Ada Palmer

Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer--a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away. The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labelling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world's population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competion is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life. And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destablize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life...

Too Like the Lightning

Apurva Chitnis

3 months after finishing TLTL, I finally feel ready to write a review. This is a testament to how polarising I found this book. It has some wonderfully exciting ideas, but in other ways it's an absolute car crash.

Let's start with the good stuff. TLTL is set hundreds of years in the future in a seemingly utopian world. Many things we take we robustly believe in today are remade into a exciting cocktail.

Nation states, for example, no longer exist. Instead, people choose to join one of a handful of "hives" that define the laws and beliefs they follow. In this world, nationalism isn't nearly as strong - people choose their values and their method of governance, whether it is a monarchy, democracy, capitalist hierarchy and so on. I've already seen inklings of this behaviour in online communities (think of memes that only a small subreddit would understand), so it's fascinating to see what this idea could look like if taken to an extreme.

TLTL remakes other aspects of our lives too: gender, religion, 'pure' humanity vs biohacking, violence, and political organisation. Ada does very well to make you think hard about the assumptions you have around life today. If you're into world-building sci-fi, there's plenty to keep you interested.

This neatly takes me onto my criticisms. There's too much going on here. I feel like Ada Palmer had some wonderful ideas for a story and on philosophy, but for some reason she decided to get them all down in a single book. There's so many ideas, characters, names (people often have multiple names!), titles and concepts, I found it very hard to navigate the story and understand what was happening. I gave up reading at several points because I was no longer excited about spending an hour reading Latin. I did eventually came back though, but perhaps out of stubbornness and desire to not not finish a book that I'd spent so much time on.

The real story of the book is a conflict between different forms of social structure theorised during the Enlightenment in the 1700s. It's a great plot, but Ada tells it by referencing and quoting philosophers from that time. And whilst these ideas are fun, I found this prose to be dense and impenetrable. Most of my understanding of the story actually came several months later, whilst listening to podcasts about the book (I can recommend this excellent one by AnarchySF). Your mileage may vary, but IMO TLTL is obtusely hard to follow.

I also had some issues with her writing style, too. The characters speak in long, unrealistic passages, and use cumbersome and awkward language. The pacing of the story is off - there's excitement at the beginning and end, but the middle lags for too long. Most of the story is told through ideas of the world and of the characters, more tell than show. Finally, there's no real conclusion or pay-off to reading TLTL, you actually need to read the sequel to get the juice (I'm currently reading it - it's much better).

Overall, it's hard to give this book a star rating, since it's the first part of two. TLTL had the potential to be a great book, but falls short for me.

Aloe Han

** spoiler alert **
           One of those books much smarter than me. Filled with complex worldbuilding and rife with ideas, then presented in a style so unique for such a book that at points it was almost infuriatingly dense, almost esoteric. But you gradually get used to it, and at that point you're sucked in.

Having said all that, I feel like this book, or at least _the world created_, is incredibly problematic. Certainly a world builder can create a world that is free of problems, they can also create one full of it. How it addresses those problems and from whose perspective theyre from are what's important. But it's difficult currently to extract whether that perspective is our narrator and in-story author Mycroft Canner, or the real writer of Too Like the Lightning, Ada Palmer.

Having said all that, the story has engrossed me. Perhaps Seven Surrenders will say more.

This book is kind of difficult to rate since it's not in my typical literary regimen. The genre is a blend of political intrigue, philosophical reflection, sci-fi, and fantasy. Usually books that focus on intrigue, subterfuge, and an incredibly deep well of plot twists are not my thing, but this book pulls it off in a way that maintains my interest and doesn't make me roll my eyes. Palmer gives you just enough to make you think and then leaves you two stew on it a bit, thinking of all the implications this new detail will have on the characters you've become invested in. Of course I'll now read the next book in the quartet.

Ashlyn

Gavin

SF with prose from the (radical) C18th, written IRL by a historian of that time. A big old bucket of ideas. 

I loved the many didactic discursions - e.g. de Sade's Christian name being a plot point, sections written in speculative future Latin - but I think most readers will not love them. I did choke a little at the constant coincidences, and at the enslaved protagonist meeting literally every elite in the world in the space of two days. 

Filled with what some have called out for, "competence porn" - i.e. the elites are manipulative, egotistical, and yet still acting in (what they think are) the best interests of the world.

Will probably bump it up to a 5 on re-read.

Get past the superficial quaintness, you'll be rewarded.

Frederik De Bosschere

One of the most orginal and provocative future visions I've encountered in a long time. Very clever, and brimming with philisophical references. Its plethora of intrigues can be a bit much at times. That said, the constant scheming reminds me of Asimov's Foundation-stories, which I love.

Nat Welch

Dropped this book about 25% in. Story was interesting, but the writing style drove me nuts.

Sunyi Dean

If I could define Too Like the Lightning in a word, it would probably be "overwhelming". 

That perhaps seems at odds given my rating, but it is fully immersive, carefully thought out and planned, densely written, complex, layered, intelligent, powerful. There aren't a lot of books where I need to stop every few chapters and review my mental notes; this is one of them.

It's certainly not for everyone, but nothing is, and what is (probably) lacks in pulp appeal it makes up for with lively discussion and intellectual engagement. The plot is surprisingly tight, but it takes awhile to emerge from the heaving morass of humanity as depicted. 

It is something of a setting junkie book, and the plot takes awhile to get going. I was also dubious about the pacing--there's always something jarring to me about a book which takes longer to read than it does to "happen", by which I mean events occur in a matter of days during the novel. Meanwhile it took me weeks to read it.

Luke Kanies

Intriguing, surprising, scary, and intelligent.

I loved how this book told me nothing, letting the story -- even the narrator -- be revealed over time. By the end the world felt complete, but it started out sparse yet large. It provided little detail yet never felt thing, which shows great writing.

I enjoyed it enough to give it 5 stars, but honestly, I can't of very many people I'd recommend it to, because it's such a peculiar book. I liked it a lot, but I'm not sure who else would.

Katy Watkins

Brian Alderman

The year is 2454. Humanity has engineered a hard-won golden age, forged in the aftermath of a bitter conflict that wiped both religion and nation state from the planet. Now seven factions or 'hives' co-govern the world, their rule fuelled by benign censorship, oracular statistical analytics and technological abundance. But this is a fragile Utopia – and someone is intent on pushing it to breaking point. Convicted for his crimes, celebrated for his talents, Mycroft Canner is the indentured instrument – and confidant – of some of the world's most powerful figures. When he is asked to investigate a bizarre theft, he finds himself on the trail of a conspiracy that could shatter the tranquil world order the Hives have maintained for three centuries. But Mycroft has his own secrets. He is concealing a much greater threat to the seven Hives, a wild card no degree of statistical analysis could have prophesied. This threat takes the unlikely form of a thirteen-year-old called Bridger. For how will a world that has banished God deal with a child who can perform miracles?

Too Like the Lightning

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