I had stalled out after the first volume of some recent sci-fi series, so I’d put this one off despite strong recommendations from multiple friends. I wish I had read it sooner—it certainly shares a lot of thematic elements from other recent faves (Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy, Tamsyn Muir’s ongoing Locked Tomb series).
I’m a sucker for “bureaucrat finds themselves in the middle of galactic intrigue”-type stories, and Memory mixes that common premise with some threads about culture, collective/individual memory, and colonialism. Some of those elements are treated with more success than others, and sometimes the hijinks of Ambassador Mahit Dzmare and her sidekicks verge on the Scooby-Doo side of things, but overall I found it very entertaining and I can’t wait to read the second installment.