Jacey Bedford's Journal

I know this has had huge accolades, but to be honest I found it tough going at first. I always have difficulty with unpronounceable names and it took me a few pages of boggling to get used to the naming system in the Teixcalaan Empire. Though to my slight annoyance I found a glossary and pronunciation guide at the end of the book which by that time were superfluous. The author is obviously deeply into linguistics, and I'm not. 

Mahit Dzmare is sent from fiercely independent Lsel Station as ambassador to the centre of the Teixcalaan Empire only to discover that her predecessor, Yskandr, has been murdered. Teixcalaan is an empire which regularly expands and swallows all civilisations in its path (except Lsel, so far). Lsel has imago technology. Imago machines capture memories which can be implanted and handed down to successors through many generations. Unfortunately when Mahit is sent to Teixcalaan, all she has is an imago of Yskandr which is both fifteen years out of date, and faulty. He shares her headspace for a brief time and then crashes. So she's a fish out of water on Teixcalaan, and short of a whole load of facts. She's assigned an aid, Three Seagrass (I told you the naming system was weird) with whom she strikes up an immediate friendship, bonding  over their love of poetry, and comes across several characters whose motives for befriending her are suspect, in particular Nineteen Adze. Mahit has to navigate her way through court intrigue, the riddle of Yskandr's murder, and a palace coup, all while defending the interests of Lsel station and trying to discover what Yskandr promised the ageing and ailing emperor, Six Direction.