Perhaps the Stars

Hardcover, 586 pages

English language

Published Feb. 26, 2021 by Head of Zeus.

ISBN:
978-1-78669-960-2
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4 stars (31 reviews)

World Peace turns into global civil war.

In the future, the leaders of Hive nations—nations without fixed location—clandestinely committed nefarious deeds in order to maintain an outward semblance of utopian stability. But the facade could only last so long. The comforts of effortless global travel and worldwide abundance may have tempered humanity's darkest inclinations, but conflict remains deeply rooted in the human psyche. All it needed was a catalyst, in form of special little boy to ignite half a millennium of repressed chaos.

Now, war spreads throughout the globe, splintering old alliances and awakening sleeping enmities. All transportation systems are in ruins, causing the tyranny of distance to fracture a long-united Earth and threaten to obliterate everything the Hive system built.

With the arch-criminal Mycroft nowhere to be found, his successor, Ninth Anonymous, must not only chronicle the discord of war, but attempt to restore order in a world spiraling …

8 editions

Review of 'Perhaps the Stars' on 'Goodreads'

5 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 …

reviewed Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer (Terra Ignota #4)

Review of 'Perhaps the Stars' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I don't know if it's because I didn't do the full required reading of Homer, Hobbes and ancient Greek mythology, but this book seemed overly long. There are moments of brilliance that made me keep going, but I still lost track of all the characters and their motivations frequently enough to make me consider aborting. All that said, it was a clever and many-layered book (or rather, series of books), just not one that I find easy to recommend.

reviewed Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer (Terra Ignota #4)

Review of 'Perhaps the Stars' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

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 …

reviewed Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer (Terra Ignota, #4)

Satisfaction (no spoilers)

5 stars

After a long wait for the final Terra Ignota volume, Perhaps The Stars does not disappoint. Yes, there are parts that on and on, but they work if you've bought in to the previous books. There is even in-story justification for this that was started in The Will to Battle.

The dense prose we've come to expect continues here, and I feel I need to complete a reread before I can write much more of a review.

In short, if you liked the previous novels then this is an extremely satisfying conclusion. Those who found the prior works to be more of a struggle won't have any relief here.

Review of 'Perhaps the Stars' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

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 …

reviewed Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer (Terra Ignota, #4)

Review of 'Perhaps the Stars' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

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 …

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Subjects

  • American literature

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