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reviewed Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer (Terra Ignota -- Book 1)

Ada Palmer: Too Like the Lightning (Hardcover, 2016, Tor Books)

"The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our …

Review of 'Too Like the Lightning' on 'Goodreads'

Too Like the Lightning is a good book, but hard to recommend.

Though the story takes place in the future, it’s written in a faux Enlightenment-era style. The pace is glacial, the narrator has regular dialogs with the reader (putting words in the reader’s mouth), and the characters speechify to each other about abstract concepts even during unrelated activity. This style obscures the details of the world and the action of the plot to the point that I almost set the book aside after a hundred pages.

I persevered, though, and the book rewarded me with a brilliant future world full of progressive ideas and lively characters.

It’s not traditional science fiction: this society is built on extremely advanced technology that is barely described, and the many questions I have about how it works are never acknowledged. It’s beside the point of this book, which is about a society that has moved beyond geographic division.

I’ve wondered if we (here in 2019) are watching the end of the nation-state as our tribal boundaries get demolished by mass media and the internet. In Too Like the Lightning, this is ancient history, nations are long gone, and people organize themselves by outlook and skillset. War and strife are averted by public servants using statistics and social engineering reminiscent of Foundation, and religion is taboo.

It’s not plausible, but it is fascinating. Like in the works of the Enlightment writers that the book’s characters revere, believability takes a back seat to rhetoric. There are only a few named characters in a world of billions and they are all practical philosophers, representing a worldview and sometimes advocating it. They’re not believable, and often not likable, but they are memorable and compelling.

So the book is difficult in style and content. It also contains some scenes of extreme violence and fetishistic sex which felt out of place to me (though I’m sure the author, like de Sade, would say that pushing those boundaries is part of the point). That’s why it’s hard to recommend.

But I plan to read the sequel. In the end I was captured by the fresh perspective on the future and a stinger of a cliffhanger. After this set-up, the next book might be either a disaster or a triumph, and that’s exciting.