Reading Update: A Desolation Called Peace

[jaggedwolf]

Me, a cool kid: Don’t have expectations for sequels, don’t do it, go into it with an open mind

Me, after reading this book: I love everyone in this bar except maybe 16M because she lurks and has a name that reminds one of reddit advice threads (okay okay heritage lady also unnerves me)

*ahem* So you could say I quite liked this book.

Whipping through the various PoVs was more entertaining than disorienting, as well as informative when it came to seeing some characters in different eyes. Now, character thoughts in somewhat increasing order of fondness...

Twenty Cicada: Talk about that nominative determinism, damn. Obviously this Boring Adjutant Man had my interest from the start. I loved his constant steadiness and his doing what needs to be done attitude - he doesn’t think they should negotiate with the aliens, but if they’re going to do it they better do the best job they can. And of course that’s wrapped up in his relationship with Nine Hibiscus. His connection to her differs from the broader loyalty among the others, and the way he drops into calling her my dear both in the medbay and as he makes that very final choice did get to me.

That final choice, gah. “Becoming a part of a hive-mind” is one of those things that freak me out, and yet this worked for me, this deliberate act of choosing to be consumed. (I would likely have different opinions if this hadn’t happened to him in the very same installment he was introduced. Such are one’s whims.) Maybe choosing to be consumed by these aliens the same way he'd chosen to subsume himself into his role as Teixcalaanli adjutant without any self-abnegation - he still had the tattoos, the plants, the tapestries.

Can he still hang out with his kitten? I hope so. :(

Eight Antidote: What the fuck, in AMCE I thought of him as that creepy boy-emperor, how did inverse-Joffrey claim my affection like this?? I dunno, I just know that I am very fond of this clever and surprisingly sweet kid, who wants to be good for war and political intrigue but is lonely and exhausted in figuring out the layers of all these adults around him. He’s sharp enough to figure out 11L’s simulations and stop the bombardment order in the end, yet has to hold back tears both at 11L using him and the idea of Shard pilots feeling each other’s pain.

Maybe that's why I found the holorecording that he gets from Three Seagrass and Mahit very sweet, as odd a sentiment that is about so ill-timed a request and fraught a set of questions. They are as honest as can be, and Mahit being the one to go no, we should give this kid answers now, makes me think of how she watched him get shuttled about at the end of the first book while recalling what he told her: They don't even have to touch you

(Also, it’s incredibly funny to hear his side of his encounter with Mahit in AMCE, where he accurately relates that “Mahit was sad and lost and drunk” )

Something about his horror-struck reaction to the planetary bombs solution paralleled the Lsel graphic novel’s focus on preserving truthful memories over Heritage’s version, despite the vast difference in scope - perhaps it’s the sense that their governments were ultimately too good at the propaganda. You told us that Teixcalaan now is far above planetary genocide. You told us that Lsel must remember its past. The betrayed guilelessness of even a powerful child for the former, and the teenage calling of a bluff for the latter, all wrapped up in what it means to love and know a state. If such a thing is even possible.

I hope 8A gets to sleep for a while and also maybe have a non-secret agenda friend in Map.

Three Seagrass: Perhaps the Teixcalaanli bureaucracy should consider the implementation of mandatory bereavement leave, because it turns out certain Third Undersecretaries really cannot be trusted when they are spiraling! Though I suppose it hardly matters when the Emperor herself is fine with it.

I couldn't discern how much of Three Seagrass's initial decision was a sort of death wish vs wanting to see Mahit again vs being bored as fuck in the Ministry that killed her friend, and I'm not sure she knows either. It was a very entertaining (and illuminating) spiral, even if it hit my second-hand embarrassment a couple of times. The image of Three Seagrass absentmindedly drinking kelp beer and discovering she hates it as she stands in the middle of Lsel kiosks was an excellent one. I very much enjoy that both her and Mahit’s reaction to being in a completely new location is to aimlessly wander around, regardless of potential dangers.

Her brisk forthrightness was a delight - most of my instinct-taken screencaps were 3S doing yet another thing - how it extended to within her PoV, and even more so when it comes to the way she’s constantly, obliviously riding the edge of stepping on Mahit’s sore spots

Mahit: Oh, Mahit. A few months of brooding and what she gets is yet another No Good, Very Bad Week, in which she is the pinnacle of exhausted competency, all while that Teixcalaan-Lsel complex of hers churns. I, naturally, was pleased with every new terrible thing, from walking through Lsel as an abomination with no one’s allyship and everyone’s disappointment, to the indignities of Teixcalaan on this sudden alien diplomacy job, to the moment she stays silent for unnervingly long when everything almost goes to shit on the bridge (thanks Darj Tarats /s).

