Perhaps the Stars

Terra Ignota is now my favorite series! Perhaps the Stars nailed the finish. Everything is fantastically concluded, and it has something cool saved up even for the last pages.

First, how does this volume compare to the previous three? It's a bit different. Or maybe I'm different — a few years passed between.

We have a new narrator, who I think is intentionally bland. So we ache for Mycroft Canner's voice even more. The first 100 pages are like the boring parts of Iliad. But it doesn't stay like that. In fact, the prose grows ever more epic as we get closer to the end. An example:

Just as the hour came when shadows lengthen into fingers, and the weary ploughman smiles knowing labor’s end approaches with the goldening of the light, a force of Cousins broke through the barricades around the palace shell. Quick as a flock of gulls that race along the churning, white-maned surf, they arced their way up to the largest gleaming central face of the man-made mountain range of conjoined pyramids that form great Caesar’s home.

I write these words, a reader far from what this account was intended for. One from 300 years in the past for one. A gender addict (though I could have sworn I wasn't one before some twists and turns present in this volume showed me otherwise). A nobody with no accomplishment to speak of. I've never shook hands with anyone that haunts any halls of any kind of measurable power let alone walk them myself. I don't read philosophy or history. I like to think I'm good and kind but I'm yet to find hard evidence for it. I don't care that much for my nation strat. The magnitude of "oppositude" I feel would make this list endless (though not to imply that I believe one has to relate with anything to enjoy it) and I'm not fit to in anyway to critic this book but it...set forth a lot of...wavefronts in my mind and I wanted to put down some words. I'm unversed in writing reviews and writing in general so this willll only be a list of things I found remarkable, not a piece driven towards or in with any composition. I also write this with some final 15% of the book left. I doubt any thing is hereafter would make me rescind these words and I thought it best to put these down now while the magic had me in it's throes for I find when the last page closes, everything disperse faster than I can say "future fetish".

### A. The Ninth Anonymous

What the author did with this character leaves my gaping. You see, for some reason, I was waiting for them to get...properly introduced (for the lack of words) to them but next thing I know they were whisked away and I was left rubbing at eye at what transpired and nursing a minor heartache. Idk why I kept waiting for they were "properly introduced". Everything was laid out. The how, why, when, where and most of all, the who. No, in fact they were center stage for most of this affair. But details were sparse, by design, and the mantle of Mycroft's temporary replacement was always in the air and I guess I was waiting for them to be...best I can manage is "properly introduced". To take the traditional sidekick role? I don't know what I was waiting for but then they were gone and oh, the shock. A character that I didn't even know to have made a deep connection with, gone, just like that. A character, while framed "sidekick" had all the writing and attention of the lead. A beautiful character. And what's more, on what I might well be the page before they disappear, we found out they're assigned female at birth which, gender addict that I am, despite my best attempts, had be double take everything and make them dearer. Right before they took them....

I thought the character was an excellent execution of the idea. A "no one" that's a lead. A lead that dies. Do I really need names to? Do I really need gender to make sense of people? I guess not because even if I was only aware of it in retrospect, I was truly attached to the character. But maybe I rely on these contracts too much.

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Not the first time I'm encountering where all the role of villains is given to characters that make sense and are trying to do good but I thought this was excellently done. When Mycroft's hate for Felix bubled through in that once scene, I was right with them as I was well with them when they understood and sympathized with Felx's reasoning a page later. I usually have a hard time choosing the antagonist over the hero no matter their stances (too loyal the the mc, a mire that bothers me) but Sniper was I was ready to give the love and worship all in the story give them. In fact, the author succeed in making me love and respect all the characters save Perry-Croucher-Kray and Madame D'Aruoet. And I thought this was remarkable. Perry Kray's remarkable because as a reader from the past, he's the most recognizable politician in the whole shebang. And Madame, Madame I found most fascinating because I found myself struggling to separate the symbol from the character. Whore, manipulator, cruel, for some reason (the author's intent?), I found myself throwing these accusation on the costume-of womanhood? idk what word to use here-she wore and, considering all the other, lovable, antagonists the cast features, I had to take a pause. I'd have railed against the symbol on any-man or woman-symbol-leaning villain of course but this one was gender, a very powerful symbol in our world. I not only revealed myself an addict, I thought that maybe, I rely on these symbols too much.

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I'd recommend this book to any that'd give me their ear, of course, but I fear it won't do for a lot of my friends. That some of them would find the long paragraphs too much to bear. And I write this, wondering if I should retract the word "bear" from the previous sentence for I'd not cut one sentence from the book. Words, words, and more words are the only tool an author has to help us step into their beautiful minds and alas, the best way to gurantee accuracy and detail is more words. A barrage of words on each page that allows this one to build up and acheive some of the mind shatteringly beautiful chapters contained within. Favorite scenes that bring me to the edge of a "Microft-esqe waterworks" session just at the thought of them. I don't think these later and surprisingly plain words would have had the incredible power they wield over me if not for those that came previous to it that put in beautiful and well thought out choices the mind state necessary to make it all work.

