A Desolation Called Peace

A Desolation Called Peace is a space opera novel by the American writer Arkady Martine, published in 2021. It is the second book of her Teixcalaan series and the sequel to A Memory Called Empire.

A few months after the events of the first book, an alien force massacres an industrial colony of the Teixcalaanli Empire. Admiral Nine Hibiscus is given the task of confronting the threat and asks for a specialist from the Information Ministry who can attempt to communicate with an enemy nobody understands; Three Seagrass, by now a senior Imperial official, is sent. She travels to the frontlines by way of Lsel Station, where she convinces her former associate Mahit Dzmare, still the nominal ambassador to the Empire, to accompany her. Mahit agrees partly because it takes her away from the factional conflict building on Lsel, and she is given a private instruction by one of Lsel's leaders to sabotage the first-contact effort so that the Empire's war with the aliens goes on longer. Aboard Nine Hibiscus's fleet the two women work out a way to speak with the aliens, with the help of the admiral's adjutant, Twenty Cicada.

Martine's series is about an empire that absorbs the cultures it takes in and a small station trying to survive alongside it, and the second book moves that argument out to a frontier where the available answers are translation or extermination.