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dsrtaoArkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire.
Two interstellar human civilizations: the stationers and the Teixcalaanli empire. The stationers are a small league of space-station dwellers who specialize in mining and piloting, with a sideline in advanced memory-storage techniques. Things seem to be going okay for them -- this isn't the story of a machine ghost taking over a human body, or a hereditary bureaucracy that needs to be knocked over by our plucky teenage revolutionaries. Their big problem is that the Teixcalaanli empire is really big, expansionist, and only a couple of star-gates away now. So the stationers set up diplomatic relations twenty years ago, and the empire accepted an ambassador... but the ambassador is dead now, please send a new one.
So there's a death to investigate and a developing political situation and a bunch of major players, and the whole thing goes forward from there, centered on the new ambassador, Mahit Dzmare, who is reasonably well suited for the position but would have been happier not having arrived at such an interesting time.
Two interstellar human civilizations: the stationers and the Teixcalaanli empire. The stationers are a small league of space-station dwellers who specialize in mining and piloting, with a sideline in advanced memory-storage techniques. Things seem to be going okay for them -- this isn't the story of a machine ghost taking over a human body, or a hereditary bureaucracy that needs to be knocked over by our plucky teenage revolutionaries. Their big problem is that the Teixcalaanli empire is really big, expansionist, and only a couple of star-gates away now. So the stationers set up diplomatic relations twenty years ago, and the empire accepted an ambassador... but the ambassador is dead now, please send a new one.
So there's a death to investigate and a developing political situation and a bunch of major players, and the whole thing goes forward from there, centered on the new ambassador, Mahit Dzmare, who is reasonably well suited for the position but would have been happier not having arrived at such an interesting time.
