A Memory Called Empire

I might suffer from inflated expectation because this book has just won Hugo, but this was underwhelming. I had to plod through and promised myself rewards every 30 pages or so because it really didn't compel me to continue reading.

The book began with a decent mystery, actually: Yskandr, the previous ambassador to the Empire, was dead and so Mahit was sent as a replacement. The whoddunit was quite intriguing.

But the narration could not sustain my interest. Maybe it was one thing being piled on after another in a very quick timeframe, maybe it was the long, pointlessly meandering internal thoughts on Mahit's part, maybe it was my lack of aptitude for poetry. English is not my first language so when they began to celebrate scansion and meters.. I just couldn't picture it in my mind.

As I began to lose my interest, several things stood out:
- This was billed as a space opera, but it's mainly political intrigue and you could transport most of the book to say, 14th century Italy, or a fantasy, or to present-day monarchy and there would be little difference to notice. [I noticed this point as I was listening to Genre Junkies podcast making this same exact complain about Scalzi's The Collapsing Empire–at least there were physics and physicists in Scalzi's Interdependency].
- An ambassador of one? How is it that Mahit was sent as an ambassador and she was the only person from Lesl in the City? It's hardly likely that if there had been trade no one else from Lesl would be in the City. She doesn't even have a native staff and I think it just beggars belief.
- An ambassador without access to resources that she had almost nothing to offer for a medical procedure? No money, nothing? (Compare this to real-life embassies full of diplomatic staff, local and otherwise.)
- Everyone in Teixcalaan seems to be basically human? At least everyone with speaking lines in the story is. And other than the (surmountable) difference in language, Mahit seems to be taller than other people, but that's it.
- Why is the imago technology that Mahit has seems to be an unspeakable taboo but other forms of bodily augmentation seems OK?

I can see this could have been an otherwise enjoyable read–but it doesn't seem to do the trick for me.