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Terra Ignota #4
Perhaps the Stars
From the 2017 John W. Campbell Award Winner for Best Writer, Ada Palmer's Perhaps the Stars is the final book of the Hugo Award-shortlisted Terra Ignota series.
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 closer to irreparable ruin.
The fate of a broken society hangs in the balance. Is the key to salvation to remain Earth-bound or, perhaps, to start anew throughout the far reaches of the stars?
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 closer to irreparable ruin.
The fate of a broken society hangs in the balance. Is the key to salvation to remain Earth-bound or, perhaps, to start anew throughout the far reaches of the stars?
586 pages, Hardcover
First published October 19, 2021
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December 21, 2022
A very satisfying conclusion, with a remarkable trust in the general capacity of good by (future) people. A rollercoaster of a book, full of twist and turns and many concepts to ponder on
We are the instruments that carve the path from cave walls to the stars
Ada Palmer her Terra Ignota series is the discovery of the reading year 2021 for me in terms of science-fiction, and as very thought provoking books in general. In Perhaps the Stars, the final instalment of the series, we follow a broad cast of familiar characters, in their first war.
I loved the thoughtful portrayal of the opening acts of the war, with communications and transportation (and hence geography) becoming central once again. Also the role of [anonymous] (such a fascinating position in general) is great to have a complete picture of the events unfolding and the politics involved. Told mainly from the perspective of someone in the world capital, located at Sardinia, the war is both global and local with battles at the bridges and communication as far as Kashmir trickling in from a pass-it-on makeshift system. Agreements on identifying combatants, on how to celebrate religious feasts even though there is war, reviving a kind of Red Cross, there is not much Ada Palmer has not thought of.
You can already feel the fibers of the world regenerating, town by town the narrator says, and the war in general is far from as destructive as one could imagine it to be based on more recent examples. Space elevators are of prime importance, one being located at the Maldives, who are interesting enough still around after climate change.
Although I like the less flowery narration in the first 20% equally, when a old familiar face comes back a veritable mini Odyssee, with a splash of The Count of Monte Cristo unfolds, I was rather awestruck by the audacity of combining these kind of narratives into a science-fiction novel. Hope opens up the armour inside of us one of the character says, and it is hard to stay cynical after following the cast for three books and nearly 2.000 pages.
In terms of epicness the story is also everything one can hope for, from speeches saying: We face tomorrow tomorrow. We face tonight tonight or Peace comes only after victory to We can’t undo this level of destruction that had me gasping, very gripping how Palmer makes tangible how many years of progress hang in the balance and could be lost.
Again this is a sprawling, twisty novel, full of high stake brilliance and two conceivable sides for the battle over the very future of humanity, developing very differently than the initial sides that are clear at the start of the war.
Mindgames, ultimatums and twists hit the cast full on, with many old favourites making appearances: Cornel, Ando, Ganymede, Lorelei Cook, Thisbe, Perry, Joyce Faust just to name a few.
Humanity is teamwork, and this concept of what direction humanity should move towards, is further made urgent because there is a being who represent First Contact in the midst of the turmoil.
I chose not to choose yet he notes, but that choice is exactly the center of the conflict and possibly the whole direction of the future evolution of our species. Meanwhile he kind of burns humanity on the mess we make of meeting an Alien for the first time: You must become better at making your touch kind. Not next time, this time..
A venerable conversation between gods somewhere at 2/3's is very brilliantly done to make the philosophical sides these stark visions take in, clear. All this is topped of by a reference to Plato: You will not always have a philosopher prince.
Meanwhile in the macro conflict there is also a mini conflict brewing between our narrators who are in quite some psychological stress due to all the events: Friends help friends ignore the voices that tell us we’re not human, outside voices and in one thinks, and even an old enemy says to them: If I couldn’t be happy, you wanted to help me to at least be excellent
The Iliad and Odyssee references are brilliantly interwoven, we have super innovative voting systems to protect plurality, dialogue and the interests of those affected by decisions.
There is a minors speech at the end which is like Greta Thunberg at her finest in terms of rhetorics on Earth’s children war debt.
All in all the resolution of this book promises A richer, more plural world, almost like a futuristic version of Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman in novel form.
Was it always fully believable? No, there is a real Deus Ex Machina, even called that way in the novel for instance. But in terms of provoking thought about not technology, which most people would associate with the genre, but democracy, society, war, politics and finding purpose in a potential post scarcity world, this series is unrivalled.
Highly, highly recommended!
We are the instruments that carve the path from cave walls to the stars
Ada Palmer her Terra Ignota series is the discovery of the reading year 2021 for me in terms of science-fiction, and as very thought provoking books in general. In Perhaps the Stars, the final instalment of the series, we follow a broad cast of familiar characters, in their first war.
I loved the thoughtful portrayal of the opening acts of the war, with communications and transportation (and hence geography) becoming central once again. Also the role of [anonymous] (such a fascinating position in general) is great to have a complete picture of the events unfolding and the politics involved. Told mainly from the perspective of someone in the world capital, located at Sardinia, the war is both global and local with battles at the bridges and communication as far as Kashmir trickling in from a pass-it-on makeshift system. Agreements on identifying combatants, on how to celebrate religious feasts even though there is war, reviving a kind of Red Cross, there is not much Ada Palmer has not thought of.
You can already feel the fibers of the world regenerating, town by town the narrator says, and the war in general is far from as destructive as one could imagine it to be based on more recent examples. Space elevators are of prime importance, one being located at the Maldives, who are interesting enough still around after climate change.
Although I like the less flowery narration in the first 20% equally, when a old familiar face comes back a veritable mini Odyssee, with a splash of The Count of Monte Cristo unfolds, I was rather awestruck by the audacity of combining these kind of narratives into a science-fiction novel. Hope opens up the armour inside of us one of the character says, and it is hard to stay cynical after following the cast for three books and nearly 2.000 pages.
In terms of epicness the story is also everything one can hope for, from speeches saying: We face tomorrow tomorrow. We face tonight tonight or Peace comes only after victory to We can’t undo this level of destruction that had me gasping, very gripping how Palmer makes tangible how many years of progress hang in the balance and could be lost.
Again this is a sprawling, twisty novel, full of high stake brilliance and two conceivable sides for the battle over the very future of humanity, developing very differently than the initial sides that are clear at the start of the war.
Mindgames, ultimatums and twists hit the cast full on, with many old favourites making appearances: Cornel, Ando, Ganymede, Lorelei Cook, Thisbe, Perry, Joyce Faust just to name a few.
Humanity is teamwork, and this concept of what direction humanity should move towards, is further made urgent because there is a being who represent First Contact in the midst of the turmoil.
I chose not to choose yet he notes, but that choice is exactly the center of the conflict and possibly the whole direction of the future evolution of our species. Meanwhile he kind of burns humanity on the mess we make of meeting an Alien for the first time: You must become better at making your touch kind. Not next time, this time..
A venerable conversation between gods somewhere at 2/3's is very brilliantly done to make the philosophical sides these stark visions take in, clear. All this is topped of by a reference to Plato: You will not always have a philosopher prince.
Meanwhile in the macro conflict there is also a mini conflict brewing between our narrators who are in quite some psychological stress due to all the events: Friends help friends ignore the voices that tell us we’re not human, outside voices and in one thinks, and even an old enemy says to them: If I couldn’t be happy, you wanted to help me to at least be excellent
The Iliad and Odyssee references are brilliantly interwoven, we have super innovative voting systems to protect plurality, dialogue and the interests of those affected by decisions.
There is a minors speech at the end which is like Greta Thunberg at her finest in terms of rhetorics on Earth’s children war debt.
All in all the resolution of this book promises A richer, more plural world, almost like a futuristic version of Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman in novel form.
Was it always fully believable? No, there is a real Deus Ex Machina, even called that way in the novel for instance. But in terms of provoking thought about not technology, which most people would associate with the genre, but democracy, society, war, politics and finding purpose in a potential post scarcity world, this series is unrivalled.
Highly, highly recommended!
September 25, 2021
There is no easy way to review this or the other three books in this cycle without first distinguishing the whole lot from all other SF.
It is important to note that this one is smarter, denser, more deeply thoughtful, and planned out than most heavily world-built stories. If you took your extensive knowledge of history of Romantic periods: from Humanists, Utopians, divine rights of kings, gender explorers, anarcho-libertarians, and more, mix them all up with futuristic tech and then set them all up to tear their shared utopias apart over the span of the first three books, then you'll get Perhaps the Stars.
War. The third great World War, full of idealists that want to limit the damage as they fight for their ideals, the totally predictable slide into atrocities, plots within plots within plots, massive death tolls, and a huge cast of characters all following their values to their inevitable dooms.
From the first book, Too Like the Lightning, where the future world is rocked with massive betrayals to its utopia core -- to Seven Surrenders which seemed to have an ultimate winner in the wonderfully intricate values battle -- to Will to Battle, which proves that politics never really ends until all parties are safely dead -- to Perhaps the Stars, where we live the horrors of war and their aftermath, including setting one's hopes ever higher -- I have to say this series is one of the most intricately interesting pieces of fiction I've ever read.
The last book is a true capstone to the others.
One fair warning, however: because of the amount of love that had gone into these four books, I don't expect anyone to absorb all the goodies in these pages. It is rich, dense, and deserves multiple readings. It took me much longer to finish this simply because I had to absorb so much, and I'm generally a fairly fast reader.
Fortunately, it is ALL very much worth it. In a genre that generally attracts intellectuals and scientists and those who truly appreciate the imagination, this one rises to the very top of the intellectual chart.
In a world of SF that seems interchangeable with itself, the Terra Ignota series aims for the stars.
It is important to note that this one is smarter, denser, more deeply thoughtful, and planned out than most heavily world-built stories. If you took your extensive knowledge of history of Romantic periods: from Humanists, Utopians, divine rights of kings, gender explorers, anarcho-libertarians, and more, mix them all up with futuristic tech and then set them all up to tear their shared utopias apart over the span of the first three books, then you'll get Perhaps the Stars.
War. The third great World War, full of idealists that want to limit the damage as they fight for their ideals, the totally predictable slide into atrocities, plots within plots within plots, massive death tolls, and a huge cast of characters all following their values to their inevitable dooms.
From the first book, Too Like the Lightning, where the future world is rocked with massive betrayals to its utopia core -- to Seven Surrenders which seemed to have an ultimate winner in the wonderfully intricate values battle -- to Will to Battle, which proves that politics never really ends until all parties are safely dead -- to Perhaps the Stars, where we live the horrors of war and their aftermath, including setting one's hopes ever higher -- I have to say this series is one of the most intricately interesting pieces of fiction I've ever read.
The last book is a true capstone to the others.
One fair warning, however: because of the amount of love that had gone into these four books, I don't expect anyone to absorb all the goodies in these pages. It is rich, dense, and deserves multiple readings. It took me much longer to finish this simply because I had to absorb so much, and I'm generally a fairly fast reader.
Fortunately, it is ALL very much worth it. In a genre that generally attracts intellectuals and scientists and those who truly appreciate the imagination, this one rises to the very top of the intellectual chart.
In a world of SF that seems interchangeable with itself, the Terra Ignota series aims for the stars.
October 14, 2023
I did not enjoy a majority of this book. Up until the last 50 pages, I was going to give this 2 stars. But I'm sentimental, and these are emotional books with big ideas which really tug at your heart. And even though soooo much of this final book frustrated me, if I'm trying to be as objective as possible, then this book, like the previous 3 - though I do think this is the weakest - is an epic piece of literature, something unique and so human and what science fiction is all about.
But wow so much of it made me mad.
I think this books biggest flaws are in it being way too fucking long and the characters being way too fucking dramatic. It's like the author watched a shit ton of anime before writing this novel - but not the good kind; the kind where every little interaction is drawn out over multiple episodes, and everyone acts like an melodramatic maniac. E V E R Y T H I N G is dragged out: every decision, every conversation, every act - page after page after page of characters verbally jerking each other off when in the end they almost always do what they initially say they're going to do. Every page is a dance when sometimes it'd be nice if it was a nice, brisk walk. At one point we get this...
And then the invading Mitsubishi captured most of Romanova. Sorry to be so curt, but we have to move now and I wanted to leave some summary in case we get blown up and I never finish. (161)
...and I'm just like NO, PLEASE GOD, BE MORE CURT! So much more of this book needed to be summed up. It really needed editing.
Things That Annoyed the Shit Out of Me
JEDD Mason. JEDD is terrible. JEDD is someone who is so smart and so odd that everyone thinks he's a literal God or Alien. But he is really not written as such - in a believable way. He reads like, at best, an autistic savant, and at worst, a complete moron, and yet every character practically bows down to him after every little piece of word-vomit that comes out of his mouth. He reminded me of that fucked up child from the movie Midsommar who just draws nonsensical paintings, and then the elders take the painting and make up prophetic nonsense about it. He is one of the biggest plot elements of the whole series, yet he completely misses the mark for me - his half-baked, anthropocentricphilosophy theology, his "literal" way of speech, his downright inability to understand basic concepts - and he's a HUGE focus of Perhaps the Stars.
"Where are you, Martin?"
or
"What has humankind named that place where stands thy flesh, My Martin?"
Congratulations, if you picked the second option as an example of a sensible question to ask someone to acquire their location, thenyou're clearly a fucking weirdo you're clearly a sane individual who appreciates quality speech.
Gordian. The Brillists play a bigger part in this novel. This should be a good thing - they are the psychologists, the brains - but it's not, because this book - and pretty much every crime show, tv drama, even most books, EVEN science books - butchers psychology.
"Pick a number."
"Five."
"Larger than five."
"One hundred thirteen million, six hundred and four."
"Color?"
"Silver-gray."
They gave a little gasp, as when a judge sees the first good touch in a fencing match....
...and then the Gordian reads the character like a book.
Look, I know we love the fantasy of a Sherlock Holmes, or a Spencer Reid, or [insert genius detective character who can read someone's life story by looking at the dirt under their fingernails], but this is not how psychology works. In reality, every person is an island; emotional fingerprints do not exist, and there are factors of unpredictability that no calculation based on personal experience or stereotyping or statistical average can account for.
The characters of this series - especially JEDD and Gordian - are constantly doing this bullshit mind-body reading that isn't a true replicable science in reality, and sci-fi books need to stop using this trope as massive plot elements.
Leviathan, The Iliad and Odyssey, and Fate. This book just goes off the rails with references to other books. People talk shit about books like Ready Player One for relying on nostalgia and lacking a unique voice, but Perhaps the Stars is guilty for the same overindulgences. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing - no work exists in a vacuum, and homages and building off other ideas can be great - and it wasn't a bad thing in book 1 or 2, where philosophy and history is relevant to the world-building. But Homer's epics become more than a relevant parallel in book 4, they devour the plot, turning any realistic plot-potential into a play, without real stakes and without believability. I never realized how much OS and the Humanists carried this series - thought it was mostly Utopians and the big ideas before - until they became largely absent (though many humanist characters do return, and they are the highlights of book 4).
Achilles and Cornel MASON. Annoying, melodramatic man-children.
Miracles and Answers. This series started off feeling like an epic historical sci fi with elements of magic that would turn out to be Clarke's third law. By book three and four, it starts to feel like fantasy. I was a little prepared for this though - I didn't think we would get very satisfying answers to Bridger or the miracles. In some ways, I was actually pleasantly surprised with some "answers" in book 4 (but really only because I had such low expectations for sensible answers in the first place). I've learned that people kind of suck at ending books like this - shows like Lost - movies like Prometheus - which present some insane shit early on that gets you hooked but can't deliver.
Things That I Enjoyed
U-beasts, Huxley, Faust, 9A, Sniper, Cato, sometimes Mycroft.... All these had their good moments.
There is a torture scene that is the best part of the book.
The Humanists are great characters.
Gender and human flexibility. Strongest aspect of the series. I think it fails in metaphysics and new wave philosophy, but it doesn't fail in gender politics.
But wow so much of it made me mad.
I think this books biggest flaws are in it being way too fucking long and the characters being way too fucking dramatic. It's like the author watched a shit ton of anime before writing this novel - but not the good kind; the kind where every little interaction is drawn out over multiple episodes, and everyone acts like an melodramatic maniac. E V E R Y T H I N G is dragged out: every decision, every conversation, every act - page after page after page of characters verbally jerking each other off when in the end they almost always do what they initially say they're going to do. Every page is a dance when sometimes it'd be nice if it was a nice, brisk walk. At one point we get this...
And then the invading Mitsubishi captured most of Romanova. Sorry to be so curt, but we have to move now and I wanted to leave some summary in case we get blown up and I never finish. (161)
...and I'm just like NO, PLEASE GOD, BE MORE CURT! So much more of this book needed to be summed up. It really needed editing.
