
A Desolation Called Peace
Teixcalaan, Book 2
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Narrated by:
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Amy Landon
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By:
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Arkady Martine
About this listen
2021 Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year
"[An] all around brilliant space opera, I absolutely love it." (Ann Leckie, on A Memory Called Empire)
A Desolation Called Peace is the spectacular space-opera sequel to Arkady Martine's genre-reinventing, Hugo Award-winning debut, A Memory Called Empire.
An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is running out of options.
In a desperate attempt at diplomacy with the mysterious invaders, the fleet captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass - still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire - face the impossible task of trying to communicate with a hostile entity.
Their failure will guarantee millions of deaths in an endless war. Their success might prevent Teixcalaan’s destruction - and allow the empire to continue its rapacious expansion.
Or it might create something far stranger....
A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books
©2020 Arkady Martine (P)2020 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Lambda Literary Award - Nominee, 2022
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Story
Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. This gave him plenty to talk about in therapy. He walked among invisible powers: devils and anti-gods that mock the mortal form. He learned a lethal catechism, lost his shadow, and gained a habit for secrecy. After a blood-soaked childhood, Fetter escaped his rural hometown for the big city, and fell into a broader world where divine destinies are a dime a dozen.
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Interesting but hard to follow on audio
- By S. Browne on 07-09-24
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The Galaxy, and the Ground Within
- A Novel
- By: Becky Chambers
- Narrated by: Rachel Dulude
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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With no water, no air, and no native life, the planet Gora is unremarkable. The only thing it has going for it is a chance proximity to more popular worlds, making it a decent stopover for ships traveling between the wormholes that keep the Galactic Commons connected. If deep space is a highway, Gora is just your average truck stop. The Five-Hop is run by an enterprising alien and her sometimes helpful child, who work hard to provide a little piece of home to everyone passing through.
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The narrator completely ruined it.
- By rosenh on 09-13-21
By: Becky Chambers
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All Systems Red
- By: Martha Wells
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 3 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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All Systems Red is the tense first science fiction adventure novella in Martha Wells' series The Murderbot Diaries. For fans of Westworld, Ex Machina, Ann Leckie's Imperial Raadch series, or Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. The main character is a deadly security droid that has bucked its restrictive programming and is balanced between contemplative self-discovery and an idle instinct to kill all humans.
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I just wish all four stories were one book...
- By Garrett Stone on 11-05-18
By: Martha Wells
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She Who Became the Sun
- By: Shelley Parker-Chan
- Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.
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Almost great.
- By stacey on 09-13-21
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Translation State
- By: Ann Leckie
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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When Enae's grandmaman passes away, Enae inherits something unexpected: a diplomatic assignment to track down a fugitive who has been missing for over 200 years. No one actually expects Enae to succeed; it's an empty assignment meant to keep hir occupied. But Enae has never had a true purpose—no one ever expected hir to do more than care for grandmaman—so sie is determined to accomplish this task to the best of her ability.
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Single themed and not on par with the series
- By Andrew Pollack on 07-01-23
By: Ann Leckie
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Cyteen
- Cyteen, Books 1-3
- By: C. J. Cherryh
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman, Jonathan Davis
- Length: 36 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The saga of two young friends trapped in an endless nightmare of suspicion and surveillance, of cyber-programmed servants and a ruling class with century-long lives – and the enigmatic woman who dominates them all.
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This is a Heavy Book (lovely too)
- By troy on 05-20-12
By: C. J. Cherryh
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Gideon the Ninth
- By: Tamsyn Muir
- Narrated by: Moira Quirk
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth unveils a solar system of swordplay, cut-throat politics, and lesbian necromancers. Her characters leap out of the audio, as skillfully animated as arcane revenants. The result is a heart-pounding epic science fantasy. Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse.
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Fun. Not art, very gory, but 100% fun.
- By Sarah K. on 10-27-19
By: Tamsyn Muir
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The City in the Middle of the Night
- By: Charlie Jane Anders
- Narrated by: Jennifer O'Donnell, Laura Knight Keating
- Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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January is a dying planet - divided between a permanently frozen darkness on one side, and blazing endless sunshine on the other. Humanity clings to life, spread across two archaic cities built in the sliver of habitable dusk. Sophie, a student and reluctant revolutionary, is supposed to be dead, after being exiled into the night. Saved only by forming an unusual bond with the enigmatic beasts who roam the ice, Sophie vows to stay hidden from the world, hoping she can heal.
