This year’s 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel. It’s hard to believe this is a debut novel as Arkady Martine’s tale is an accomplished work about an inexperienced, newly appointed ambassador who faces the daunting challenge of adjusting to a new culture, whilst also investigating the circumstances of her predecessor’s suspicious death. Her perilous situation is personalised as an outdated version of her predecessor happens to inhabit her mind as an ‘imago’, a future tech system that enables memories of the dead to be preserved in another human’s mind. I look forward to finishing this novel, particularly Arkady’s take on technology of the future and its impact on the individual, society and empire.
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