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I did not expect to be God to be the reason the J.E.D.D. chooses the Utopia. I was hoping a beautiful plea of reason, an indomitable argument that'd dispel and destroy the great doubt and thinking the Gordian argument that's worked well sowing mine and the all characters mind. Am I disappointed? I guess you can technically use that word but only about my mind. My heart? One "microft-esque waterwork" for the scene of how and why God convinces his pal Other God to choose Utopia please. And I suppose the whole series is the beautiful plea of reason. Enough to untangle the Goridan knot? As someone working in the computer industry and who expects computers to be the first answer to my prayer for immortality, no. But my, what a plea.

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I loved this series from the first book, of course. I even read the original twice and even if I was a bit let down by the sequel, the third fixed everything in a sense, the series would have been a treasured entry on my shelf no matter. I was not prepared how incredible the Perhaps The Stars would be to.

Making use of digital medium, I did not notice how many pages the thing was when I picked it up. Imagine my immense joy after indulging for 5 hours straight but then only to find out I've only read 1/5th. It's then that dawned on me what the author's trying to achieve, an explanation for why book 4 took long, and filled me with anticipation for what laid forth. And I was more than satisfied! In the previous books, it was my "future fetish" that enjoyed this treat the most. The enjoyable utopian mirror for what we can be, vague but enough details, with enough pretty words, philosophy and gender and other mighty ideas to left. Book 4 (and 3 too, in a way), in a lot of ways, left that behind. The war, mainly futuristic in how kind it was. Gender and sex barely mentioned. Very different from the first two but I think the series's much better for it. The characters that were built up came to full force in this one giving almost everyone a great resolution (Did you deserve something equal Ganymede, Ando?). Bridger and J.E.D.D and the whole Homeric affair, cheff's kiss. Utopia vs. Gordian and how it was treated gave more than my fetish could ever ask for and done so well that I don't even feel guilty. They even introduced and pulled off 9A, oh my god. Effing beautiful.

I haven't read enough science fiction to be making such claims but this labor of love and product of genius is surely an achievement of the genre? I can't see how but if any well-read fellow readers (who found this series to their fancy) disagree and can illuminate on good reasons why it's not an achievement, I'd like to know.

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At the end, I find myself wanting to use a superlative for this book/series. I'll update this review if I find one.

I'm not really sure what to make of this last entry in the Terra Ignota quartet. Some parts were absolutely brilliant -- the way that war spirals out into tiny fractal battles with the motivation behind each becoming increasingly personal and complex. I loved the way that Palmer as a historian thinks about not just technological changes but how government, family structure and social mores will change in 500 years. As she reminds us, the American Experiment is not yet 500 years old and there's no reason to believe that 500 years in the future people will continue to idealize democracy and free speech, as dear as that is to us today.

I loved the tension between: do we do everything we can to dream of a better world, or do we work incrementally on this one? I thought that ultimately, after The Will To Battle being overly sympathetic to the Masonic Empire, Palmer in this book shows more of the nuance between these sides and ultimately the arc for the original Saneer-Weeksbooth bash and for Carlyle Foster are pretty satisfying.

But there's just too much in this book. There are three pieces that just don't really fit and I feel bad because I think they're really Palmer's favorite parts: The Homeric references, JEDD Mason and Mycroft. Each is central, but ultimately distracting. Perhaps the least clear complaint is Mycroft -- part of what made Terra Ignota stand out is a literally criminally insane, unreliable narrator, whose scandalous secret past is definitely scandalous. But by the third book, Mycroft's deification of JEDD Mason and commitment to the monarchy of the Masonic Empire was starting to really dilute the richness of the setting. Palmer's responded to this criticism by saying that it's just the lens of reading via Mycroft and that readers can read past him. But she had a rich opportunity to provide a foil for his narrative with 9A, and instead 9A too became a JEDD cultist. I think this is simply a theory of mind failure -- as the reader, I cannot completely see past an unreliable narrator to pick up clues from a highly complex setting from only seeing first person narration from said highly unreliable narrator. Also, Mycroft's schtick is that he really is an unforgiveable person and I think Palmer got wrapped up in her own creation and ultimately found him sympathetic in a way that I did not find deserved.

So complex world-building + interesting philosophy + futuristic homeric retelling + morally complex unreliable narrator + exploration of novel divinity = too many things to fit into a quartet

These books are so goddamned weird and I love them for it. Having said that, I don't know if this final entry quite sticks the landing. I'd have given the first half of this an easy five stars, but the second half (starting from around the point the Alexander is introduced) drags it down a bit, I think.

Things I liked:

- It was interesting to have so much more of the story told from a non-Mycroft perspective.
- The expansion of scope to include the actions of so many non-focal characters to show the wider impact of the war.
- The rapid fire betrayals, side swaps, clarifications, and re-allying of so many factions really brought home the idea of a war of many factions with no fixed geographic territory.
- The weaving in of the Homeric elements.

Things I didn't:

- The first three books played a lot with ambiguity and Mycroft's unreliable perception to make it unclear whether the supernatural elements of the plot might actually be more mundane, but this last one seems to take a much firmer stance, especially toward the end, and I think it loses something for that.
- Petty, sure, but more or less every viewpoint character seems to be, to some extent, a partisan of the faction in the real underlying war that I disagree with.
- The constant (lampshaded, even!) deus ex machinas. With a few exceptions, pretty much the only way for a focal character to "die" seems to be getting Bridgered into someone else.
- The last fifth or so of the book is basically just people standing on a stage making announcements.