkadyMartine *understands how empire works.*

And she wrote a damn good book about real human people enmeshed in that system.

Here's the link one more time:

amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07C7B…