You mentioned on Ao3 that I should drop in around April to talk about science fiction, so I am taking the opportunity. Hi!
But I agree with everything you say here. The first third of the book, with Mahit on the Station and Three Seagrass in the City, seemed like the bit that a competent editor would tell you to cut off and burn... just moving pieces around on the board to get them where you think they ought to be for the part you actually want to write. (Then again, when I feel that a speculative author has really done the medias res thing properly and forced you to pick up the worldbuilding bit by bit instead of telling you everything, just as I'm mentally congratulating them, I tend to look back at the cover and find that I've missed the part where it says "Book Two".)
As you say, there isn't much of a sense of Stationer culture. The problem, I think, is that Mahit simply doesn't like or think deeply about Stationer culture, which makes her a bad viewpoint on it. She likes the Station as a political concept; she does not get a warm thank-heavens-I'm-home feeling from graphic novels and seaweed beer. This is something the story really should have explored and made her face up to... Does she just not like it, in the way that a person with few friends and an unhappy upbringing often doesn't? Or another way in which she feels drawn to the Empire despite herself?
The other problem, I think, was that the conflict didn't feel intractable enough. The conflicts within the Empire worked great; I liked how everyone was still trying to figure out who was being sidelined or sacrificed or prepared for high command after the reshuffling from Memory. It felt appropriately hard, with decent people forced onto opposite sides. The interstellar conflict felt cheap by comparison. Diplomacy is cool as a plot device when it feels really difficult. This had a bit of an air of "if we could all just sit down and talk to one another..."
All in all, not a terrible book. But a real let-down after the first one.
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But I agree with everything you say here. The first third of the book, with Mahit on the Station and Three Seagrass in the City, seemed like the bit that a competent editor would tell you to cut off and burn... just moving pieces around on the board to get them where you think they ought to be for the part you actually want to write. (Then again, when I feel that a speculative author has really done the medias res thing properly and forced you to pick up the worldbuilding bit by bit instead of telling you everything, just as I'm mentally congratulating them, I tend to look back at the cover and find that I've missed the part where it says "Book Two".)
As you say, there isn't much of a sense of Stationer culture. The problem, I think, is that Mahit simply doesn't like or think deeply about Stationer culture, which makes her a bad viewpoint on it. She likes the Station as a political concept; she does not get a warm thank-heavens-I'm-home feeling from graphic novels and seaweed beer. This is something the story really should have explored and made her face up to... Does she just not like it, in the way that a person with few friends and an unhappy upbringing often doesn't? Or another way in which she feels drawn to the Empire despite herself?
The other problem, I think, was that the conflict didn't feel intractable enough. The conflicts within the Empire worked great; I liked how everyone was still trying to figure out who was being sidelined or sacrificed or prepared for high command after the reshuffling from Memory. It felt appropriately hard, with decent people forced onto opposite sides. The interstellar conflict felt cheap by comparison. Diplomacy is cool as a plot device when it feels really difficult. This had a bit of an air of "if we could all just sit down and talk to one another..."
All in all, not a terrible book. But a real let-down after the first one.