Things That Annoyed the Shit Out of Me
JEDD Mason. JEDD is terrible. JEDD is someone who is so smart and so odd that everyone thinks he's a literal God or Alien. But he is really not written as such - in a believable way. He reads like, at best, an autistic savant, and at worst, a complete moron, and yet every character practically bows down to him after every little piece of word-vomit that comes out of his mouth. He reminded me of that fucked up child from the movie Midsommar who just draws nonsensical paintings, and then the elders take the painting and make up prophetic nonsense about it. He is one of the biggest plot elements of the whole series, yet he completely misses the mark for me - his half-baked, anthropocentric
"Where are you, Martin?"
or
"What has humankind named that place where stands thy flesh, My Martin?"
Congratulations, if you picked the second option as an example of a sensible question to ask someone to acquire their location, then
Gordian. The Brillists play a bigger part in this novel. This should be a good thing - they are the psychologists, the brains - but it's not, because this book - and pretty much every crime show, tv drama, even most books, EVEN science books - butchers psychology.
"Pick a number."
"Five."
"Larger than five."
"One hundred thirteen million, six hundred and four."
"Color?"
"Silver-gray."
They gave a little gasp, as when a judge sees the first good touch in a fencing match....
...and then the Gordian reads the character like a book.
Look, I know we love the fantasy of a Sherlock Holmes, or a Spencer Reid, or [insert genius detective character who can read someone's life story by looking at the dirt under their fingernails], but this is not how psychology works. In reality, every person is an island; emotional fingerprints do not exist, and there are factors of unpredictability that no calculation based on personal experience or stereotyping or statistical average can account for.
The characters of this series - especially JEDD and Gordian - are constantly doing this bullshit mind-body reading that isn't a true replicable science in reality, and sci-fi books need to stop using this trope as massive plot elements.
Leviathan, The Iliad and Odyssey, and Fate. This book just goes off the rails with references to other books. People talk shit about books like Ready Player One for relying on nostalgia and lacking a unique voice, but Perhaps the Stars is guilty for the same overindulgences. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing - no work exists in a vacuum, and homages and building off other ideas can be great - and it wasn't a bad thing in book 1 or 2, where philosophy and history is relevant to the world-building. But Homer's epics become more than a relevant parallel in book 4, they devour the plot, turning any realistic plot-potential into a play, without real stakes and without believability. I never realized how much OS and the Humanists carried this series - thought it was mostly Utopians and the big ideas before - until they became largely absent (though many humanist characters do return, and they are the highlights of book 4).
Achilles and Cornel MASON. Annoying, melodramatic man-children.
Miracles and Answers. This series started off feeling like an epic historical sci fi with elements of magic that would turn out to be Clarke's third law. By book three and four, it starts to feel like fantasy. I was a little prepared for this though - I didn't think we would get very satisfying answers to Bridger or the miracles. In some ways, I was actually pleasantly surprised with some "answers" in book 4 (but really only because I had such low expectations for sensible answers in the first place). I've learned that people kind of suck at ending books like this - shows like Lost - movies like Prometheus - which present some insane shit early on that gets you hooked but can't deliver.
Things That I Enjoyed
U-beasts, Huxley, Faust, 9A, Sniper, Cato, sometimes Mycroft.... All these had their good moments.
There is a torture scene that is the best part of the book.
The Humanists are great characters.
Gender and human flexibility. Strongest aspect of the series. I think it fails in metaphysics and new wave philosophy, but it doesn't fail in gender politics.
December 24, 2021
I needed to give myself time to digest this book.
It is weird. If you put the minds of Jo Walton, China Mieville, Homer, Voltaire, and Rodenberry in a blender, and baked the resultant goo into a cake, that cake would be almost the same taste as this book, and about as plausible an occurrence.
But I...loved it? The twists and turns, the deaths and rebirths, the unexpected humor, the volley of narration and lost time and resets and magic...it's just so MUCH and still so cohesive. I hate how good it is, and I love how vile it is.
This was worth the wait, and excellent, but not perfect. The biggest thing for me was that the was so minor, in the long run.
CONTENT WARNING:
Y'all, I don't even know. If you got through Seven Surrenders, go for it. It's worth the price of admission. But I honestly can't tell you exactly what this book is about, or what it isn't about, and if it came to any good conclusions, or really any conclusions at all. Infuriating.
Can't wait to read it again.
It is weird. If you put the minds of Jo Walton, China Mieville, Homer, Voltaire, and Rodenberry in a blender, and baked the resultant goo into a cake, that cake would be almost the same taste as this book, and about as plausible an occurrence.
But I...loved it? The twists and turns, the deaths and rebirths, the unexpected humor, the volley of narration and lost time and resets and magic...it's just so MUCH and still so cohesive. I hate how good it is, and I love how vile it is.
This was worth the wait, and excellent, but not perfect. The biggest thing for me was that the was so minor, in the long run.
CONTENT WARNING:
Y'all, I don't even know. If you got through Seven Surrenders, go for it. It's worth the price of admission. But I honestly can't tell you exactly what this book is about, or what it isn't about, and if it came to any good conclusions, or really any conclusions at all. Infuriating.
Can't wait to read it again.
January 28, 2021
In some ways, it's hard to review this book without talking about the plot because there's so damn much of it and it's so damn compelling. Worry thee not, noble reader, I shall endeavour to shield you from the smallest spoilerous detail. Look, if you're reading the final volume in a series, you've enjoyed the rest enough to keep reading; I believe this will be especially true of Terra Ignota given how integrated these four volumes are. Thus, gentle reader, the question you want answered is not "should I pick up this book," but instead "does this live up to what has come before?"
I'm very pleased to report that it does. The intricate worldbuilding continues, managing to feel like it is simultaneously incredibly inventive and also an obvious conclusion that we could have thought of if only we had given enough hours to the task. The narration from the end of The Will to Battle continues, bringing a delightfully new perspective to events. The theology is maybe my favourite theology that I've ever gotten from a novel and has, for the first time ever, made me think about real-world theology differently. Questions are answered that you, dear reader, were thinking about and that haven't occurred to you.
I have, at the time of this review, read this book twice in its entirety and more than that in my favourite parts. I first read it in a frantic weekend and then, a couple months later, reread it at a more leisurely pace. I can report that it works well either way: the plot is driving, explosive, and utterly compelling so you don't want to put it down; the prose and world and characters are enjoyable and thought provoking so that you want to take your time with it and really savour and think. I will, no doubt, read this again this year. I don't need to talk about the specifics for you, kind reader, to understand that 2020 was a traumatic and grief-filled year, and this was a book that helped me through one of its darkest moments. I think it will likewise bring joy to you.
I'm very pleased to report that it does. The intricate worldbuilding continues, managing to feel like it is simultaneously incredibly inventive and also an obvious conclusion that we could have thought of if only we had given enough hours to the task. The narration from the end of The Will to Battle continues, bringing a delightfully new perspective to events. The theology is maybe my favourite theology that I've ever gotten from a novel and has, for the first time ever, made me think about real-world theology differently. Questions are answered that you, dear reader, were thinking about and that haven't occurred to you.
I have, at the time of this review, read this book twice in its entirety and more than that in my favourite parts. I first read it in a frantic weekend and then, a couple months later, reread it at a more leisurely pace. I can report that it works well either way: the plot is driving, explosive, and utterly compelling so you don't want to put it down; the prose and world and characters are enjoyable and thought provoking so that you want to take your time with it and really savour and think. I will, no doubt, read this again this year. I don't need to talk about the specifics for you, kind reader, to understand that 2020 was a traumatic and grief-filled year, and this was a book that helped me through one of its darkest moments. I think it will likewise bring joy to you.
April 26, 2024
A Masterpiece of Science Fiction that deserves to be placed alongside works like The Book of the New Sun and other classic science fiction. It will be a future classic that will be discussed decades from now.
How do you review this mammoth of an epic? Look I’ve written detailed reviews for Books 1–3, and whatever criticisms I even voiced were almost entirely mitigated by this book’s existence. So many minor quibbles you didn’t even know you had, are directly answered in this novel. There are so many revelations, twists, and awe-inspiring moments that you can tell has been meticulously crafted from the beginning. It’s a novel that honours our Homeric roots even more so than its predecessor, not in superficial nostalgia reference bait, but taking those ideas from the Homeric traditions, most notably the Iliad. Offering new insights that can only be told through science fiction, but most importantly, the genius mind of Ada Palmer.
It's one of the smartest, densest, thought-provoking, evocative, and emotional stories told in fiction. Even the acknowledgement for the book is a masterpiece, such a beautiful send-off to the reader and something to think about in our daily lives. One element I think rings true for the entire series, it sparks conversation, and everyone will disagree on different things. It's very influenced by Gene Wolfe (most specifically the Book of the New Sun), even more so than its initial framing device, but with references that go a bit deeper than you initially expect yet it's very unlike Wolfe. So even though they are often compared to each other, and for good reasons, they're very different in a good way.
These are just some of her major influences, and there are many others to list, but as a whole, it makes for a fascinating blend of influences alongside the knowledge she has gained from her profession as a historian. Everything seeps into the work, which makes the world, plot and just everything so unique. I've said this before, but if people randomly stumble upon this review and it’s the final book in the series and you're wondering about the series’ quality, it’s mainly for them.
The writing style: If you read Books 1–3, you should know what to expect: 4th wall breaks, Shakespearean plays, Socratic dialogues, 18th-century writing style, 25th-century gender pronouns, and experimental writing styles throughout. Book 4 is all that, but one could argue that it is more indulgent in a good way. What sets this book even further apart with its boldness is Chapter 13. You know, when you encounter a chapter, you are just shocked at how a chapter could be written in a certain way. I had that experience once with the Book of the New Sun (hence some of the BOTNS parallels but totally different), reading the chapter Loyal to the Group of Seventeen. I never knew stories could be told in a specific way until you actually read them, and somehow, they were done beautifully. The same thing happened here. Just when I thought I was used to a lot of Palmer's stylistic quirks, this chapter made me in complete awe and cursed audibly due to its genius. Furthermore, a unique framing device that is a product of this book alone, which is done masterfully.
The pacing of the series now that I have finished it has made me realise its genius. Each chapter in this whole series has incredible pacing, or at least, I should say, it feels very meaningful (it being unskippable). Each chapter of the series goes through several phases, and the ending of a chapter often feels like a mini-climax of sorts. She has apparently talked about it with Ken Liu, if there’s a stretch of time between now and the next interesting event (or development), just skip straight to it. That’s very much embodied in her writing for the entire series. That sounds like it’s fast paced, but it’s quite the opposite; the series is a slow burn entirely throughout. I’m not sure why, but each chapter felt like a Herculean task and just needed rest to process, so often I just read one chapter a day for this book.
I feel like you will identify with certain characters more than others, and for me, it was definitely the humanist (though I love the cousins). Though I disagree with how the humanists went about certain actions, the underlying philosophy that is discussed is something I respect. All of the Hives have something respectable about them, and you can see why certain individuals would lean towards a certain Hive. No Hive is entirely blameless, which is realistic, like certain governments aren’t entirely innocent.
There’s so much interesting theology and themes this entire series explores that multiple essays are warranted. How its pluralistic coexistence can’t keep its balance and how a tipping point is inevitable. Pretty much all the core themes of the Iliad (references are so plentiful that I feel it’s generally recommended to read the Iliad before reading Terra Ignota) are explored here:
Honour, Fate and Free Will, Gods, Morality, Wartime vs. Peace, and Love. Then goes deeper into society, governmental structures from class struggles(?), how restrictions can be best for the people as a whole, but misused can be weaponised, providence, why suffering exists, etc. There’s a laundry list I don’t want to mention as it can be considered spoilery, so I will restrain myself.
Before I discuss spoilers (which I will spoiler tag), I just say character work is generally pretty good. There’s a lot and it can get overwhelming, but the main ones will stick. Initially, some of these characters feel like they exist to share a certain ideology, so a discussion can be made, which is partly true, but then you realise the humanity of some of these characters, which really surprised me. Furthermore, due to the intricate worldbuilding, the characters feel like they inhabit an actual place, which adds further gravitas to their discussions, and you feel the plight of the average person even though we aren’t following their perspective. However, if we were to comment on one character in particular, Mycroft is phenomenal.
Spoilers:
There are genuinely too many amazing and masterpiece moments I didn’t have time to mention. Did you know the book devoted a chapter to uniforms in the midst of war and it's amazing! (trust me). In conclusion, Terra Ignota as a whole is a masterpiece, especially when taken as a whole. It might be too quick to say, but this will be a future classic and will be talked about decades from now. It’s a bold claim I make, but its sheer ambition deserves such praise. One of the most unique series that’s highly worth the investment.
9.5-10/10
P.S - Review For Book 1
If you haven't read my other reviews and my first one (for Terra Ignota) and want me to go much more in-depth with worldbuilding, check out my previous review! Plus, if you want to hear the author talk about her own world, give "Ada Palmer Interview - using history to create future worlds" on Youtube a shot!
How do you review this mammoth of an epic? Look I’ve written detailed reviews for Books 1–3, and whatever criticisms I even voiced were almost entirely mitigated by this book’s existence. So many minor quibbles you didn’t even know you had, are directly answered in this novel. There are so many revelations, twists, and awe-inspiring moments that you can tell has been meticulously crafted from the beginning. It’s a novel that honours our Homeric roots even more so than its predecessor, not in superficial nostalgia reference bait, but taking those ideas from the Homeric traditions, most notably the Iliad. Offering new insights that can only be told through science fiction, but most importantly, the genius mind of Ada Palmer.
It's one of the smartest, densest, thought-provoking, evocative, and emotional stories told in fiction. Even the acknowledgement for the book is a masterpiece, such a beautiful send-off to the reader and something to think about in our daily lives. One element I think rings true for the entire series, it sparks conversation, and everyone will disagree on different things. It's very influenced by Gene Wolfe (most specifically the Book of the New Sun), even more so than its initial framing device, but with references that go a bit deeper than you initially expect yet it's very unlike Wolfe. So even though they are often compared to each other, and for good reasons, they're very different in a good way.
In Seven Surrenders I also named many who have been my teachers without knowing me, and name again the chiefest: Diderot, Voltaire, de Sade, Homer, Arthur Conan Doyle, Alfred Bester, Gene Wolfe, Osamu Tezuka, and also the many makers of I Claudius (books and TV), Revolutionary Girl Utena, Gundam, and Julie Taymor’s Fool’s Fire.
These are just some of her major influences, and there are many others to list, but as a whole, it makes for a fascinating blend of influences alongside the knowledge she has gained from her profession as a historian. Everything seeps into the work, which makes the world, plot and just everything so unique. I've said this before, but if people randomly stumble upon this review and it’s the final book in the series and you're wondering about the series’ quality, it’s mainly for them.
The writing style: If you read Books 1–3, you should know what to expect: 4th wall breaks, Shakespearean plays, Socratic dialogues, 18th-century writing style, 25th-century gender pronouns, and experimental writing styles throughout. Book 4 is all that, but one could argue that it is more indulgent in a good way. What sets this book even further apart with its boldness is Chapter 13. You know, when you encounter a chapter, you are just shocked at how a chapter could be written in a certain way. I had that experience once with the Book of the New Sun (hence some of the BOTNS parallels but totally different), reading the chapter Loyal to the Group of Seventeen. I never knew stories could be told in a specific way until you actually read them, and somehow, they were done beautifully. The same thing happened here. Just when I thought I was used to a lot of Palmer's stylistic quirks, this chapter made me in complete awe and cursed audibly due to its genius. Furthermore, a unique framing device that is a product of this book alone, which is done masterfully.
The pacing of the series now that I have finished it has made me realise its genius. Each chapter in this whole series has incredible pacing, or at least, I should say, it feels very meaningful (it being unskippable). Each chapter of the series goes through several phases, and the ending of a chapter often feels like a mini-climax of sorts. She has apparently talked about it with Ken Liu, if there’s a stretch of time between now and the next interesting event (or development), just skip straight to it. That’s very much embodied in her writing for the entire series. That sounds like it’s fast paced, but it’s quite the opposite; the series is a slow burn entirely throughout. I’m not sure why, but each chapter felt like a Herculean task and just needed rest to process, so often I just read one chapter a day for this book.
I feel like you will identify with certain characters more than others, and for me, it was definitely the humanist (though I love the cousins). Though I disagree with how the humanists went about certain actions, the underlying philosophy that is discussed is something I respect. All of the Hives have something respectable about them, and you can see why certain individuals would lean towards a certain Hive. No Hive is entirely blameless, which is realistic, like certain governments aren’t entirely innocent.
There’s so much interesting theology and themes this entire series explores that multiple essays are warranted. How its pluralistic coexistence can’t keep its balance and how a tipping point is inevitable. Pretty much all the core themes of the Iliad (references are so plentiful that I feel it’s generally recommended to read the Iliad before reading Terra Ignota) are explored here:
Honour, Fate and Free Will, Gods, Morality, Wartime vs. Peace, and Love. Then goes deeper into society, governmental structures from class struggles(?), how restrictions can be best for the people as a whole, but misused can be weaponised, providence, why suffering exists, etc. There’s a laundry list I don’t want to mention as it can be considered spoilery, so I will restrain myself.
