That is also not forgetting the ministers at Lsel Station that sent her because they believe there is an Alien threat coming which will envelope the Empire and all of its client states into chaos. And then there is Nineteen Azde, who has far more regret buried inside of her which causes her to help Mahit in more ways than she could ever imagine. The newly appointed ambassador from Lsel Station that has to figure this out with her new lisasons, Twelve Azalea and Three Foot Seagrass. There are various deals made with the Science and War Ministry, and One Lightening and Thirty Larkspur are behind all of this. The Emperor Six Direction, is now old and wants the imago-techonology to create a clone of himself. He is a mad-man, a man obessed with power. I do feel his prescene was needed more in this book. Thirty Larkspur is the cunning maniuplator on a grand scale.

The three presumptive heirs to the throne, Thirty Larkspur, One Lightening, and even Eight Antidote, who is but a child, are some of the ruthless heirs you will ever find. And the Teixcalaani nobility have not missed any of this. To my sense, it is a sort of machine that carries the dead and makes them live on. Yskandr was supposedly protecting his station by offering the Emperor, Six Direction, a special kind of Imago technology.

The first bit is that an Lsel Ambassador, Yskandr was killed by Ten Pearl because he threatened to flood the Teixcalaani markets with a special kind of technology. What can I say about this book? It’s impressive in its worldbuilding, epic in its scale of description, and focused on a woman that has a mission to save Lsel Station from the clutches of an ever-expanding empire named Teixcalaan. I recieved an ARC from Tor Publishers and thank you to Stephen for providing me a copy of this.

Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan’s unceasing expansion-all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret-one that might spell the end of her Station and her way of life-or rescue it from annihilation But no one will admit that his death wasn’t an accident-or that Mahit might be next to die, during a time of political instability in the highest echelons of the imperial court. Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining Station, has died.

A memory called empire mahit