Auden’s elegy for another Empire: “Altogether elsewhere, vast/ Herds of reindeer move across/ Miles and miles of golden moss,/Silently and very fast.” (Auden, “The Fall of Rome”).

If A Memory Called Empire begins in a haze of Teixcalaanli glory, its ending is more reminiscent of W. In this backdrop, there is the news that the Empire faces an existential threat upon its borders, from an alien species that is beyond language and beyond communication. But it is a home where, for reasons still unknown to her, someone willfully sabotaged the imago machine that carried the live memory of her own predecessor, Yskandr Aghavn and Mahit’s own feelings for the Teixcalaanli Empire, and for Three Seagrass, her one-time cultural liaison, remain complex and unresolved. Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station’s Ambassador to Teixcalaan, has gone home. Teixcalaan has a new Emperor-Her Brilliance Nineteen Adze-but a reign that commences in the blood of her predecessor, who publicly sacrificed himself to defeat a coup, is hardly off to the most secure start. Like all good endings, the denouement of Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire feels more like a beginning.

A memory called empire ending