Before I discuss spoilers (which I will spoiler tag), I just say character work is generally pretty good. There’s a lot and it can get overwhelming, but the main ones will stick. Initially, some of these characters feel like they exist to share a certain ideology, so a discussion can be made, which is partly true, but then you realise the humanity of some of these characters, which really surprised me. Furthermore, due to the intricate worldbuilding, the characters feel like they inhabit an actual place, which adds further gravitas to their discussions, and you feel the plight of the average person even though we aren’t following their perspective. However, if we were to comment on one character in particular, Mycroft is phenomenal.
Spoilers:
There are genuinely too many amazing and masterpiece moments I didn’t have time to mention. Did you know the book devoted a chapter to uniforms in the midst of war and it's amazing! (trust me). In conclusion, Terra Ignota as a whole is a masterpiece, especially when taken as a whole. It might be too quick to say, but this will be a future classic and will be talked about decades from now. It’s a bold claim I make, but its sheer ambition deserves such praise. One of the most unique series that’s highly worth the investment.
9.5-10/10
P.S - Review For Book 1
If you haven't read my other reviews and my first one (for Terra Ignota) and want me to go much more in-depth with worldbuilding, check out my previous review! Plus, if you want to hear the author talk about her own world, give "Ada Palmer Interview - using history to create future worlds" on Youtube a shot!
April 20, 2023
Series Review No Spoilers
Ok, this series is straight up, no qualifiers, one of the best things I've ever read. If I had a top ten list, I expect it would be in the top 3. This is Dune level SF, but unlike Dune this is a world I'd kill to live in. This is deeper than Murderbot, richer than Teixcalaan, Bank's Culture series without the boring parts. I love this so, so much.
It won't be for everybody. The language is dense, imitating an 18th century style. It breaks the fourth wall frequently, our narrator talking to various censors and readers. It's politics and intrigue. Our unreliable narrator has committed atrocities, and probably a dozen other dealbreakers for some of you that aren't occurring to me at the moment.
The world here for me is a utopia, organized religion is outlawed, flying cars can get you anywhere on earth in 2 hours, nations are not geographical or hereditary, you get to choose your nation and your laws. The major political entities are 7 so-called "hives" which form an Alliance with a senate. The black and white, authoritarian Masons, compassionate Cousins, the Humanists with theater and sport, the EU for traditionalists, the corporate Mitsubishi, academic Gordians, and the technological Utopians. Personally my historic interest patterns align very much with the inward focused Gordians and their sophisticated psychology. But I can't help but love the Utopians with their U-beasts, and city on the moon, and quest to colonize Mars, despite never being particularly interested in space myself. Maybe just because it's something out of reach, and out of my control.
Of course, there is an underbelly.
You should think of this as a duology. The first 2 books, inciting incident, a scandal that disrupts this seemingly ideal society, the last 2, the consequences.
As to where it sits on the Science Fiction-Fantasy spectrum, my initial, instinctive reaction was to say this is NOT hard SF, as the extrapolation we are given is not starting from physics or any other of the "hard" sciences. And even worse there is not just religion, something conspicuous by it's absence in so much science fiction, there is God. Miracles. And elements, events, which feel more like magical realism than unexplained technology. But Palmer is a professor, a historian, and the worldbuilding feels every bit as well thought out, as elaborate and detailed as the best so-called "hard" SF, here built from history, philosophy, and politics. (And Homer and Shakespeare!)
When those miraculous events first reared their head in Too Like the Lightning, I did not want them. I did not like them. While I think including religion in SF as a human tendency, a sociological layer essential for an accurate portrayal of humanity, is a positive, I reject anything that implies that religion is actually true. It pushes a book into the category of fantasy. I wanted to write them off as a product of our unreliable narrator's belief. I hoped later revelations would prove those things false. But this story could not be what it is without those elements. What Palmer ultimately does with these elements was satisfying and I wouldn't see it changed.
This book is also full of Gender-Fuckery. We don't get a clear picture of most characters' sex in these books. Like discussion of religion, gender is taboo, outlawed after the Church War. They/them for everyone. But our oh so unreliable narrator who's decided to write in the style of an Enlightenment philosopher-historian assigns gendered pronouns to characters as he wills, inconsistently, based only on their perception of actions, personality traits, or roles in the moment. Very occasionally we get a cue that seems to contradict the pronouns Mycroft assigns. Sometimes the gender flips. As someone who doesn't really form concrete images of characters this didn't bother me in the slightest, but I do wonder if readers who are strong visualizers will find this jarring when their assumptions about a character are occasionally contradicted.
There are so many wonderful characters here, to love, to hate, to admire, to detest, to mourn. I adored the main narrator, Mycroft, others I changed my mind about as the story progressed. At one point it had me empathize with God, and I'm generally on team, if one exists, we should put a stop to that.
Generally with books, I'm shorter is better. Series are best when they're linked standalones, like mysteries or thrillers. But this 4 book behemoth is, again, one of the best things I've ever read. I will read all of it again. Though I might brush up on some history and philosophy first.
All the stars.
---
Some quotes I like from this volume:
Ok, this series is straight up, no qualifiers, one of the best things I've ever read. If I had a top ten list, I expect it would be in the top 3. This is Dune level SF, but unlike Dune this is a world I'd kill to live in. This is deeper than Murderbot, richer than Teixcalaan, Bank's Culture series without the boring parts. I love this so, so much.
It won't be for everybody. The language is dense, imitating an 18th century style. It breaks the fourth wall frequently, our narrator talking to various censors and readers. It's politics and intrigue. Our unreliable narrator has committed atrocities, and probably a dozen other dealbreakers for some of you that aren't occurring to me at the moment.
The world here for me is a utopia, organized religion is outlawed, flying cars can get you anywhere on earth in 2 hours, nations are not geographical or hereditary, you get to choose your nation and your laws. The major political entities are 7 so-called "hives" which form an Alliance with a senate. The black and white, authoritarian Masons, compassionate Cousins, the Humanists with theater and sport, the EU for traditionalists, the corporate Mitsubishi, academic Gordians, and the technological Utopians. Personally my historic interest patterns align very much with the inward focused Gordians and their sophisticated psychology. But I can't help but love the Utopians with their U-beasts, and city on the moon, and quest to colonize Mars, despite never being particularly interested in space myself. Maybe just because it's something out of reach, and out of my control.
Of course, there is an underbelly.
You should think of this as a duology. The first 2 books, inciting incident, a scandal that disrupts this seemingly ideal society, the last 2, the consequences.
As to where it sits on the Science Fiction-Fantasy spectrum, my initial, instinctive reaction was to say this is NOT hard SF, as the extrapolation we are given is not starting from physics or any other of the "hard" sciences. And even worse there is not just religion, something conspicuous by it's absence in so much science fiction, there is God. Miracles. And elements, events, which feel more like magical realism than unexplained technology. But Palmer is a professor, a historian, and the worldbuilding feels every bit as well thought out, as elaborate and detailed as the best so-called "hard" SF, here built from history, philosophy, and politics. (And Homer and Shakespeare!)
When those miraculous events first reared their head in Too Like the Lightning, I did not want them. I did not like them. While I think including religion in SF as a human tendency, a sociological layer essential for an accurate portrayal of humanity, is a positive, I reject anything that implies that religion is actually true. It pushes a book into the category of fantasy. I wanted to write them off as a product of our unreliable narrator's belief. I hoped later revelations would prove those things false. But this story could not be what it is without those elements. What Palmer ultimately does with these elements was satisfying and I wouldn't see it changed.
This book is also full of Gender-Fuckery. We don't get a clear picture of most characters' sex in these books. Like discussion of religion, gender is taboo, outlawed after the Church War. They/them for everyone. But our oh so unreliable narrator who's decided to write in the style of an Enlightenment philosopher-historian assigns gendered pronouns to characters as he wills, inconsistently, based only on their perception of actions, personality traits, or roles in the moment. Very occasionally we get a cue that seems to contradict the pronouns Mycroft assigns. Sometimes the gender flips. As someone who doesn't really form concrete images of characters this didn't bother me in the slightest, but I do wonder if readers who are strong visualizers will find this jarring when their assumptions about a character are occasionally contradicted.
There are so many wonderful characters here, to love, to hate, to admire, to detest, to mourn. I adored the main narrator, Mycroft, others I changed my mind about as the story progressed. At one point it had me empathize with God, and I'm generally on team, if one exists, we should put a stop to that.
Generally with books, I'm shorter is better. Series are best when they're linked standalones, like mysteries or thrillers. But this 4 book behemoth is, again, one of the best things I've ever read. I will read all of it again. Though I might brush up on some history and philosophy first.
All the stars.
---
Some quotes I like from this volume:
Mycroft Canner loves Romanova, they wouldn’t harm a shingle on its pretty roofs, not without direct orders from MASON, or Mason Junior, or a short list of hallucinatory dead people, but I can tell by that blink—right there, did you catch it? And the little eyebrow twitch?—that Mycroft has no such orders.
I felt like a hateful messenger in some Shakespeare history, come to tell the earnest peasants that the sides had switched again, and friends and ba’sibs must now kill one another, because some distant noble sneezed too near the king.
Friends help friends ignore the voices that tell us we’re not human, outside voices and in.
November 22, 2021
Of the war between Myopia and Utopia.
Hold on until page 125. That wait would be fatal in a first book, but everyone who makes it here, to book four, has proven hardier and will eat it gladly.
Not a lot of war in this war novel before then. Instead, a Hufflepuff hum - faint in previous books, risen in this one. I don’t mean to be mean: the philosophical principle that nice things are important, philosophically rich is one of mine. But 9A, the narrator, is too much the overgrown child. They say “snugglier”. They emphasise snacking. Someone cries in every chapter I think. Like Odysseus. They also rave against free speech (though Palmer is a historian of censorship and should not be identified with 9A).
Neotene domesticity is all very well for Becky Chambers, but it doesn’t gel with the other gigantic aesthetic banners of this work (the Enlightenment consummated and their language appropriated; a society transformed, deluding itself to be peaceful; the ideological roots of conflict, the inexorability of war’s logic, thus this realistic war between lovers and friends).
The achievement of this book - besides the truly baroque prose, the truly insane narration - is that it nearly succeeds in making every faction reasonable. Uncertainty justifies terrible things, the most terrible: distrust, surveillance, subterfuge, war.
I can’t remember this being done so well. Maybe in Hugo or Dumas.
I am a big fan, but, so I dislike a lot about this series. I find the central conflict arbitrary, and the central psychological claim wrong. Actually maybe I just dislike the Ninth Anonymous, puppy Odysseus.
—-
* Meme: “in the grim darkness of the C25th, mankind has divided into the elemental archetypes: jock, fash, hufflepuff, freud, stemlord, landlord, libertarian, people with a country of origin instead of a personality”. (This is no critique of Palmer when we remember that all such groupings will arise through weird partially random historical contingencies: the resulting categories don’t need to make sense and probably won’t.)
* Common bit of silliness:
* I like the Renaissance conceit of calling god The Great Author, and Jedd's conceit of calling the Utopians "small authors", small gods. Later, this is expanded into a huggy thing where all humans are small authors - in the afterword Palmer implies more: that we're all obeying the Utopian oath by working so much as 40 hours a week. I honour this thought - for instance a cleaner is in fact doing something of moral significance when they work, is in fact imperceptibly pulling on the rope that leads to the future. But it's a piety to say that all stories are equal-sized, that all pull the same.
No, there is more to do.
* So many hundreds of details, like the Brillist / Gordian double name (ideology and instantiation). Recalls GNU / Linux. The verisimilitude of mess.
* The office of Anonymous doesn’t make sense. Has there ever been a writer who successfully spoke for humanity? Is solving epistemic logic puzzles really the only qualification you want for such a person?
* The stable stagnation following the exponential age seems pretty implausible. Then there's the laughable smallness of the AI threat - one serial killer(!). (I suppose Utopia solved AI alignment. But then set-sets would have to be obsolete, unless the other Hives hated U-beasts, which they don't seem to.)
* There’s a moving sequence about chronic fatigue, also one of Palmer’s personal crosses. Wheelchair as throne.
* The book takes a slightly absurd view of the wisdom and effectiveness and moral stature of the UN. Maybe they get better over 400 years of irrelevance.
* The plot is excessive, and I think it's intentionally difficult to track all the threads. Fine, but one bit goes too far for me:
* The main characters spend lots of their most critical resources on documentation, history monging. Sniper’s chapter is bought at extreme expense, Mycroft’s whole shtick… This is sorta realistic - militaries have war artists and official bookworms. But it’s not usually the commanders and chief strategists scribbling for posterity as the death squads stalk their corridors. Palmer uses epistolary devices to great effect, but I find myself wishing they’d focus on the war for a sec.
* I like the Mitsubishi a lot more in this one. Palmer makes me notice that the rich are a minority. Less vulnerable than the others, but there's a high floor to the vulnerability of any small group.
* a bit of body horror and mind rape, be warned.
* The novel could do without religion. Jedd could be a vast noble alien, and we would have no need for This World’s Creator or even Bridger. The narrators’ abjection before Jedd makes their tweeness worse. If there’s a god, you should wrestle him, not kneel. I could do without the extended
* Yet another fundamental problem:
* The Masons are shown as heroic and vast in numbers, and yet they seem most of the way to fascism. With one bad MASON, they could ruin everything. Their superiority complex, retributive deontology, lack of individualism, and willing lack of freedom, are in far more severe contradiction to the Hive Alliance than the conflicts Palmer chooses to emphasise. Cornel is a liberal tyrant and a longtermist, and so they do good despite their terrible potential. (It’s not just their power - Utopia is powerful too. It’s the sheer lack of checks.) I wish I could say I find it unrealistic for a billion people to larp full-time as a Roman pleb or Mussolinian.
* This book will age better than most, but parts of it ring trendy, sarky, Whedony. The bold, unclichéd treatment of gender of past books - as gravity, as a seductive force that can be covered up but not ignored, dimorphism as transgression, feminine arts as mind control, pronouns as a spicy personality marker.
Here it gives way to a soppy constructionism, gender as conspiracy:
—-
But the main gripe:
That said, nearly all the main characters are Explorers, taking one side.
What would I have as the war’s great theme? The one from the last book is fantastic and underemphasised here: faith in a benevolent dictator vs pragmatic, aggressive scepticism. The second? Past-regarders and future-regarders. Long reflection vs Builders. Noble lie vs radical honesty. Bioconservatism vs transhumanism (represented already, a little). Theory vs praxis. Academia vs autodidacts. Stamp collecting vs engineering. All better than the chosen
What about Jedd’s philosophy? Like Yahweh, he has serious problems with respecting boundaries. That his subsumption and illiberal eternal hugging is taken so seriously is annoying. His lack of socialisation is half stupidity (demanding unconditional surrender at the cost of millions of lives), half defamiliar genius (why do people die, father?).
One more deep disagreement:
And yet I am so glad. There is nothing like it in C21st literature. I am only able to attack its philosophy (philosophies) because it’s so clearly and sympathetically drawn, because so intellectually ambitious. I am certain there are readers out there who view Utopia as trivially wrong, though it’s hard to imagine anyone loving
Characters routinely do the reasonable thing, including positive-sum trades with their mortal enemies, including instrumental harm for enormous stakes. It is one of the few works which sees the full stakes so clearly, which sees the world-historical significance of nerds, science fiction, and technical tat, both beneath and beyond the average novelist.
Over-the-top, wrong, and great.
---
Clippings:
(every worldview a religion - I spit. Some less so than others!)
Hold on until page 125. That wait would be fatal in a first book, but everyone who makes it here, to book four, has proven hardier and will eat it gladly.
Not a lot of war in this war novel before then. Instead, a Hufflepuff hum - faint in previous books, risen in this one. I don’t mean to be mean: the philosophical principle that nice things are important, philosophically rich is one of mine. But 9A, the narrator, is too much the overgrown child. They say “snugglier”. They emphasise snacking. Someone cries in every chapter I think. Like Odysseus. They also rave against free speech (though Palmer is a historian of censorship and should not be identified with 9A).
Neotene domesticity is all very well for Becky Chambers, but it doesn’t gel with the other gigantic aesthetic banners of this work (the Enlightenment consummated and their language appropriated; a society transformed, deluding itself to be peaceful; the ideological roots of conflict, the inexorability of war’s logic, thus this realistic war between lovers and friends).
The achievement of this book - besides the truly baroque prose, the truly insane narration - is that it nearly succeeds in making every faction reasonable. Uncertainty justifies terrible things, the most terrible: distrust, surveillance, subterfuge, war.
I can’t remember this being done so well. Maybe in Hugo or Dumas.
I am a big fan, but, so I dislike a lot about this series. I find the central conflict arbitrary, and the central psychological claim wrong. Actually maybe I just dislike the Ninth Anonymous, puppy Odysseus.
