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A murder mystery in the heart of a space opera

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

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I brought this book home in March 2019.  It was Mysterious Galaxy’s featured speculative fiction hardcover pick for the month.  Over the past year this book kept getting recommended; by fellow Cannonballers, articles, and it is nominated for a Hugo award.  That nomination finally pushed A Memory Called Empire to the top of my TBR. In a normal timeline, I would have torn through this book in a matter of days.  Instead it took a few weeks.  This book pushed all the right buttons; excellent sci-fi world […]

Scenes From a Memory

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

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Do you know hat time of the year it is?   Yes, the Hugo nominees are out! And I’ve signed myself up again to read as many of them as possible. Going down the Best Novel list, I have already read Gideon the Ninth – which I reviewed here – and I loved the hell out of it. But now voting is going to be a bit complicated because A Memory Called Empire is another excellent, if tonally different, addition to the shortlist. And I’ll […]

Poetry and Politics Can Be Interesting

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

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I am starting to wonder if my local library hasn’t hired someone new in charge of new purchases who might not be my reading twin. The library has suddenly started getting in new books that I personally want to read not long after they are published. A Memory Called Empire is among those titles. The premise is pretty normal sounding: a new ambassador to the capital of the Teixcalaanli Empire (which spans planets and systems) arrives at her new job to discover that her predecessor […]

A bunch of gay as hell space books

The Disasters by M.K. England

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear

The Sol Majestic by Ferrett Steinmetz

Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White

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These are some of the sci-fi books I read in 2019. I’m not going to specify how for each one but they are all gay as hell in various ways, which is honestly just how I think space is going to be for us when we finally get there. Or at least, I sure hope. The Disasters by M.K. England takes one of my favorite tropes, a ragtag bunch of outcasts who circumstances force together must fight for their survival and learn to trust and […]



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