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One of the best S-F novels I've ever read!!!
- By Michael J. Mcmorrow on 02-17-19
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Empire of the Vampire
- Book One
- By: Jay Kristoff
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 27 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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It has been twenty-seven long years since the last sunrise. For nearly three decades, vampires have waged war against humanity; building their eternal empire even as they tear down our own. Now, only a few tiny sparks of light endure in a sea of darkness.
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So good
- By donna on 09-16-21
By: Jay Kristoff
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A Fire Upon the Deep
- By: Vernor Vinge
- Narrated by: Peter Larkin
- Length: 21 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.
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What a wild, wacky, awesome book!
- By Noah Smith on 06-20-10
By: Vernor Vinge
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Dancer's Lament
- Path to Ascendancy, Book 1
- By: Ian C. Esslemont
- Narrated by: John Banks
- Length: 16 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Esslemont's all-new prequel trilogy takes readers deeper into the politics and intrigue of the New York Times bestselling Malazan Empire. Dancer's Lament focuses on the genesis of the empire, and features Dancer, the skilled assassin, who, alongside the mage Kellanved, would found the Malazan empire.
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FISH
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 01-05-17
By: Ian C. Esslemont
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Black Sun
- By: Rebecca Roanhorse
- Narrated by: Cara Gee, Nicole Lewis, Kaipo Schwab, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial even proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world. Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger.
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5-star Concept; Too Many Threads Left Hanging
- By Lisa Davidson on 10-26-20
Read this book!
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This is an amazing series
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What an incredible sequel
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All around great…
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so good
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Palace and fleet intrigue! Mahit getting in trouble by merely existing! Three Seagrass being Three Seagrass! Reflections on the self and the myriad conflicting emotions of falling in love with a culture that you are inherently distinct from.
Honestly the only reason I gave the story 4 stars is a nit pick on xenobiology that nevertheless stuck in my craw.
If you liked A Memory Called Empire...
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Excellent!!
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I wouldn't recommend reading these books out of order. While the plots are not closely intertwined, the characters who recur certainly are.
Because I read this as an audiobook unlike the first in the series which I consumed as an ebook, I think this heightened the differences I felt between them. It had more examples of shared minds on the grand scale as opposed to the small scale sharing of the Stationer imago technology we learned about in the first book, by the aliens, by the Teixcalaanli shard pilots, and by their Sunlit police force. It is a mixed subject, with its obvious frightening aspects but also glimpses of how it can enrich lives too and provide a communal meaning to a group. The first part of this book portrays the villainy of the Lsel station directorate up close as the precipitating event for the characters' flight out to the battle zone, and it crops up again at the end. Charges of spying by Mahit are not new, but supporting evidence of those loyalties is. The settings are in space more often than on planets as they were in book one, although they do not feature the microgravity experience at all.
I was fine with the planet side subplots, though I didn't really understand the palace intrigue fully. It was clear that hiding information is an important motif both on the personal level and institutionally. I also don't completely understand where the aliens' motivations lay, such as why exactly they had slaughtered everyone on a colony planet even though it didn't benefit them. Maybe it was a mistake on their part? I'm not sure. The tension leading up to the climax was undercut for me because I never really believed that the atrocity being advocated would actually get carried out.
I can understand that the author's style, which emphasis the interior lives of the characters so much, might not be what everyone prefers. It is a book where no one in the halls of power say anything without calculation, in their own mind or that of an image riding along, and what a person says to you and does not say is subjected to deep analysis, even when a person is in the throes of death. Rarely does anyone say a line of dialogue without a heavy dose of premeditation, which plays well for readers that are that way by temperament too, maybe not for everybody. I will be looking forward to the next thing coming from her along with the fans, however, whether it is set in this universe or something completely new.
An engrossing space opera
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Solid follow up if not slightly predictable.
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Compelling and sophisticated
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