—-
* Meme: “in the grim darkness of the C25th, mankind has divided into the elemental archetypes: jock, fash, hufflepuff, freud, stemlord, landlord, libertarian, people with a country of origin instead of a personality”. (This is no critique of Palmer when we remember that all such groupings will arise through weird partially random historical contingencies: the resulting categories don’t need to make sense and probably won’t.)
* Common bit of silliness:
“…languages are precious enough to be worth people dying for. A human life has infinite value, infinite consequences over the universe of space-time, but apparently They think a language is another order of infinity.”Piety. I can’t think of any language worth anyone dying for.
* I like the Renaissance conceit of calling god The Great Author, and Jedd's conceit of calling the Utopians "small authors", small gods. Later, this is expanded into a huggy thing where all humans are small authors - in the afterword Palmer implies more: that we're all obeying the Utopian oath by working so much as 40 hours a week. I honour this thought - for instance a cleaner is in fact doing something of moral significance when they work, is in fact imperceptibly pulling on the rope that leads to the future. But it's a piety to say that all stories are equal-sized, that all pull the same.
Many have described to me the journey from feeling they could never maintain such a high standard to realizing that we already are.
No, there is more to do.
* So many hundreds of details, like the Brillist / Gordian double name (ideology and instantiation). Recalls GNU / Linux. The verisimilitude of mess.
* The office of Anonymous doesn’t make sense. Has there ever been a writer who successfully spoke for humanity? Is solving epistemic logic puzzles really the only qualification you want for such a person?
* The stable stagnation following the exponential age seems pretty implausible. Then there's the laughable smallness of the AI threat - one serial killer(!). (I suppose Utopia solved AI alignment. But then set-sets would have to be obsolete, unless the other Hives hated U-beasts, which they don't seem to.)
* There’s a moving sequence about chronic fatigue, also one of Palmer’s personal crosses. Wheelchair as throne.
* The book takes a slightly absurd view of the wisdom and effectiveness and moral stature of the UN. Maybe they get better over 400 years of irrelevance.
* The plot is excessive, and I think it's intentionally difficult to track all the threads. Fine, but one bit goes too far for me:
* The main characters spend lots of their most critical resources on documentation, history monging. Sniper’s chapter is bought at extreme expense, Mycroft’s whole shtick… This is sorta realistic - militaries have war artists and official bookworms. But it’s not usually the commanders and chief strategists scribbling for posterity as the death squads stalk their corridors. Palmer uses epistolary devices to great effect, but I find myself wishing they’d focus on the war for a sec.
* I like the Mitsubishi a lot more in this one. Palmer makes me notice that the rich are a minority. Less vulnerable than the others, but there's a high floor to the vulnerability of any small group.
* a bit of body horror and mind rape, be warned.
* The novel could do without religion. Jedd could be a vast noble alien, and we would have no need for This World’s Creator or even Bridger. The narrators’ abjection before Jedd makes their tweeness worse. If there’s a god, you should wrestle him, not kneel. I could do without the extended
* Yet another fundamental problem:
* The Masons are shown as heroic and vast in numbers, and yet they seem most of the way to fascism. With one bad MASON, they could ruin everything. Their superiority complex, retributive deontology, lack of individualism, and willing lack of freedom, are in far more severe contradiction to the Hive Alliance than the conflicts Palmer chooses to emphasise. Cornel is a liberal tyrant and a longtermist, and so they do good despite their terrible potential. (It’s not just their power - Utopia is powerful too. It’s the sheer lack of checks.) I wish I could say I find it unrealistic for a billion people to larp full-time as a Roman pleb or Mussolinian.
* This book will age better than most, but parts of it ring trendy, sarky, Whedony. The bold, unclichéd treatment of gender of past books - as gravity, as a seductive force that can be covered up but not ignored, dimorphism as transgression, feminine arts as mind control, pronouns as a spicy personality marker.
Their comportment invites it, that toxic artificial helplessness that coded feminine in olden days, and makes us all fall over ourselves wanting to do things for Heloïse, so much so that we stifle when they try to do things for themself.
Here it gives way to a soppy constructionism, gender as conspiracy:
—-
But the main gripe:
That said, nearly all the main characters are Explorers, taking one side.
What would I have as the war’s great theme? The one from the last book is fantastic and underemphasised here: faith in a benevolent dictator vs pragmatic, aggressive scepticism. The second? Past-regarders and future-regarders. Long reflection vs Builders. Noble lie vs radical honesty. Bioconservatism vs transhumanism (represented already, a little). Theory vs praxis. Academia vs autodidacts. Stamp collecting vs engineering. All better than the chosen
What about Jedd’s philosophy? Like Yahweh, he has serious problems with respecting boundaries. That his subsumption and illiberal eternal hugging is taken so seriously is annoying. His lack of socialisation is half stupidity (demanding unconditional surrender at the cost of millions of lives), half defamiliar genius (why do people die, father?).
One more deep disagreement:
And yet I am so glad. There is nothing like it in C21st literature. I am only able to attack its philosophy (philosophies) because it’s so clearly and sympathetically drawn, because so intellectually ambitious. I am certain there are readers out there who view Utopia as trivially wrong, though it’s hard to imagine anyone loving
Characters routinely do the reasonable thing, including positive-sum trades with their mortal enemies, including instrumental harm for enormous stakes. It is one of the few works which sees the full stakes so clearly, which sees the world-historical significance of nerds, science fiction, and technical tat, both beneath and beyond the average novelist.
Over-the-top, wrong, and great.
---
Clippings:
I could see you, across the sky, the crowded sea, a thousand black and winged shapes for every tardy, well-meant Peace-dove. But humans began digging a canal across the Gulf of Corinth more than three thousand years ago and finished it in 1893. It’s worth trying things again. Apollo Guardian of Strangers knows that it’s worth trying things again. Especially for such a goal as peacefall.
Free Speech, that old tool of plutocracy, the intoxicating, rosy blossom under whose petals parasite lies can breed and multiply until they devour all the garden. None of us wants that. I hope none of us wants that, but there are still Free Speech zealots in this day and age, and they’re just the type to have communications tech, to build a radio or study Morse code, and volunteer to join our network as a link and pass on . . . death. I’m panicking, I know it. Everyone understands why we need censorship... I do believe it was a pretty thing once, Free Speech, such a lofty notion, but we outgrew it with our communications revolution, as with our machine guns we outgrew pretty chivalry.Odium! Also odious:
our true beliefs are visible in what pokes above the psyche’s surface in those moments when the overflowing heart sings out in gratitude, and then we learn what name it calls: Nature, Humanity, Reason, God, Gaea, Fate, subtle Prometheus, or Providence that takes so much but gives this.
(every worldview a religion - I spit. Some less so than others!)
I hope the ideas, the fragile and imperfect Hives of 2454, and the battered but changing-for-the-better Hives of 2456, will help you rise with strength tomorrow morning as you lift your oar, or pack, or first aid kit, whatever task at hand, they’re all the oar so long as you still carry in your breast the ancient spark, contagious, shared from breast to breast, that has died out a thousand times, but never yet in every breast at once. We will.
November 27, 2021
Factum est.
April 17, 2022
And so the Terra Ignota saga draws majestically to a close. The ambition and complexity of this series is truly incredible. I've never read any other sci-fi quite so dense with historical and literary material. The plot, style, world-building, and characters are all distinctively erudite. Each book demands the reader's full attention to keep up at all, let alone get the most from it. I'm sure that I missed a great deal, but definitely benefited from some familiarity with The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hobbes's Leviathan, and Rousseau's The Social Contract. Knowledge of French and Latin also helped. As with the previous books in the series, it took me at least fifty pages to adjust to the narrative style, remember the characters, and recall their basic allegiances. Once I did, the book became extremely compelling.
In the previous Terra Ignota books, war threatened. In Perhaps the Stars, war breaks out; a war unlike any other I've read about. Ada Palmer asks how a utopian global society would conduct a world war while attempting to minimise casualties and damage. The ideological splits that precipitated it are real and complex, but none of the sides want to wholly destroy the others. Their means of harm reduction are suitably ingenious: non-lethal weapons that cause lasting fatigue ('tiring guns'), unilateral suspension of global communications and travel systems, and agreement that combatants and non-combatants must be visually distinguishable by uniforms, among other strategies. The 9th Anonymous has taken over chronicling duties and recounts the outset of world war from the city of Romanova. There are echoes of the pandemic in the bandwidth lags during video calls, fears of local plague outbreaks, and similarity of tiring gun symptoms to Long Covid.
I had the satisfaction of yelling, "Called it!" twice during the ensuing thrilling web of events. Despite these threads of irresistible narrative determinism, overall the war follows an unpredictable path as it fragments. I think this exchange is too oblique to constitute spoilers:
The narrator's and thus the reader's expectations of the war are repeatedly challenged and subverted. There are some spectacularly tense and exciting action sequences, as well as unexpected twists.
This review is rambling as there is just SO MUCH going on in Perhaps the Stars and Terra Ignota as a whole. Palmer dissects themes and tropes of hard sci-fi such as the pursuit of immortality, space exploration, and first contact with aliens via Homer and 18th century philosophy. Other writers have attempted elements of this, e.g. Ilium, but this is by far the most ambitious and thorough synthesis of far future and literary past that I've read. The series is deeply concerned with humanity's past, present, and future. Questions given significant attention in this book include: should humanity perfect ourselves or explore the stars? Are there reasons not to do both? How can we govern ourselves to ensure social stability, individual choice, and universal comfort? What is important to preserve from the past? After a war, who judges what crimes were committed and how the guilty are to be punished? The narrative is full of striking comments like this:
Other favourite moments I'm tempted to quote include the Diary of a U-beast chapter told in code output, the speech on empire, 9th Anonymous moving the mountain, and the rise of Alexander. This is getting too long, though, so I will simply praise the quality of Palmer's writing instead. How to summarise my thoughts on Terra Ignota? I would describe it as sincerely grandiose, inaccessible, and demanding. While reading Perhaps the Stars I struggled to recall the many events of the prior three books from years ago and wondered if I should re-read them all. I can only imagine that reading the four books together as a single narrative would be utterly overwhelming, albeit probably glorious.
I'm not sure how widely to recommend Terra Ignota, as I do not think everyone would get on with it. I think if you can digest the first fifty to eighty pages, you'll be hooked. (Read a wikipedia summary of the Iliad and Odyssey first if you've never read either.) Then let the elaborate narrative style sweep you along, without dwelling on who every single character is and exactly what they've done. There were too many for me to keep track of, but this did not prevent me from greatly enjoying the profusion of ideas, allusions, debates, dilemmas, and dramas. I think this series would require utter obsession to fully appreciate its every nuance. I am not that reader, as I flit about in search of variety and novelty. Terra Ignota would reward exacting re-reads, as every line has significance. The one thing I feel this series lacks is visuals. It is rich in thoughts, feelings, philosophy, and incident, but descriptions of the characters and settings are layered in Homeric metaphor or intellectual details rather than being visually evocative. I do not intend this as a criticism, as it seems a function of stylistic priorities. Interesting, though, that I have a very visual imagination yet after circa 1,800 pages lack any mental images of Terra Ignota. Perhaps my mind was too preoccupied with the challenges of decoding the text to find space for visualisation. Nonetheless, this is undoubtedly a series that will linger in my mind and act as a catalytic link between other books in several genres. I wonder what Ada Palmer will write next.
In the previous Terra Ignota books, war threatened. In Perhaps the Stars, war breaks out; a war unlike any other I've read about. Ada Palmer asks how a utopian global society would conduct a world war while attempting to minimise casualties and damage. The ideological splits that precipitated it are real and complex, but none of the sides want to wholly destroy the others. Their means of harm reduction are suitably ingenious: non-lethal weapons that cause lasting fatigue ('tiring guns'), unilateral suspension of global communications and travel systems, and agreement that combatants and non-combatants must be visually distinguishable by uniforms, among other strategies. The 9th Anonymous has taken over chronicling duties and recounts the outset of world war from the city of Romanova. There are echoes of the pandemic in the bandwidth lags during video calls, fears of local plague outbreaks, and similarity of tiring gun symptoms to Long Covid.
I had the satisfaction of yelling, "Called it!" twice during the ensuing thrilling web of events. Despite these threads of irresistible narrative determinism, overall the war follows an unpredictable path as it fragments. I think this exchange is too oblique to constitute spoilers:
"Older and more immortal is the enemy we knew we would awaken with our war. Distance."
"Distance," I repeated, and felt an oceanic echo in the word, a new and crueler facet of Jehovah's unrelenting Peer. "It is your war, Kohaku? I thought it wasn't, that it was Jehovah's war instead, but here we are Mitsubishi battling Masons over land, just as you predicted."
"My war has come," the number-prophet answered, slowly. "So has Tai-kun's, Perry's, Danae's, Apollo's. Distance makes one war a hundred wars. They speciate, like sparrows breeding alone on every island until they no longer recognise each other's chirps. See these Cycladic freedom fighters? They wage a rebel's war for home and liberty; they would no more abandon their islands to escort you to distant Tai-kun than your Shearwaters would abandon their dream of Tai-kun's better world to guard the Cyclades."
A dry sob hurt. "Then was it all for nothing?" I had to ask. "Jehovah's Act, trying to make two sides worth dying for? Did it all fail?"
"No. This is a fractal war. The larger shapes still lend their structure to the whole, and larger powers, by forging their macro-peace, will forge the thousand micro-peaces, too." His smile was shadow. "And not everything has fractured."
The narrator's and thus the reader's expectations of the war are repeatedly challenged and subverted. There are some spectacularly tense and exciting action sequences, as well as unexpected twists.
This review is rambling as there is just SO MUCH going on in Perhaps the Stars and Terra Ignota as a whole. Palmer dissects themes and tropes of hard sci-fi such as the pursuit of immortality, space exploration, and first contact with aliens via Homer and 18th century philosophy. Other writers have attempted elements of this, e.g. Ilium, but this is by far the most ambitious and thorough synthesis of far future and literary past that I've read. The series is deeply concerned with humanity's past, present, and future. Questions given significant attention in this book include: should humanity perfect ourselves or explore the stars? Are there reasons not to do both? How can we govern ourselves to ensure social stability, individual choice, and universal comfort? What is important to preserve from the past? After a war, who judges what crimes were committed and how the guilty are to be punished? The narrative is full of striking comments like this:
The trolley problem does not describe our reality. Physics is cruel in many, many ways, but not that way. Yet because we all debate it, normalise it, know it, we live psychologically in the trolley problem, expecting it to be the default ethics of our world. Yes, there are corollaries - deadly missions, quarantines - but if we had admitted our kinder reality, that Nature rarely burdens us with such a choice - Cinna? No, Martin! Martin! - might the Saneer-Weeksbooth founders, who saw they could save 50,000 lives by taking one, have asked themselves: Is there a better way to use this data than to kill? Did we poison our ethics with the trolley problem? Is it bad for us, our minds, our souls, to dive, even in thought experiment, into a universe so artificially unkind?
Other favourite moments I'm tempted to quote include the Diary of a U-beast chapter told in code output, the speech on empire, 9th Anonymous moving the mountain, and the rise of Alexander. This is getting too long, though, so I will simply praise the quality of Palmer's writing instead. How to summarise my thoughts on Terra Ignota? I would describe it as sincerely grandiose, inaccessible, and demanding. While reading Perhaps the Stars I struggled to recall the many events of the prior three books from years ago and wondered if I should re-read them all. I can only imagine that reading the four books together as a single narrative would be utterly overwhelming, albeit probably glorious.
I'm not sure how widely to recommend Terra Ignota, as I do not think everyone would get on with it. I think if you can digest the first fifty to eighty pages, you'll be hooked. (Read a wikipedia summary of the Iliad and Odyssey first if you've never read either.) Then let the elaborate narrative style sweep you along, without dwelling on who every single character is and exactly what they've done. There were too many for me to keep track of, but this did not prevent me from greatly enjoying the profusion of ideas, allusions, debates, dilemmas, and dramas. I think this series would require utter obsession to fully appreciate its every nuance. I am not that reader, as I flit about in search of variety and novelty. Terra Ignota would reward exacting re-reads, as every line has significance. The one thing I feel this series lacks is visuals. It is rich in thoughts, feelings, philosophy, and incident, but descriptions of the characters and settings are layered in Homeric metaphor or intellectual details rather than being visually evocative. I do not intend this as a criticism, as it seems a function of stylistic priorities. Interesting, though, that I have a very visual imagination yet after circa 1,800 pages lack any mental images of Terra Ignota. Perhaps my mind was too preoccupied with the challenges of decoding the text to find space for visualisation. Nonetheless, this is undoubtedly a series that will linger in my mind and act as a catalytic link between other books in several genres. I wonder what Ada Palmer will write next.
January 16, 2023
Let's do this then, shall we?
Terra Ignota is a full meal, a book series that excites the senses of every reader who is passionate about the Craft of Writing, History, Philosophy, Poetry, and everything in between.
