
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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The imperious Winter colonists have ruled the planet Tiamat for 150 years, deriving wealth from the slaughter of the sea mers. But soon the galactic stargate will close, isolating Tiamat, and the 150-year reign of the Summer primitives will begin. All is not lost if Arienrhod, the ageless, corrupt Snow Queen, can destroy destiny with an act of genocide. Arienrhod is not without competition as Moon, a young Summer-tribe sibyl, and the nemesis of the Snow Queen, battles to break a conspiracy that spans space.
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A magnificent performance of an old favorite
- By Nancy on 07-31-12
By: Joan D. Vinge
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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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A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe
- By: Alex White
- Narrated by: Charlotte Blacklock
- Length: 14 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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A washed-up treasure hunter, a hotshot racer, and a deadly secret society. They're all on a race against time to hunt down the greatest warship ever built. Some think the ship is lost forever, some think it's been destroyed, and some think it's only a legend, but one thing's for certain: whoever finds it will hold the fate of the universe in their hands. And treasure that valuable can never stay hidden for long....
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wow. this was terrible
- By Amazon Customer on 03-15-21
By: Alex White
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Falling Free
- Miles Vorsokigan, Book 4
- By: Lois McMaster Bujold
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Leo Graf was just your average highly efficient engineer: mind your own business, fix what's wrong, and move on to the next job. But all that changed on his assignment to the Cay Habitat, where a group of humanoids had been secretly, commercially bioengineered for working in free fall. Could he just stand there and allow the exploitation of hundreds of helpless children merely to enhance the bottom line of a heartless mega-corporation?
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Don't read this one first
- By Carol on 02-20-13
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All Systems Red (Dramatized Adaptation)
- The Murderbot Diaries, Book 1
- By: Martha Wells
- Narrated by: Alejandro Ruiz, Bradley Foster Smith, Holly Adams, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 33 mins
- Original Recording
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In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern. On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid—a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.”
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Narrators are the opposite of what we want
- By Badger Badger on 09-12-23
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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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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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
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Light from Uncommon Stars
- By: Ryka Aoki
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay
- Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: To escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six. When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate. But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four.
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Awesome with a few hitches.
- By Levi Fay on 10-01-21
By: Ryka Aoki
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Asunder
- By: Kerstin Hall
- Narrated by: Alyssa Appleton
- Length: 19 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch being—three-faced, hundred-winged, unforgiving—who has granted her the ability to communicate with the newly departed. She pays the rent by using her abilities to investigate suspicious deaths around the troubled city she calls home. When a job goes sideways and connects her to a dying stranger with some very dangerous secrets, her entire world is upended.
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Asunder
- By G Family on 10-16-24
By: Kerstin Hall
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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
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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