Astounding Award for Best New Writer
Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota)
In the twenty-fifth century, where communities of belief and lifestyle matter more than nation-states, the convict Mycroft recounts secrets that threaten the world order. It is the first Terra Ignota novel, combining philosophy, religion, and political design.
Work Information
Fractures of faith and power spread beneath a future society.
A science fiction novel that pairs an Enlightenment-inflected voice with conspiracy tension, exposing ethical weaknesses in an apparently stable future.
Review Summaries
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Readers value the original future setting and density of ideas, while some find the voice and information load demanding.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Tor Books
- Published
- 2016-05-10
- Pages
- 432 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 16.23 x 3.78 x 24.46 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780765378002
- ISBN-10
- 0765378000
- Price
- 2806 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Political
From the winner of the 2017 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Ada Palmer's 2017 Compton Crook Award-winning political science fiction, Too Like the Lightning, ventures into a human future of extraordinary originality 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 competition 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 destabilize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life...
ADA PALMER is a professor in the history department of the University of Chicago, specializing in Renaissance history and the history of ideas. Her first nonfiction book, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, was published in 2014 by Harvard University Press. She is also a composer of folk and Renaissance-tinged a capella music, most of which she performs with the group Sassafrass. Her personal site is at adapalmer.com, and she writes about history for a popular audience at exurbe.com and about SF and fantasy-related matters at Tor.com. The third book of her Terra Ignota series, The Will to Battle , will be released December 2017.
Reviews
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Worldbuilding A Complex Future Human Culture
This book is slow to start, hard work, but worth every minute. If I were not going move on to volume 2 next, I would re-read it again now. Like a great film, musical recording, or other piece of provocative art, I am confident that I will enjoy, and be engaged, by this work even more the second time through. It felt almost dreamlike to me; never quite sure where the characters are, which ones are present, the sense of the space in which they are in, and moving from place to place suddenly and without clarity. This was frustrating at times, and required re-reading at times. Perhaps intentionally, the reader is made to feel like the proverbial fish-out-of-water in this odd but obviously human world. The worldbuilding itself is admirable and likely reason enough to read the book; it feels complex, layered, and plausible. As a reader, I am as much interested in being a tourist in this world as I am following the plotline of these particular characters. There are also the cascade of big philosophical ideas, past, present, and imagined future. These ideas are often embodied in the top level social structure of the world called a "Hive". Just marvelous through and through.
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deep and fascinating world, great caracters
I personally loved this book, as well as its sequel "Seven Surrenders". The world is deep and original and utterly fascinating with its cultures and politics and wonderful little details. The characters are interesting and lifelike, and most of them have unexpected secrets. That said, this book has its quirks (that worked very well for me, but might not for everybody). The narrator is Mycroft Canner, a reformed felon whose crime you only discover rather late into the book. Be warned, it is really bad and disgusting. Mycroft has a rather unique narrating style that I really liked, though it took a bit of time to get used to. Rather confusing is his unreliable use of personal pronouns for people. Apart from the world-building and politics and a little boy called Bridger that can animate toys, there are also very interesting discussions of religion, sex and gender in a world where these things are not lived publicly. I'd definitely recommend the book for people who like rather weird societies and political intrigues, and don't mind a rather flowery narrator. If possible though you should read the free sample of the book before buying it, if you like that you will like the rest of the book as well.
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The power-play among the different groups to prevent war from again laying waste to the world and to consolidate their house's power ...
Humankind in the future has divided itself into seven houses based upon different life philosophies rather than on nation states and/or religious views. The power-play among the different groups to prevent war from again laying waste to the world and to consolidate their house's power is written about in philosophical terms.
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Meraviglioso
Scritto molto bene, con poche (pochissime) parti in Inglese che imita lo stile del diciottesimo secolo e per tutto il resto del libro lo stile è assolutamente contemporaneo. Molto interessante l'uso dei pronomi. Storia davvero intrigante e ben scritta e mondo tra utopia e distopia abbastanza realistico. Per la trama consiglio la pagina di wikipedia che la descrive bene. In generale ottimo acquisto, non vedo l'ora di leggere gli altri!
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Densa pero aburrida, y con algunas emociones aisladas
Too Like The Lightning es el primer libro de la serie Terra Ignota, que tiene lugar en una tierra futura en la que no existen los países como los que los conocemos hoy en día, sino que hay varios territorios, organizaciones e incluso familias que controlan diferentes aspectos de la vida diaria. Es una novela densa, que rara vez explica claramente los pormenores o razones de lo que pasa, por lo que hay algunas cosas que se entenderán hasta mucho después. Supongo que ese estilo de escritura es parte de la intención de la autora, pero en mi caso fue un obstáculo muy grande para disfrutar la novela, pues muy pocas veces llegaron a interesarme los dilemas de los personajes, y no me quedaron ganas de leer las otras 2 novelas de la serie.