Watch as Mycroft, our Richard III, charms the reader with his soliloquies under the guide of future hatred. They warn us, beloved reader, that any empathy we may feel for this object of our affection will soon fade as the reality of his actions reveal itself in gore and anger. This same Shakespearean protagonist that will confide in us his insecurities and their life of servitude. Watch him as he plays with God, as he lifts the curtain on a most curious conspiracy that would delight all and any who distrust the powers that be, whichever epoque they may inhabit.
Watch Voltaire exulted and Dumas avenged. Send us Aramis and make her dance into our home, afraid. Watch the marble-infused Masons and the mothers of the world, regardless of gender. Watch the cyborgs. Are they cyborgs? Watch the lust of the clerics and the androgyny of beauty. Watch Diderot paint and Rousseau negotiate a treaty, and show us how the land starved devour all.
Watch as we witness the corruption of Utopia, as we are lead to support murder for the sake of the common good. Watch as we are complicit on torture, and blood, and cannibalism. And watch as marvel at the foundations of Olympia, cemented in corruption and sex, and political games too gruesome to conceptualise without being present. Watch us witness this second Enlightenment, on the shoulders of the original, the great Renaissance, where our Giants transform and adapt to the realities of the Future.
And then Watch it all fall apart.
Watch Mycroft, our Odysseus, reenact the stage and map of this new Iliad and this new Odyssey. Watch Bester's influence in a World War that reminds us there is no glory in nations, only in Men, and only just. Watch us fail Mankind, and the Stars. See us at Mankind's best and worst. Here is a Weapon of Mass Destruction! Watch us hate with sufficient vigour to demand its use, annihilate all who oppose us.
Oh, wait, we were wrong.
War. War never changes.
It hasn't changed since Sun Tsu.
It hasn't changed since Hobbes (oh, Hi Monster of Malmesbury!)
And meet God.
Fucking Hell.
This is awesome.
Terra Ignota is a full meal, a book series that excites the senses of every reader who is passionate about the Craft of Writing, History, Philosophy, Poetry, and everything in between.
Watch as Mycroft, our Richard III, charms the reader with his soliloquies under the guide of future hatred. They warn us, beloved reader, that any empathy we may feel for this object of our affection will soon fade as the reality of his actions reveal itself in gore and anger. This same Shakespearean protagonist that will confide in us his insecurities and their life of servitude. Watch him as he plays with God, as he lifts the curtain on a most curious conspiracy that would delight all and any who distrust the powers that be, whichever epoque they may inhabit.
Watch Voltaire exulted and Dumas avenged. Send us Aramis and make her dance into our home, afraid. Watch the marble-infused Masons and the mothers of the world, regardless of gender. Watch the cyborgs. Are they cyborgs? Watch the lust of the clerics and the androgyny of beauty. Watch Diderot paint and Rousseau negotiate a treaty, and show us how the land starved devour all.
Watch as we witness the corruption of Utopia, as we are lead to support murder for the sake of the common good. Watch as we are complicit on torture, and blood, and cannibalism. And watch as marvel at the foundations of Olympia, cemented in corruption and sex, and political games too gruesome to conceptualise without being present. Watch us witness this second Enlightenment, on the shoulders of the original, the great Renaissance, where our Giants transform and adapt to the realities of the Future.
And then Watch it all fall apart.
Watch Mycroft, our Odysseus, reenact the stage and map of this new Iliad and this new Odyssey. Watch Bester's influence in a World War that reminds us there is no glory in nations, only in Men, and only just. Watch us fail Mankind, and the Stars. See us at Mankind's best and worst. Here is a Weapon of Mass Destruction! Watch us hate with sufficient vigour to demand its use, annihilate all who oppose us.
Oh, wait, we were wrong.
War. War never changes.
It hasn't changed since Sun Tsu.
It hasn't changed since Hobbes (oh, Hi Monster of Malmesbury!)
And meet God.
Fucking Hell.
This is awesome.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 24, 2021
Terra Ignota is very dear to me, and so whether my opinions of the series' conclusion were glowing or otherwise, they could never be impartial! I was so excited to receive a review copy - I've been anticipating it for a long time now, and had adored the previous three installments (I had been mid-way through a re-read before I found out I'd gotten an ARC of this one).
It's hard to discuss Perhaps the Stars without reflecting on Terra Ignota as a whole - and there is so much to say about the series! I'm on a mission to get more people to read it, so that I can talk about it endlessly, and hear other thoughts too.
This installment differed in some ways from the previous three - there was a lot more plot, and we were hearing voices other than Mycroft's far more frequently. I found seeing this universe unfold, suddenly not within Mycroft's head, to be quite jarring at first - but I became equally attached to other narrators in time.
I'm always more drawn to characters, rather than plot - but despite the novels occasional play-by-play of the actual warfare, and events therein, rather than the more personal slant Mycroft always gave, I absolutely adored this book. Just before the mid-way point, the narrative really started to kick in - plot points occurred which made me gasp, and I ended up staying up past my bedtime, on multiple occasions, for "just one more chapter". (The irony here being that some of the chapters are monoliths! Although I raced through it, this is not a quick book - I can't wait for my physical copy to arrive (I definitely haven’t cancelled my pre-order!) so I can see what a doorstopper it is.
As previously in Terra Ignota, however, this book isn't just gripping because of the plot - there was a philosophical discussion near the end which literally made me have to put the book down and have a little think. I love that this series has that effect - it achieves what the best of sci-fi does, encouraging you to think, to reflect on the present and dream of the possible future. Of all weeks, this one was a good one for me to have read Perhaps the Stars I think - I feel like I needed this, and the small burst of hope and inspiration it's given me.
Thanks to Macmillan / Tor and Netgalley for the ARC.
It's hard to discuss Perhaps the Stars without reflecting on Terra Ignota as a whole - and there is so much to say about the series! I'm on a mission to get more people to read it, so that I can talk about it endlessly, and hear other thoughts too.
This installment differed in some ways from the previous three - there was a lot more plot, and we were hearing voices other than Mycroft's far more frequently. I found seeing this universe unfold, suddenly not within Mycroft's head, to be quite jarring at first - but I became equally attached to other narrators in time.
I'm always more drawn to characters, rather than plot - but despite the novels occasional play-by-play of the actual warfare, and events therein, rather than the more personal slant Mycroft always gave, I absolutely adored this book. Just before the mid-way point, the narrative really started to kick in - plot points occurred which made me gasp, and I ended up staying up past my bedtime, on multiple occasions, for "just one more chapter". (The irony here being that some of the chapters are monoliths! Although I raced through it, this is not a quick book - I can't wait for my physical copy to arrive (I definitely haven’t cancelled my pre-order!) so I can see what a doorstopper it is.
As previously in Terra Ignota, however, this book isn't just gripping because of the plot - there was a philosophical discussion near the end which literally made me have to put the book down and have a little think. I love that this series has that effect - it achieves what the best of sci-fi does, encouraging you to think, to reflect on the present and dream of the possible future. Of all weeks, this one was a good one for me to have read Perhaps the Stars I think - I feel like I needed this, and the small burst of hope and inspiration it's given me.
Thanks to Macmillan / Tor and Netgalley for the ARC.
January 20, 2022
TL;DR - A treatise on Theology & Philosophy masquerading as a science fiction novel. Includes some neat social & linguistic commentary. A rather suspenseful arc, emotionally moving, & aesthetic story as well :)
Small sample: "If we the portrait alphabet of our many-faced Maker cease our restless aim, that means the First Mover, the One Who aimed across a darkness no being had senses tuned to see, will someday Move no more."
Some longer samples with somewhat spoiler-ish content, though if you were to start at book 1, you'd totally forget all of this since there's way too much content and eccentric writing style for you to get used to:
Small sample: "If we the portrait alphabet of our many-faced Maker cease our restless aim, that means the First Mover, the One Who aimed across a darkness no being had senses tuned to see, will someday Move no more."
Some longer samples with somewhat spoiler-ish content, though if you were to start at book 1, you'd totally forget all of this since there's way too much content and eccentric writing style for you to get used to:
December 26, 2021
This is really five stars for the entire series. The book itself, which was a rough go for me, I would say is more at 4.5 stars. But, somebody, in the future please stop me from adding complex emotionally trying books to my TBR at the end of December. It doesn't ever go well. Full review later. Or, maybe I will review amnesty it. That is fully possible.
November 12, 2021
Not sure I’ll have the words for this, and so hard not to spoil. Like the deluge from a broken dam that must eventually settle down to a natural flow. or the momentum of this ultra fast freight train that still has to pull into station. This was such an onslaught of action and revelations for 500 pages, then a letting off, a pumping of brakes, a disembarkation. Each loose end ferried to its termination. And in the end, respect and warmth and redemption for our unlikeliest hero (friend).
April 17, 2022
At long last I am finally through the Terra Ignota series. I would give this book (and the series) 5 stars for plotting, ideas, and general awesomeness. But unfortunately the actual writing just disagreed with me and the whole reading process was unenjoyably laborious.
My biggest issue was JEDD Mason - I was never even slightly persuaded why people followed him, why anyone gave any credence to his claims of godhood, and found his pronouncements juvenile and unpersuasive. It was incredibly frustrating to have so much of the plot revolving around him and his remaker movement.
I was also frustrated by the writing style, in particular the melodramatic narration by 9A and Mycroft. Everything was dialed up to a 10, everything the worst thing ever and such a personal disaster. The writing was overwrought and bombastic. This combined with the stakes - we only ever see things from the 1% and the impact upon the world is never directly shown or communicated. The whole war was told from how it impacted the major characters.
It was very difficult to follow - there are so many characters and their loyalties and alliances are incredibly difficult to follow (and never mind the motivations for those alignments). And with the stakes being all over the place - who would die and with what stakes? Some were killed off-stage, while others might get 100 pages.
Finally, the level and types of magic or miracles in the book messed up the stakes in the book. Profound plot developments were hand-waved away in the next paragraph. .
I desperately wanted to enjoy this book and series, because it is right in my wheelhouse. But THese issues and many more repeatedly prevented me for connecting and being invested in the story. There were many great ideas and plot twists, but the lack of consistent stakes limited my personal investment in the story.
My biggest issue was JEDD Mason - I was never even slightly persuaded why people followed him, why anyone gave any credence to his claims of godhood, and found his pronouncements juvenile and unpersuasive. It was incredibly frustrating to have so much of the plot revolving around him and his remaker movement.
I was also frustrated by the writing style, in particular the melodramatic narration by 9A and Mycroft. Everything was dialed up to a 10, everything the worst thing ever and such a personal disaster. The writing was overwrought and bombastic. This combined with the stakes - we only ever see things from the 1% and the impact upon the world is never directly shown or communicated. The whole war was told from how it impacted the major characters.
It was very difficult to follow - there are so many characters and their loyalties and alliances are incredibly difficult to follow (and never mind the motivations for those alignments). And with the stakes being all over the place - who would die and with what stakes? Some were killed off-stage, while others might get 100 pages.
Finally, the level and types of magic or miracles in the book messed up the stakes in the book. Profound plot developments were hand-waved away in the next paragraph. .
I desperately wanted to enjoy this book and series, because it is right in my wheelhouse. But THese issues and many more repeatedly prevented me for connecting and being invested in the story. There were many great ideas and plot twists, but the lack of consistent stakes limited my personal investment in the story.
September 3, 2022
Dense (even at almost 600 pages) and thoughtful, Palmer finishes the series with a conflict and resolution undergirded with an academicians homage to Classics, Enlightenment thought, and the power of Literature to guide our path forward. Underlying the conflict is our Hobbesian human nature towards friction and cruelty. Underlying the resolution is moral development and compassion made possible through theology.
There are lots of really interesting ideas in this series. After finishing this book, I feel similarly to how I felt after finishing Liu's Three Body Problem series: the ideas were phenomenally imaginative and thoughtful but as a novel this really falls apart. Palmer spent three imaginative and dense books constructing an elaborate and detailed global society and political structure on the brink of world war, and this fourth book needs to carry out that war and resolve all of the flaws that led to it. That means that quite a lot needs to happen in this single book. And to get through it all, quite a lot of the book is impersonal, abstract, or retrospective summary of events. Mycroft's voice, so fascinating in his madness and dramatic Grecian interpretations when describing his own personal experiences, becomes histrionic in this book when describing events he has little direct part in. And unfortunately the level of drama imputed by Palmer in the deaths of characters, I never felt. It's hard to feel any sorrow at the willful death of the 9th anonymous, whom we never properly meet or see interacting with others in a meaningfully human way. A few dramatically intoned lines (from the mouth of 9A himself no less) about some close relationship with Su Hyeon the censor don't actually illustrate a real emotional bond between the two or make me feel invested in 9A. Similarly, the litany of characters at the end of the book that you find out died during the war mean almost nothing - it's hard to remember who those characters were or what their importance was (much less feel saddened by their death) when they were only ever given 5-10 sentences each across the entire series. Cornel Mason's death, by contrast, actually feels earnedly dramatic - in keeping with the character developed over 3 books, he stubbornly persists in claiming something he claims as his own to the point of getting himself killed in an avoidable situation.
This is one of Palmer's central themes, that even hundreds of years beyond our modern 2022, humans maintain the same character flaws and capacity for reckless, stubborn, possessive rage as the Greeks and Romans millennia past. And this is one of several interesting and astute themes Palmer brings to Sci Fi. I misdoubt that world leaders would be so hot-bloodedly dramatic as our recordings of Greek heroes, but we could easily attribute this to our unreliable narrator, the mad, faithful Mycroft Canner. Regardless, although Palmer spent 3 books constructing fairly plausible geopolitical and social impetuses for the outbreak of war, its execution and organization are driven by emotions and animal instincts of the world leaders no different from those of the Greeks or even our non-human primate ancestors. And the really beautifully optimistic bent of the book is evinced at the end, when Mycroft, our murderous narrative guide - who was broken by his own deeds but not so broken as to be incapable of further murder - holds a sword to the neck of Faust, the antagonist who made the metaphorical deal with the utilitarian devil to minimize the casualties of the war. Mycroft, and indeed even I the reader, felt a deep outrage at Faust's suggestion that he and his Gordion Hive should be let to escape the public knowledge of their puppeteering of the war, that they should escape personal or collective responsibility b/c they could thereby better aid in the rebuilding of the world and reduce the total number of deaths and suffering. Mycroft is so outraged at this suggestion that he comes close to cutting Faust's throat, and indeed some part of me wants him to. But Palmer correctly points out that this is vengeance seeking, not justice seeking, that if we care about creating more justice in the world overall then a more fitting punishment is Mycroft's: to be set to employ one's unique talents for the betterment of all until death, no longer able to work for one's own gains. And Palmer implies that humans, still bloodthirsty and capable of starting a war in the mid 2400's, have at least improved morally to the point where they can execute the war less lethally (only 1.8 million dead in a world war on a planet with 10 billion) and construct a peace more readily.
The whole throughline of these books seems to be that humans are capable of moral development, though we (as we are all collectively represented in Mycroft) are capable of great violence and frequently misdoubt our moral worth or our ability to reform ourselves. We have some notion that there will be a utopic future free of strife or suffering. But, though we may develop technologies to traverse the planet in 3 hours and feed every person to bursting while maintaining a healthy ecology, we will still be humans and there will still be disagreements and politics. The only way to asymptotically approach utopia is to change what it means to be human, to make ourselves kinder towards each other and towards others. And this is a process that we are undergoing now in the real world, and which hasn't ended in Palmers imagined 2450's. In fact her society has boxed itself into some blind corners, no longer allowing discussions of gender or religion b/c they resulted in so much conflict in the past, thinking this makes them more peaceful when really it stifles society and individual expression of what has been a fundamental aspect of the human experience so far in history. There will be missteps and backward steps, but if we are hopeful and earnest about becoming better, as a society and a species we can improve ourselves.
This brings us to JEDD Mason: the underlying motivator for our entire species' development. JEDD is a capital G God from another universe, discovered by the God of our universe and brought into a body on Earth so that these two infinite but separate beings might have a way of communicating - us. This Great Conversation, it turns out, is the whole reason for humanity and Earth. Throughtout the first three books it's unclear what our God is trying to communicate to the much kinder God embodying JEDD Mason - who (in his home universe in constant but delayed contact with his ship of flesh on Earth) never invented distance to separate individually minded beings. Rather he is everything and all things are (knowingly) him (much like a Stoic perspective on the metaphysics of our universe). So we see with this infinitely kind and compassionate JEDD, who knew nothing outside of himself until our God opened a line of communication via a human body on Earth, the seeming cruelty of our own universe, characterized as it is by entropy, distance's separation of loving individuals, and inevitable death. And when we learn Mycroft's theory that our God created humanity for the sake of communicating with his Visitor, it seems monstrously cruel to have created life and imposed so much suffering on it purely to communicate a sentence to another being. But at the end of the fourth book, we come to see that our God made us in his image, not cruel ourselves for cruelty's sake, but outreaching and desirous of company. The difficulties of our world harden us to the challenges of reaching out through the void for new worlds, to encounter new beings beyond ourselves, as our God did in reaching his Visitor. In addition to being a four book long thesis on continuous moral evolution of humanity, the series is also a theodicy based on space travel. Palmer posits that the cruelties of our human lives and the random suffering imposed on us is necessary to goad us into reaching beyond our garden planet and hardening us to the trials such an endeavor entails - that if we lived in a truly Edenic world we would never reach beyond ourselves and come to know other worlds and species. Our God, who encompasses our universe and grew up blind to any others, still strove to make contact with others beyond himself. In Their kindness, They gave us stars They never had to inspire us and towards which we could aspire. And when the Visitor, so different from Them in every way, self-contained and self-content, was horrified by the struggles of humanity (even the mild ones of the 2400's), God adjusted his plan and sent us a miracle in the form of Bridger, who gave us the tools to overcome death and distance. God did this to appease Their Visitor, and make our way to the stars easier. And thenceforward, humans would be able to summon the discontented and restless dead back to life, not to live a full life again but at least to toil under the sun preparing worlds for human settlement (drawing heavily from Achilles' words to Odysseus).