This does not even include the half-creepy half-hilarious moment where 16M?? Is chilling in her room?? It led me to wonder whether A) 16M had automatic access to the room or B) carefully peeled off the plastic sheet on the input pad, used it, opened the door, and then carefully relaid the plastic so Mahit would be none the wiser.

Can’t even blame her for unwittingly revealing the imagos after all that shit.

As with the first book, it’s great seeing Mahit pull things off. I enjoyed a full story’s worth of her bouncing off Yskandr, and how she can still feel the difference between the two Yskandrs, along with the neuropathy side-effect. (Also Yskandr’s contributions to the sex scene: sex tips + information on how the Yskandr:19A ratio compares to Mahit:3S, haha. Throw in the height info about the two Teixcalaanlitzlim and there’s some kind of math equation here I swear)

I still don’t know if I found Mahit’s ending here more hopeful or sad, or perhaps that’s mostly determined by how she handles things from here. I was 100% here for Mahit getting exiled from Lsel. Again, she really had no allies there. But there’s something so desperate to her response to the end of the immediate crisis once more being I Must Run Away Or I Will Be Seduced By Empire. I kind of get it, that’s how Yskandr died, but if she cannot permit herself what the city would give her, and Lsel has nothing for her, the result is a rootlessness that doesn’t seem to work for Mahit.

Hanging out for a while somewhere there’s no drama around her will probably be good for her.

Mahit/3S: I did not think a single night of sleeping with each other would make them more powerfully distracted than Callie/Elena from The Axiom Series, but these two are nothing if not overachievers :D And being whisked away for decontamination showers as soon as they stepped out of the room together was far funnier than an ill-timed knock on the door would have been. As was their very...specific concerns afterwards.

Mahit: Is Reed hanging closer a metaphor for the Teixcalaanli annexation???

Three Seagrass: Did I also sleep with Yskandr?? Is this Mahit or Yskandr I’m talking to, that's how it works right?

I loved watching these intense nerds once more fall into the utter thrill of solving a problem together while also clashing more now that Mahit can afford to challenge Reed explicitly. If a bit beyond 3S at the start - but that works too, another problem for 3S to chew on and then understand a little in a flash of insight while Mahit and Tarats converse at gunpoint.

And gosh, their final conversation. My earlier question of hopeful or sad isn’t about these two at all, because I love the back-and-forth attempts to comprehend and to be good to each other, the utter fondness, what with Mahit saying she’d like to say yes when asked a third time and Three Seagrass offering letters and poems in exchange for more comic book issues. <3

Finally, I appreciate the way the ghost of Twelve Azalea lingers for them. There are mentions of him, and it took me a while to not immediately think of him every time Mahit said “Reed”.

(completely tangential side-note: the last seven books before my re-read of AMCE and this book were all so fucking mired in family, one way or another. In the people who made you and the people who made them and your siblings and the unavoidable weight of it all. So it was an unexpected relief to return to this world, where the closest any of that matters is the Eight Antidote-Six Direction connection.. No immediate family here, only empire-driven tensions and friendship and loyalty and maybe-romance, which is exactly the sort of thing a reader wants sometimes.)

Bonus: Look at this lovely fanart, I want more fanart for this series.

Comments

[reconditarmonia]

Me in the early Eight Antidote segments: oh it's Ender's Game

Me in the middle/end: oh it REALLY REALLY IS Ender's Game

But also in a way that is a Commentary because ~why would anyone who could be part of the hivemind not want to be~

[reconditarmonia]

Also I just remembered "you're not, but I am" and I have to scream now

[jaggedwolf]

Damn you're right, it is very Ender's Game-ish. The "trying to communicate with aliens" parts did remind me of both the Formics and the tree aliens in the later books of the Ender series.

Also I just remembered "you're not, but I am" and I have to scream now

That entire scene and specifically that line killed me! Legitimately didn't expect that.

[reconditarmonia]

Heh, I never actually read the rest of the Ender books (though I did read all of the Bean books). But the plot point of "they don't entirely realize that killing a human is more like killing a hive than cutting off a finger or hair" thing of the Formics, yes!

That entire scene and specifically that line killed me! Legitimately didn't expect that.

Me neither. I was so delighted by the whole thing - the Yskandr stuff didn't do anything for me in particular, but the rest was one of the hotter sex scenes or sex-adjacent(??) scenes I've read in a book, and they're also just such a good ship.

[jaggedwolf]

I read all the Ender and Bean books in high school, and I remember liking the Bean ones more than the later Ender ones - they more often scratched that "satisfying high-tension problem-solving" itch that Ender's Game did.

Yep to both counts on Mahit/3S. It is funny how here for them I am, considering I spent most of AMCE not realising it was going to happen, while still being very attached to the burgeoning friendship and Mahit's complicated feelings. (Rereading AMCE made me realize how oblivious I was, truly.)

[reconditarmonia]

The problem-solving was a huge part of it!! I loved the strategery. Like watching heists/capers.