This was all an interesting line of thinking, but falls pretty flat for me as a serious theodicy. This resurrection offered as a late consolation doesn't strike me as obviating the suffering of those untold masses of humans who died cruelly. Nor does a colonization of the stars or communion with other species seem to justify the massive cruelty of nature to humans and non-humans alike. There's nothing inherently superior about this extraterrestrial human empire (and it is explicitly empire) as a form of social-spatial organization. Our narrator and focal characters are clearly biased towards the outpath Utopia pursues, and so is Palmer. She offers a fair shake to the inpath, giving Gordion noble motives and equal consideration to their final goal. Though in truth, she spent little time exploring what that path actually looked like. In the end, the justification for that outpath seems to be an article of faith, perhaps one heavily influenced by some Romantic-Enlightenment values, but still a leap of faith.
The contrast she offers between the outbranch and inbranch path, human expansion into space or into the universes internal to each of us, as represented by Utopia and Gordion, is a highly intriguing one. But I can't believe that these two are mutually exclusive. Palmer has no trouble envisioning a whole subset of the human population devoted to ceaseless striving for excellence, but she doesn't expect a subset of the population would still pursue space exploration for its own sake, regardless of the forgone comforts of home? It seems to me that there's something as innate in humans as the terrible drive to violence, and that's a drive to disperse and explore. There will always be humans who are restless and dissatisfied with the status quo or the comfortable homeostasis of our quotidian society. At the same time I don't think that the majority of humans actually want to explore their inner depths either. I think most people are content to simply live their lives in the macro-world, as humans have for millennia (but w/ more tech to keep us comfortable).
It was frustrating that the solutions to the societal/political problems that Palmer spent three books building are issued in summary fiats in the last ~20 pages of the book by a deus ab alia univerusm. This is pretty unsatisfying from a novelistic perspective, but it is in keeping with Palmer's broader aims for the book, which is to explore theology using Enlightenment values and Classical trappings in a sci-fi setting. Ultimately, in issues of faith (as Mycroft says at some point in this series about Bridger), one accepts answers from an external source.
But honestly it does feel like Palmer, as an academic Classicist, became over-enthusiastic about the Classical trappings (which I say as someone who studied Classics in undergrad and is broadly interested in these things). The rehashing of the Odyssey and Mycroft's transformation, the alignment of the war to the axis of the Illiad, it all felt unnecessary and at times forced. Instead of this interesting world Palmer built following its own course, it slid into the historic-literary groove of one of our oldest stories of war. And of course this was the point - to underscore the deep natural tendencies of human nature. It felt heavy-handed to me, Palmer forcing the narrative to follow the Classics she clearly loves. But that's the book she clearly wanted to write - tying Classics to human nature and showing that human nature is bellicose and resistant to change, not impossible but slow and requiring great concerted effort (and perhaps only possible by divine intervention). This was a more ambitious literary sci-fi than most other things I can think of, and impressive for it. I think it didn't really come together into a beautiful conclusion, and it was easier to ignore the novelistic shortcomings when the ideas were building, interweaving so many eras of history and culture and philosophy. And the conflict between inner and outer was an interesting one, putting parties with truly noble motives in opposition to each other in a convincing way. But it was still an interesting series that posed Great Questions and proffered intriguing answers.
There's plenty more to say about this series and to dig into, but not enough time alas.
There are lots of really interesting ideas in this series. After finishing this book, I feel similarly to how I felt after finishing Liu's Three Body Problem series: the ideas were phenomenally imaginative and thoughtful but as a novel this really falls apart. Palmer spent three imaginative and dense books constructing an elaborate and detailed global society and political structure on the brink of world war, and this fourth book needs to carry out that war and resolve all of the flaws that led to it. That means that quite a lot needs to happen in this single book. And to get through it all, quite a lot of the book is impersonal, abstract, or retrospective summary of events. Mycroft's voice, so fascinating in his madness and dramatic Grecian interpretations when describing his own personal experiences, becomes histrionic in this book when describing events he has little direct part in. And unfortunately the level of drama imputed by Palmer in the deaths of characters, I never felt. It's hard to feel any sorrow at the willful death of the 9th anonymous, whom we never properly meet or see interacting with others in a meaningfully human way. A few dramatically intoned lines (from the mouth of 9A himself no less) about some close relationship with Su Hyeon the censor don't actually illustrate a real emotional bond between the two or make me feel invested in 9A. Similarly, the litany of characters at the end of the book that you find out died during the war mean almost nothing - it's hard to remember who those characters were or what their importance was (much less feel saddened by their death) when they were only ever given 5-10 sentences each across the entire series. Cornel Mason's death, by contrast, actually feels earnedly dramatic - in keeping with the character developed over 3 books, he stubbornly persists in claiming something he claims as his own to the point of getting himself killed in an avoidable situation.
This is one of Palmer's central themes, that even hundreds of years beyond our modern 2022, humans maintain the same character flaws and capacity for reckless, stubborn, possessive rage as the Greeks and Romans millennia past. And this is one of several interesting and astute themes Palmer brings to Sci Fi. I misdoubt that world leaders would be so hot-bloodedly dramatic as our recordings of Greek heroes, but we could easily attribute this to our unreliable narrator, the mad, faithful Mycroft Canner. Regardless, although Palmer spent 3 books constructing fairly plausible geopolitical and social impetuses for the outbreak of war, its execution and organization are driven by emotions and animal instincts of the world leaders no different from those of the Greeks or even our non-human primate ancestors. And the really beautifully optimistic bent of the book is evinced at the end, when Mycroft, our murderous narrative guide - who was broken by his own deeds but not so broken as to be incapable of further murder - holds a sword to the neck of Faust, the antagonist who made the metaphorical deal with the utilitarian devil to minimize the casualties of the war. Mycroft, and indeed even I the reader, felt a deep outrage at Faust's suggestion that he and his Gordion Hive should be let to escape the public knowledge of their puppeteering of the war, that they should escape personal or collective responsibility b/c they could thereby better aid in the rebuilding of the world and reduce the total number of deaths and suffering. Mycroft is so outraged at this suggestion that he comes close to cutting Faust's throat, and indeed some part of me wants him to. But Palmer correctly points out that this is vengeance seeking, not justice seeking, that if we care about creating more justice in the world overall then a more fitting punishment is Mycroft's: to be set to employ one's unique talents for the betterment of all until death, no longer able to work for one's own gains. And Palmer implies that humans, still bloodthirsty and capable of starting a war in the mid 2400's, have at least improved morally to the point where they can execute the war less lethally (only 1.8 million dead in a world war on a planet with 10 billion) and construct a peace more readily.
The whole throughline of these books seems to be that humans are capable of moral development, though we (as we are all collectively represented in Mycroft) are capable of great violence and frequently misdoubt our moral worth or our ability to reform ourselves. We have some notion that there will be a utopic future free of strife or suffering. But, though we may develop technologies to traverse the planet in 3 hours and feed every person to bursting while maintaining a healthy ecology, we will still be humans and there will still be disagreements and politics. The only way to asymptotically approach utopia is to change what it means to be human, to make ourselves kinder towards each other and towards others. And this is a process that we are undergoing now in the real world, and which hasn't ended in Palmers imagined 2450's. In fact her society has boxed itself into some blind corners, no longer allowing discussions of gender or religion b/c they resulted in so much conflict in the past, thinking this makes them more peaceful when really it stifles society and individual expression of what has been a fundamental aspect of the human experience so far in history. There will be missteps and backward steps, but if we are hopeful and earnest about becoming better, as a society and a species we can improve ourselves.
This brings us to JEDD Mason: the underlying motivator for our entire species' development. JEDD is a capital G God from another universe, discovered by the God of our universe and brought into a body on Earth so that these two infinite but separate beings might have a way of communicating - us. This Great Conversation, it turns out, is the whole reason for humanity and Earth. Throughtout the first three books it's unclear what our God is trying to communicate to the much kinder God embodying JEDD Mason - who (in his home universe in constant but delayed contact with his ship of flesh on Earth) never invented distance to separate individually minded beings. Rather he is everything and all things are (knowingly) him (much like a Stoic perspective on the metaphysics of our universe). So we see with this infinitely kind and compassionate JEDD, who knew nothing outside of himself until our God opened a line of communication via a human body on Earth, the seeming cruelty of our own universe, characterized as it is by entropy, distance's separation of loving individuals, and inevitable death. And when we learn Mycroft's theory that our God created humanity for the sake of communicating with his Visitor, it seems monstrously cruel to have created life and imposed so much suffering on it purely to communicate a sentence to another being. But at the end of the fourth book, we come to see that our God made us in his image, not cruel ourselves for cruelty's sake, but outreaching and desirous of company. The difficulties of our world harden us to the challenges of reaching out through the void for new worlds, to encounter new beings beyond ourselves, as our God did in reaching his Visitor. In addition to being a four book long thesis on continuous moral evolution of humanity, the series is also a theodicy based on space travel. Palmer posits that the cruelties of our human lives and the random suffering imposed on us is necessary to goad us into reaching beyond our garden planet and hardening us to the trials such an endeavor entails - that if we lived in a truly Edenic world we would never reach beyond ourselves and come to know other worlds and species. Our God, who encompasses our universe and grew up blind to any others, still strove to make contact with others beyond himself. In Their kindness, They gave us stars They never had to inspire us and towards which we could aspire. And when the Visitor, so different from Them in every way, self-contained and self-content, was horrified by the struggles of humanity (even the mild ones of the 2400's), God adjusted his plan and sent us a miracle in the form of Bridger, who gave us the tools to overcome death and distance. God did this to appease Their Visitor, and make our way to the stars easier. And thenceforward, humans would be able to summon the discontented and restless dead back to life, not to live a full life again but at least to toil under the sun preparing worlds for human settlement (drawing heavily from Achilles' words to Odysseus).
This was all an interesting line of thinking, but falls pretty flat for me as a serious theodicy. This resurrection offered as a late consolation doesn't strike me as obviating the suffering of those untold masses of humans who died cruelly. Nor does a colonization of the stars or communion with other species seem to justify the massive cruelty of nature to humans and non-humans alike. There's nothing inherently superior about this extraterrestrial human empire (and it is explicitly empire) as a form of social-spatial organization. Our narrator and focal characters are clearly biased towards the outpath Utopia pursues, and so is Palmer. She offers a fair shake to the inpath, giving Gordion noble motives and equal consideration to their final goal. Though in truth, she spent little time exploring what that path actually looked like. In the end, the justification for that outpath seems to be an article of faith, perhaps one heavily influenced by some Romantic-Enlightenment values, but still a leap of faith.
The contrast she offers between the outbranch and inbranch path, human expansion into space or into the universes internal to each of us, as represented by Utopia and Gordion, is a highly intriguing one. But I can't believe that these two are mutually exclusive. Palmer has no trouble envisioning a whole subset of the human population devoted to ceaseless striving for excellence, but she doesn't expect a subset of the population would still pursue space exploration for its own sake, regardless of the forgone comforts of home? It seems to me that there's something as innate in humans as the terrible drive to violence, and that's a drive to disperse and explore. There will always be humans who are restless and dissatisfied with the status quo or the comfortable homeostasis of our quotidian society. At the same time I don't think that the majority of humans actually want to explore their inner depths either. I think most people are content to simply live their lives in the macro-world, as humans have for millennia (but w/ more tech to keep us comfortable).
It was frustrating that the solutions to the societal/political problems that Palmer spent three books building are issued in summary fiats in the last ~20 pages of the book by a deus ab alia univerusm. This is pretty unsatisfying from a novelistic perspective, but it is in keeping with Palmer's broader aims for the book, which is to explore theology using Enlightenment values and Classical trappings in a sci-fi setting. Ultimately, in issues of faith (as Mycroft says at some point in this series about Bridger), one accepts answers from an external source.
But honestly it does feel like Palmer, as an academic Classicist, became over-enthusiastic about the Classical trappings (which I say as someone who studied Classics in undergrad and is broadly interested in these things). The rehashing of the Odyssey and Mycroft's transformation, the alignment of the war to the axis of the Illiad, it all felt unnecessary and at times forced. Instead of this interesting world Palmer built following its own course, it slid into the historic-literary groove of one of our oldest stories of war. And of course this was the point - to underscore the deep natural tendencies of human nature. It felt heavy-handed to me, Palmer forcing the narrative to follow the Classics she clearly loves. But that's the book she clearly wanted to write - tying Classics to human nature and showing that human nature is bellicose and resistant to change, not impossible but slow and requiring great concerted effort (and perhaps only possible by divine intervention). This was a more ambitious literary sci-fi than most other things I can think of, and impressive for it. I think it didn't really come together into a beautiful conclusion, and it was easier to ignore the novelistic shortcomings when the ideas were building, interweaving so many eras of history and culture and philosophy. And the conflict between inner and outer was an interesting one, putting parties with truly noble motives in opposition to each other in a convincing way. But it was still an interesting series that posed Great Questions and proffered intriguing answers.
There's plenty more to say about this series and to dig into, but not enough time alas.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 27, 2023
Best book of the series, of a new all-time favourite series.
May 22, 2022
Wow.
Of all the great finds in recent years, Ada Palmer takes the cake. The four books forming her Terra Ignota series are utterly magnificent, science fiction taken to the very highest level.
I love everything about these books, so where to start? The writing is sublime. While it is incredibly dense in stylistically and referentially, it draws the reader both completely into the world of her mid-25th century and forward through the plot.
The two main premises on which this world is built are the invention of cheap, autonomous flying cars that can get anyone anywhere in the world in a couple of hours and, consequent to this and other changes, people have complete freedom to choose their political allegiances. Why should a patch of soil hold sway over someone when they can live and work anywhere on the globe? Further, when people do this, political allegiance becomes a "buyer's market" where political entities need to appeal to people to join them?
So we have a world where there are seven major groupings (known as Hives) that have grown from either formerly existing polities (Europe), organisations (Mitsubishi), or philosophical ideas (Utopians who seek to advance humanity through scientific progress, the Humanists who seek individual excellence and idealise the Olympic spirit). To belong to a Hive is to agree to be governed by its laws and customs, but one of the primary laws is that anyone can leave.
Additional to this, people can have association with smaller groups known as Strats, and nations to which they may feel they have a cultural heritage - so someone could belong to the Masonic Hive (supposedly descended from Masonic secret societies), the Nation-strat of France and personal-interest strats, as long as their philosophies and rules don't contradict.
The setting is superbly realised, the system drawn as the closest to an ideal humanity has yet achieved - indeed, there has been absolute peace since the Church Wars 200 years earlier, the reason for another universal law: religious belief must be kept absolutely private and personal and religious gatherings are not allowed.
However, while the above forms the setting it is only a small part of what these books are about. Palmer foregrounds big ideas of philosophy that run through the whole series. It is written (mostly) in a faux-European Enlightenment style, directly referencing Rousseau and Diderot and Thomas Hobbes (who, indeed, makes an appearance in this volume). Some people have focused on the importance of ideas of redemption of the narrator, Mycroft Canner, although I think this is relatively minor, a mirror for the bigger - possibly the biggest - idea; whether humanity is worthy of a loving God.
Wait, what? I thought this was science fiction?
It surprised me to no small degree that the introduction of this element didn't unsettle me. I certainly don't believe in loving creator God - nor any other sort - and neither (I think) does the author. As well as being a huge scifi epic, this is a highly literary novel. I took this as a metaphor for whether humanity is worthy of its own higher instincts, those better angels.
And, throughout, it wrestles with more. Whether the ends can ever justify the means - be they Mycroft's criminal atrocities, targeted assassination or even a smaller war to prevent a worse one. The nature of power, the ideas of belonging and family and "nation". The tyranny of distance and time. The friction between outward expansion and internal improvement. All carried along in a plot the intricacies of which are mind-numbing to simply contemplate with a huge cast of characters who often go by many different names, few of whom can be safely labelled "good guys" or bad guys".
And that none of that should put you off reading this because it all not only works, but is what makes these books so magnificent. To top it all, as well as buzzing with ideas and characters and references, Palmer is frequently very funny - both witty and laugh-out-loud funny. And there is a little bit in the final (long) chapter that really made me smile; not so much a twist as a little kicker about the reader that Mycroft had been addressing, and occasionally conversing with.
I suspect that this series is one that will go on rotation, along with The Book of the New Sun, to be revisited on page or on audio every few years and, like Wolfe's magnum opus, I will find more layers, mor details, every time I do.
Of all the great finds in recent years, Ada Palmer takes the cake. The four books forming her Terra Ignota series are utterly magnificent, science fiction taken to the very highest level.
I love everything about these books, so where to start? The writing is sublime. While it is incredibly dense in stylistically and referentially, it draws the reader both completely into the world of her mid-25th century and forward through the plot.
The two main premises on which this world is built are the invention of cheap, autonomous flying cars that can get anyone anywhere in the world in a couple of hours and, consequent to this and other changes, people have complete freedom to choose their political allegiances. Why should a patch of soil hold sway over someone when they can live and work anywhere on the globe? Further, when people do this, political allegiance becomes a "buyer's market" where political entities need to appeal to people to join them?
So we have a world where there are seven major groupings (known as Hives) that have grown from either formerly existing polities (Europe), organisations (Mitsubishi), or philosophical ideas (Utopians who seek to advance humanity through scientific progress, the Humanists who seek individual excellence and idealise the Olympic spirit). To belong to a Hive is to agree to be governed by its laws and customs, but one of the primary laws is that anyone can leave.
Additional to this, people can have association with smaller groups known as Strats, and nations to which they may feel they have a cultural heritage - so someone could belong to the Masonic Hive (supposedly descended from Masonic secret societies), the Nation-strat of France and personal-interest strats, as long as their philosophies and rules don't contradict.
The setting is superbly realised, the system drawn as the closest to an ideal humanity has yet achieved - indeed, there has been absolute peace since the Church Wars 200 years earlier, the reason for another universal law: religious belief must be kept absolutely private and personal and religious gatherings are not allowed.
However, while the above forms the setting it is only a small part of what these books are about. Palmer foregrounds big ideas of philosophy that run through the whole series. It is written (mostly) in a faux-European Enlightenment style, directly referencing Rousseau and Diderot and Thomas Hobbes (who, indeed, makes an appearance in this volume). Some people have focused on the importance of ideas of redemption of the narrator, Mycroft Canner, although I think this is relatively minor, a mirror for the bigger - possibly the biggest - idea; whether humanity is worthy of a loving God.
Wait, what? I thought this was science fiction?
It surprised me to no small degree that the introduction of this element didn't unsettle me. I certainly don't believe in loving creator God - nor any other sort - and neither (I think) does the author. As well as being a huge scifi epic, this is a highly literary novel. I took this as a metaphor for whether humanity is worthy of its own higher instincts, those better angels.
And, throughout, it wrestles with more. Whether the ends can ever justify the means - be they Mycroft's criminal atrocities, targeted assassination or even a smaller war to prevent a worse one. The nature of power, the ideas of belonging and family and "nation". The tyranny of distance and time. The friction between outward expansion and internal improvement. All carried along in a plot the intricacies of which are mind-numbing to simply contemplate with a huge cast of characters who often go by many different names, few of whom can be safely labelled "good guys" or bad guys".
And that none of that should put you off reading this because it all not only works, but is what makes these books so magnificent. To top it all, as well as buzzing with ideas and characters and references, Palmer is frequently very funny - both witty and laugh-out-loud funny. And there is a little bit in the final (long) chapter that really made me smile; not so much a twist as a little kicker about the reader that Mycroft had been addressing, and occasionally conversing with.
I suspect that this series is one that will go on rotation, along with The Book of the New Sun, to be revisited on page or on audio every few years and, like Wolfe's magnum opus, I will find more layers, mor details, every time I do.
June 19, 2022
This was the 4th book in the series. I liked the first book, but liked each successive book less and less. This could easily have been a trilogy, maybe even a two book series, but the author must have been paid by the word. Much too wordy, much to convoluted. Some good ideas, but ruined by the verbal diarrhea.
This last book was torture to get through. I doubt I will ever read a book by this author again.
This last book was torture to get through. I doubt I will ever read a book by this author again.
July 30, 2022
Such a wonderful, complex, unique and intelligent novel - maybe the best in the series - and what an ending. Giving a big chunk of the book over to the new Anonymous, a character the reader hardly knows, was a bold move but made this such an effective and emotional read. It's also the perfect length for all the things it wants to accomplish.
Can't wait to see what Ada Palmer might write next.
Can't wait to see what Ada Palmer might write next.
January 11, 2022
There are times when I feel utterly incapable of expressing my appreciation and admiration for a particular book. This is the case with Perhaps the Stars, Ada Palmer’s magnificent conclusion to her Terra Ignota Quartet. Please know, dear reader, that even if you read this entire review, and my reviews of the other three Terra Ignota books (Book 1, Book 2, Book 3), I will never have enough words––or the right words––to tell you how deeply grateful I am to be alive in a time when such stories are conceived and disseminated. Palmer’s literary achievement is so brilliant and powerful that it defies this humble reviewer’s ability to heap sufficient praise; I will try to tell you how great these books are, and I will fail.
In my senior thesis for my undergraduate degree, I posited a theory of “ethically complex narratives,” which I described as narratives that “struggle against the tendency to categorize moral agents and their actions within traditional dichotomous ethical formulas, such as ‘good and evil,’ ‘right and wrong,’ or ‘strength and weakness.’” I’ve come across many great stories that meet the criteria for ethical complexity, but none more effectively than Terra Ignota. Palmer’s 25th-century future is, above all else, a vision of courageous optimism in which even the ostensible villains generally strive to uphold the core tenets of humanism and basic decency. Perhaps the Stars describes a World War in which nearly all combatants are honorable and laudable, depending on your personal and ideological inclinations. It is notoriously difficult to generate genuine tension in such scenarios, and this is why most writers succumb to ethical simplicity, usually in the form of an overbearing antagonist who wants to control everything or destroy the world because…well, because we need that in order to generate conflict, and also to dispel any ambiguity regarding who we are “supposed” to root for. Ada Palmer is the living antithesis of that lazy approach.
It’s nearly impossible to find an author with a broader range of influences. Palmer’s prose is replete with intelligent observations about languages, historical periods, philosophical traditions, technological possibilities, political structures, and mythological traditions. One fascinating feature of Perhaps the Stars is that it’s a retelling of Homer’s The Iliad, or perhaps a “remix” might be a more accurate term. It also contains a single chapter that’s a rollicking reimagining of The Odyssey. I prepared for this by reading Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of The Iliad and a few secondary texts, and that work really paid off. While I’d have to be as smart as Palmer to fully grok all of her allusions, many of them clicked for me after immersing myself in Greek Mythology for a few months. I had a huge amount of fun witnessing Palmer unfurl each new connection between her story and Homer’s.
Palmer is unflinching in her love of humans, who she refers to as “the instruments that carve the path from cave walls to the stars…[and who] built this world and will build better ones” (2). She is also appropriately caustic when it comes to pointing out the many failings of “we who build so much and burn it, bumbling humanity” (540). She is nothing if not an epic thinker, and the plot of Perhaps the Stars hinges on nothing less than the longterm future of our species. Without dropping spoilers, I will say that in this book the core conflict of the War is revealed to be something quite different from what was previously indicated––a satisfying reveal that elevates the narrative to richer philosophical territory than it has previously visited. She also provides thoughtful and moving commentary on the nature of human relationships, the dangers and benefits of tribalism, the value of loyalty and political pragmatism, the tension between comfort and exploration, and humanity’s pressing need to become kinder in its dealings with other living things.
One potential stumbling point is that Palmer refuses to give direct explanations for a couple of her major conceits. This is sure to disappoint some readers, and I will admit to being a little irked about it at first. But the more I think about it, the less frustrated I become. This could be because I seek to anchor an unalloyed adoration of these books in my memory, or because in the end Palmer’s tale could not have been told in a way that perfectly satisfies my preferences for narrative coherence. Whatever the case, sometimes we choose to simply love something without criticism or caveat. In the final analysis, I realize that Terra Ignota drew that choice from me as easily as I draw breath.
I’d like to wrap up with my favorite quote from this 2020 interview with Palmer:
"As Ursula Le Guin said in her National Book Award Speech, genre fiction writers of science fiction, fantasy, and alternate history are realists of a larger reality in which we are exploring not just the Earth that we’re in but other ways societies and worlds could be set up, expanding the breadth of imagination of our civilization and expanding the number of civilizations with which we have made a kind of first contact. Since the development of science fiction as a genre, when new technological changes have affected the world, we have had dozens of different well thought through answers to what might this do before it happens…Science fiction fights our ethical battles before we have to do them, and is one of the things that makes humanity now more humane and ethically prepared for the speed of change we face than we have ever been before." (2:17:00)
This remains (and I imagine will remain) the best definition of science fiction I’ve ever heard; it’s also a perfect description of Palmer’s work. Like all great science fiction, Palmer’s story is as much about the present as it is about what may come to pass. Today, humanity is on the brink of achieving civilizational escape velocity that could propel us into an infinitely bright future, but our lesser angels––our bellicose bickering and atavistic urges––may yet wreck it all. I can’t begin to enumerate the diversity and depth of the ethical battles these books fight on behalf of a better future for humanity and life more generally. Most authors would be lucky to exhibit commensurate creativity and insight in an entire career, let alone a single series. Terra Ignota not only secures Palmer’s place in the highest echelon of science fiction authors, but earns her a position as one of our finest living writers in any genre. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.
This review was originally published on my blog, words&dirt.
In my senior thesis for my undergraduate degree, I posited a theory of “ethically complex narratives,” which I described as narratives that “struggle against the tendency to categorize moral agents and their actions within traditional dichotomous ethical formulas, such as ‘good and evil,’ ‘right and wrong,’ or ‘strength and weakness.’” I’ve come across many great stories that meet the criteria for ethical complexity, but none more effectively than Terra Ignota. Palmer’s 25th-century future is, above all else, a vision of courageous optimism in which even the ostensible villains generally strive to uphold the core tenets of humanism and basic decency. Perhaps the Stars describes a World War in which nearly all combatants are honorable and laudable, depending on your personal and ideological inclinations. It is notoriously difficult to generate genuine tension in such scenarios, and this is why most writers succumb to ethical simplicity, usually in the form of an overbearing antagonist who wants to control everything or destroy the world because…well, because we need that in order to generate conflict, and also to dispel any ambiguity regarding who we are “supposed” to root for. Ada Palmer is the living antithesis of that lazy approach.
It’s nearly impossible to find an author with a broader range of influences. Palmer’s prose is replete with intelligent observations about languages, historical periods, philosophical traditions, technological possibilities, political structures, and mythological traditions. One fascinating feature of Perhaps the Stars is that it’s a retelling of Homer’s The Iliad, or perhaps a “remix” might be a more accurate term. It also contains a single chapter that’s a rollicking reimagining of The Odyssey. I prepared for this by reading Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of The Iliad and a few secondary texts, and that work really paid off. While I’d have to be as smart as Palmer to fully grok all of her allusions, many of them clicked for me after immersing myself in Greek Mythology for a few months. I had a huge amount of fun witnessing Palmer unfurl each new connection between her story and Homer’s.
Palmer is unflinching in her love of humans, who she refers to as “the instruments that carve the path from cave walls to the stars…[and who] built this world and will build better ones” (2). She is also appropriately caustic when it comes to pointing out the many failings of “we who build so much and burn it, bumbling humanity” (540). She is nothing if not an epic thinker, and the plot of Perhaps the Stars hinges on nothing less than the longterm future of our species. Without dropping spoilers, I will say that in this book the core conflict of the War is revealed to be something quite different from what was previously indicated––a satisfying reveal that elevates the narrative to richer philosophical territory than it has previously visited. She also provides thoughtful and moving commentary on the nature of human relationships, the dangers and benefits of tribalism, the value of loyalty and political pragmatism, the tension between comfort and exploration, and humanity’s pressing need to become kinder in its dealings with other living things.
One potential stumbling point is that Palmer refuses to give direct explanations for a couple of her major conceits. This is sure to disappoint some readers, and I will admit to being a little irked about it at first. But the more I think about it, the less frustrated I become. This could be because I seek to anchor an unalloyed adoration of these books in my memory, or because in the end Palmer’s tale could not have been told in a way that perfectly satisfies my preferences for narrative coherence. Whatever the case, sometimes we choose to simply love something without criticism or caveat. In the final analysis, I realize that Terra Ignota drew that choice from me as easily as I draw breath.
I’d like to wrap up with my favorite quote from this 2020 interview with Palmer:
"As Ursula Le Guin said in her National Book Award Speech, genre fiction writers of science fiction, fantasy, and alternate history are realists of a larger reality in which we are exploring not just the Earth that we’re in but other ways societies and worlds could be set up, expanding the breadth of imagination of our civilization and expanding the number of civilizations with which we have made a kind of first contact. Since the development of science fiction as a genre, when new technological changes have affected the world, we have had dozens of different well thought through answers to what might this do before it happens…Science fiction fights our ethical battles before we have to do them, and is one of the things that makes humanity now more humane and ethically prepared for the speed of change we face than we have ever been before." (2:17:00)
This remains (and I imagine will remain) the best definition of science fiction I’ve ever heard; it’s also a perfect description of Palmer’s work. Like all great science fiction, Palmer’s story is as much about the present as it is about what may come to pass. Today, humanity is on the brink of achieving civilizational escape velocity that could propel us into an infinitely bright future, but our lesser angels––our bellicose bickering and atavistic urges––may yet wreck it all. I can’t begin to enumerate the diversity and depth of the ethical battles these books fight on behalf of a better future for humanity and life more generally. Most authors would be lucky to exhibit commensurate creativity and insight in an entire career, let alone a single series. Terra Ignota not only secures Palmer’s place in the highest echelon of science fiction authors, but earns her a position as one of our finest living writers in any genre. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.
This review was originally published on my blog, words&dirt.
March 18, 2022
With Perhaps the Stars, Palmer finally gets to the fireworks factory she's been teasing this whole series. WAR! (Hoo, yeah! What is is good for?). With the Olympic truce over, and those capable of making weapons of mass destruction abducted by the Utopian Hive, the battle lines and alliances are rapidly coming into definition. But before the war can go hot, two key technologies of the world fail entirely. The suborbital flying cars switch to an autonomous flight-denial mode, smashing any object in the air to earth. And the global tracker network, the universal internet of the 25th century, is jammed and hacked, forcing everyone back to line of sight lasers, cables, and messengers. The Hive War will be fought in a style Napoleon would have mostly recognized, even if troops are armed with stun guns rather than muskets.
In a blessed dose of sanity, the narrator for much of the book switches from much troubled, much overwritten Mycroft, with his digressions to the Reader and Hobbes, to the much more direct 9th Anonymous. 9A spends the first chunk of the story isolated in the global capital of Romanova on the island of Sardinia, fighting their own private war to rebuild communications and clarify the messy field of foes in grand alliances of Remaker and Hiveguard. Palmer manages to depict war with great clarity. It is confusion, and fear, and moments of glory are so much moonshine. War is unvarnished evil.
I also enjoyed the revelations of yet another conspiracy. The Gordian Hive, based in Brillist psychodynamics, is revealed to be the architect of plans against Utopia, with the fate of the human race at stake. Their leader, Felix Faust, believes that the Utopian project of space colonization is a diversion from a better goal of immortality via mind-machine interface. With keen insight, they saw the coming war as well, and while Utopia believed that a small war now was necessary to prevent a worse war in the future, Gordian glimpsed a chance to become humanity's visionary branch, and used their skills to move the war in that fashion.
This is a thrilling conclusion, so why is this not five stars? Three reasons.
First, while the Utopian project of space colonization and flashy miracle tech is well-defined, their Gordian adversary is not. All scifi technology is ultimately an illusion, smoke and mirrors, but Gordian's "pick a number, pick a color, fascinating" mind tricks are more illusory than most. Utopia's plan is enacting Tsiolkovsky's quote, “Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.” Diaspora is both maturity and distancing, the end of a unified humanity. Gordian deserves a grander vision to match Utopia. Not merely a garden Earth, but one of telepathy, new forms of connection, new depths in the psyche. Gordian is drawn as psychoanalysis+, but what if they inherited from Timothy Leary and Teilhard de Chardin more than Freud, charting new vistas of an intelligent, emotive, psychedelic universe? What if the Utopian/Gordian conflict was about two version of world where dreams have become real.
Second, there are still undigested lumps of Hobbes and Homer blended in amongst Palmer's writing. I reached my limit with these philosophical/theological asides in book 3, and while Perhaps the Stars wastes less time on them, it still wastes time on them. The Ninth Anonymous narrates much of the book, but Mycroft returns, and I'm thoroughly done with his voice.
And third, J.E.D.D. Mason is the pivot of the plot, the single figure who could unite the Hives in his person thereby destroying the diversity of futuristic political systems, and a divine alien visitor brought to this universe by our flawed creator, who can only perceive and act in absolutes. I don't mind religious themes in my science-fiction, but J.E.D.D. reads too often as a ponderous nullity, with Capital Letters a crude effort to capture the totality and strangeness of their thoughts. Where this beam of the story needs to be iron, it is instead rotting wood.
On completion, Terra Ignota is great, but frustratingly flawed. It has some of the best and most original ideas I've seen in recent speculative fiction. It also has ideas which are either so outre or flawed on conception that no other author has chosen to use them, and for good reason.
In a blessed dose of sanity, the narrator for much of the book switches from much troubled, much overwritten Mycroft, with his digressions to the Reader and Hobbes, to the much more direct 9th Anonymous. 9A spends the first chunk of the story isolated in the global capital of Romanova on the island of Sardinia, fighting their own private war to rebuild communications and clarify the messy field of foes in grand alliances of Remaker and Hiveguard. Palmer manages to depict war with great clarity. It is confusion, and fear, and moments of glory are so much moonshine. War is unvarnished evil.
I also enjoyed the revelations of yet another conspiracy. The Gordian Hive, based in Brillist psychodynamics, is revealed to be the architect of plans against Utopia, with the fate of the human race at stake. Their leader, Felix Faust, believes that the Utopian project of space colonization is a diversion from a better goal of immortality via mind-machine interface. With keen insight, they saw the coming war as well, and while Utopia believed that a small war now was necessary to prevent a worse war in the future, Gordian glimpsed a chance to become humanity's visionary branch, and used their skills to move the war in that fashion.
This is a thrilling conclusion, so why is this not five stars? Three reasons.
First, while the Utopian project of space colonization and flashy miracle tech is well-defined, their Gordian adversary is not. All scifi technology is ultimately an illusion, smoke and mirrors, but Gordian's "pick a number, pick a color, fascinating" mind tricks are more illusory than most. Utopia's plan is enacting Tsiolkovsky's quote, “Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.” Diaspora is both maturity and distancing, the end of a unified humanity. Gordian deserves a grander vision to match Utopia. Not merely a garden Earth, but one of telepathy, new forms of connection, new depths in the psyche. Gordian is drawn as psychoanalysis+, but what if they inherited from Timothy Leary and Teilhard de Chardin more than Freud, charting new vistas of an intelligent, emotive, psychedelic universe? What if the Utopian/Gordian conflict was about two version of world where dreams have become real.
Second, there are still undigested lumps of Hobbes and Homer blended in amongst Palmer's writing. I reached my limit with these philosophical/theological asides in book 3, and while Perhaps the Stars wastes less time on them, it still wastes time on them. The Ninth Anonymous narrates much of the book, but Mycroft returns, and I'm thoroughly done with his voice.
And third, J.E.D.D. Mason is the pivot of the plot, the single figure who could unite the Hives in his person thereby destroying the diversity of futuristic political systems, and a divine alien visitor brought to this universe by our flawed creator, who can only perceive and act in absolutes. I don't mind religious themes in my science-fiction, but J.E.D.D. reads too often as a ponderous nullity, with Capital Letters a crude effort to capture the totality and strangeness of their thoughts. Where this beam of the story needs to be iron, it is instead rotting wood.
On completion, Terra Ignota is great, but frustratingly flawed. It has some of the best and most original ideas I've seen in recent speculative fiction. It also has ideas which are either so outre or flawed on conception that no other author has chosen to use them, and for good reason.
October 21, 2021
Was it worthwhile to read this tetralogy? Yeah, overall, I suppose so. The narrative didn't go how I'd prefer, but it's consistently interesting if nothing else. In every book there's a considerable focus on experimentation in narrative style. Despite that most of the time I was more annoyed than intrigued by that, it was still worth reading.
The narrative generally stayed at the periphery of the action, which made sense, considering the events that occurred and the narrator. Although this was a change of pace from where most books are in the middle of whatever was going on, I found that reading daily field reports and similar wasn't a preferred method of engagement for me.
It was definitely a strange experience reading about people who had forgotten how to wage war and were reading monographs about how to do so and establishing best practices to have humane internment camps. They wanted to wage war against each other without killing anyone. Overall their conflict was so sterile that it seemed alien to me, though that was certainly for the best for those involved.
There were two extended psychological horror scenes and they were probably the highlights of the book for me, especially the first one. For several pages the narrative is presented entirely though a data log, which I don't remember if I've seen before, or if I have, it wasn't anything noteworthy to me.
Unfortunately, which is something I write all too often, I was still unable to feel particularly invested in any of it, which as with every book, limited my enjoyment. As with the previous books, I wasn't able to appreciate the classical age references, because my reading of classics is negligible.
I was indifferent to the ending. It works well enough for the context, though I would've preferred something more decisive. My main problem with it was that after four books it felt lacking in consequence, though that's probably a personal and cultural issue.
The narrative generally stayed at the periphery of the action, which made sense, considering the events that occurred and the narrator. Although this was a change of pace from where most books are in the middle of whatever was going on, I found that reading daily field reports and similar wasn't a preferred method of engagement for me.
It was definitely a strange experience reading about people who had forgotten how to wage war and were reading monographs about how to do so and establishing best practices to have humane internment camps. They wanted to wage war against each other without killing anyone. Overall their conflict was so sterile that it seemed alien to me, though that was certainly for the best for those involved.
There were two extended psychological horror scenes and they were probably the highlights of the book for me, especially the first one. For several pages the narrative is presented entirely though a data log, which I don't remember if I've seen before, or if I have, it wasn't anything noteworthy to me.
Unfortunately, which is something I write all too often, I was still unable to feel particularly invested in any of it, which as with every book, limited my enjoyment. As with the previous books, I wasn't able to appreciate the classical age references, because my reading of classics is negligible.
I was indifferent to the ending. It works well enough for the context, though I would've preferred something more decisive. My main problem with it was that after four books it felt lacking in consequence, though that's probably a personal and cultural issue.
June 26, 2022
This book took me 7 months to get through. It's dense and in my opinion could benefit from more dialogue and less narrator data dump. I'm glad I got to see how this ended, but I did not enjoy getting there.
This review was written in memory of Jenny Colvin (reading Envy).
This review was written in memory of Jenny Colvin (reading Envy).
May 21, 2023
A fairly solid conclusion that continues the same tone and pacing, subject matter, and battle of ideologues as the last one. The first book is still absolutely my favourite, but the transition from that to a more methodically slow examination of the human condition is well done. If readers have made it this far I think they will enjoy it, but I can see “normal” sci-fi readership bouncing off of this series, as it is not remotely interested in delivering contemporary scifi payoff, imo. I liked that a lot about it, though. It poses big questions and isn’t afraid to follow them, despite them leading down some pretty intense scenes and revealing character flaws in everyone. There are a few darlings, but it still feels quite savage, relevant, and singular.
The last speech drove home a thematic nail that was pretty interesting to me; mostly because it acknowledges how humanity is wired and how it could be gamed into thriving, since both peace time and war time are fail states for the species. Spectacular fail states, actually. The conclusion about humanity and first contact also traces a through line that prompts and engages with very interesting questions.
In reviews, people call this a future history, which I think works well, since it’s in dialogue with history; especially it’s repetition. Patterning we can’t move past and habituate ourselves, making future generations susceptible to the same problems we face today. The casual cruelty in which our society functions regularly, and what is discernible to the average individual when society functions in that way, is one of the most vile things humanity replicates reliably in every civilization.
In a more classic vein of sci-fi, this series mines speculative questions and presents a plot to interrogate them. It won’t be for everyone, as I said, but it’s certainly for me. Very successful.
The last speech drove home a thematic nail that was pretty interesting to me; mostly because it acknowledges how humanity is wired and how it could be gamed into thriving, since both peace time and war time are fail states for the species. Spectacular fail states, actually. The conclusion about humanity and first contact also traces a through line that prompts and engages with very interesting questions.
In reviews, people call this a future history, which I think works well, since it’s in dialogue with history; especially it’s repetition. Patterning we can’t move past and habituate ourselves, making future generations susceptible to the same problems we face today. The casual cruelty in which our society functions regularly, and what is discernible to the average individual when society functions in that way, is one of the most vile things humanity replicates reliably in every civilization.
In a more classic vein of sci-fi, this series mines speculative questions and presents a plot to interrogate them. It won’t be for everyone, as I said, but it’s certainly for me. Very successful.
October 18, 2022
A ver, fácil no sería. He tardado casi un mes en leer esta cuarta y última parte. Vale que me ha pillado por medio semana y media de vacaciones, pero fácil no es. Ni corto este final. ¿Vale la pena? No me habréis visto poner muchas 5 estrellas a todas y cada una de las partes de una n-logía: esa es mi respuesta.
¿Qué puedo decir de la conclusión de una trilogía en cuatro partes sin caer en el spoiler? Que ojalá alguna editorial kamikaze lo traiga a Españita, aunque si no es una generalista (¿Blackie Books?) probablemente se arruine. ¿Que igual vale la pena una bancarrota por iluminarnos, por que se derrame el samanté sobre nuestros rostros? Eso ya lo dejo al gusto de la editorial.
No he visto deus ex machina tan bien justificados (pero deus ex machina, al fin y al cabo) ni en el mismísimo Doctor Who. Que conste que no he leído ni la Ilíada ni la Odisea, pero ese es el nivel de intervención divina en el que estoy pensando. *Chef's kiss*
La gran pregunta, dados tan gargánticos saltos de fe… ¿Esto es fantasía o es ciencia-ficción? Es… es… ¡Terra Ignota! [FUNDIDO A NEGRO, CRÉDITOS].
Escena poscréditos: No sé si alguna vez habré llorado de pura emoción desbordante al cerrar un libro por última vez en un restaurante, yo solo para más inri, pero igual ha pasado hoy. Igual, eh.
¿Qué puedo decir de la conclusión de una trilogía en cuatro partes sin caer en el spoiler? Que ojalá alguna editorial kamikaze lo traiga a Españita, aunque si no es una generalista (¿Blackie Books?) probablemente se arruine. ¿Que igual vale la pena una bancarrota por iluminarnos, por que se derrame el samanté sobre nuestros rostros? Eso ya lo dejo al gusto de la editorial.
No he visto deus ex machina tan bien justificados (pero deus ex machina, al fin y al cabo) ni en el mismísimo Doctor Who. Que conste que no he leído ni la Ilíada ni la Odisea, pero ese es el nivel de intervención divina en el que estoy pensando. *Chef's kiss*
La gran pregunta, dados tan gargánticos saltos de fe… ¿Esto es fantasía o es ciencia-ficción? Es… es… ¡Terra Ignota! [FUNDIDO A NEGRO, CRÉDITOS].
Escena poscréditos: No sé si alguna vez habré llorado de pura emoción desbordante al cerrar un libro por última vez en un restaurante, yo solo para más inri, pero igual ha pasado hoy. Igual, eh.
November 30, 2022
Terra Ignota is one of the best (if not the best) SF books/series I have ever read. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed something as I did these four books. Crazy as they are. And they are crazy. Total mayhem. So many difficult themes, so much emotion, questions, events, nuances, big and small ideas, real and unreal. Identity, gender, family, government, religion, death, progress…
Books like these are the reason why I love to read.
More ramblings available on my blog: nicollzg.wordpress.com
Books like these are the reason why I love to read.
More ramblings available on my blog: nicollzg.wordpress.com
July 25, 2023
It's funny looking back at my reviews of the first three books in the series. They get progressively shorter by like 60-70% as I lose about that much enthusiasm after each entry. I started the series very excited by the world-building despite some serious narrative and thematic flaws, but as I progressed from book to book the problems kept mounting while leaving the fascinating, innovative world egregiously under-explored.
The same overall issue with the series continues here. On the one hand Palmer has built an extremely intelligent, novel and impressively-considered world, and I continuously marvel at it while reading. But on the other hand what she has decided to focus on in that world is deeply, deeply silly. There were so many directions she could have gone when laying out this fascinating geopolitical exploration of a far-future Earth utopia, and she decided to make it about: sex scandals and gender fixation; a preposterous obsession with Enlightenment thinkers from over half a millenium prior to the narrative chronology, and; literally recreating the Odyssey/Iliad but with flying cars and space elevators.
If it were possible to simply excise those three things and leave the rest -- all the political scheming, JEDD the Alien's First Contact, the Gordian/Utopian conflict -- this would have been one of the greatest scifi trilogies (emphasis on TRILOGY) of all time. Instead it's this: a bloated, profoundly frustrating exercise in what coulda been. If it weren't so utterly brilliant in many aspects it wouldn't be nearly as frustrating.
That takes care of most of the content issues but there are also serious problems with the form. I was really excited in this one that we had a new narrator who did not waste entire pages of overwrought passages conversing with the ghost of Thomas Hobbes and his "reader." Cause that was a big part of what made the first three books tedious. But then of course we switch back to Mycroft after several chapters and it basically stays with him for half the book, reviving those tedious asides. And even when not diverting in that exact way, Palmer frequently takes way too long to say things, hammering the point home over and over and over again. The series really needed a stronger editor to help Palmer kill more darlings.
There were some genuinely moving parts of this book, but they get lost in Palmer's compulsion to apply this poignance to dozens of different plot points. Most of the characters frequently break down sobbing at these points, just so you know they're meaningful I guess. I'm glad that Palmer is apparently addressing some issues of boys-don't-cry toxic masculinity, but she goes way overboard and it ends up watering (haha) everything down, in addition to making my eyes roll. They also make the interactions feel pretty stilted -- no real person has that quantity of emotional interactions with everyone around them, especially not world leaders, so it's tough to accept that 400 years in the future not just one person but EVERY person will.
The worst example is a 15-page conversation between 9A and Sniper, which is some of the most saccharine, cringiest dialogue I've ever seen in an adult novel, broken up by frequent meaning-laden soul-staring and eye-gazing. It builds up to an important plot point so I get it on some level, but there's at least 10 pages too much of it. One of the reasons I feel such a strong aversion to this scene and Palmer's general abuse of poignance is because it reminds me of my own (bad, unpublished) novel. Given the success of this series maybe I should start shopping it again (lol yeah no).
Last, so much of the events of this novel happen in extremely long speeches. This recalls a similar problem from previous entries in which the plot points occur through exposition. A lot of that is due to the narrative device that Palmer uses, a definite double-edged sword toward which I am correspondingly ambivalent. It works a lot of the time and is fairly inventive, and impressively consistent in application. But there are other times when the actual plot takes a distinct back seat to the device, and I'd rather get a more detailed synopsis of what's actually going on in the weeks/months between journal entries.
In conclusion, Terra Ignota is a land of contrasts. Despite it being one of the truly original and exciting scifi worlds I've ever encountered, I can't strongly recommend it to anyone. I wanted to give it 4 stars because in intelligence and audacity it is a distinct tier above most other scifi/fantasy I've ever read, but ultimately there were just too many flaws. Instead I'd suggest you just (re-)read The Dispossessed and see if that doesn't scratch your itch for bold, exciting scifi utopias.
Not Bad Reviews
@pointblaek
The same overall issue with the series continues here. On the one hand Palmer has built an extremely intelligent, novel and impressively-considered world, and I continuously marvel at it while reading. But on the other hand what she has decided to focus on in that world is deeply, deeply silly. There were so many directions she could have gone when laying out this fascinating geopolitical exploration of a far-future Earth utopia, and she decided to make it about: sex scandals and gender fixation; a preposterous obsession with Enlightenment thinkers from over half a millenium prior to the narrative chronology, and; literally recreating the Odyssey/Iliad but with flying cars and space elevators.
If it were possible to simply excise those three things and leave the rest -- all the political scheming, JEDD the Alien's First Contact, the Gordian/Utopian conflict -- this would have been one of the greatest scifi trilogies (emphasis on TRILOGY) of all time. Instead it's this: a bloated, profoundly frustrating exercise in what coulda been. If it weren't so utterly brilliant in many aspects it wouldn't be nearly as frustrating.
That takes care of most of the content issues but there are also serious problems with the form. I was really excited in this one that we had a new narrator who did not waste entire pages of overwrought passages conversing with the ghost of Thomas Hobbes and his "reader." Cause that was a big part of what made the first three books tedious. But then of course we switch back to Mycroft after several chapters and it basically stays with him for half the book, reviving those tedious asides. And even when not diverting in that exact way, Palmer frequently takes way too long to say things, hammering the point home over and over and over again. The series really needed a stronger editor to help Palmer kill more darlings.
There were some genuinely moving parts of this book, but they get lost in Palmer's compulsion to apply this poignance to dozens of different plot points. Most of the characters frequently break down sobbing at these points, just so you know they're meaningful I guess. I'm glad that Palmer is apparently addressing some issues of boys-don't-cry toxic masculinity, but she goes way overboard and it ends up watering (haha) everything down, in addition to making my eyes roll. They also make the interactions feel pretty stilted -- no real person has that quantity of emotional interactions with everyone around them, especially not world leaders, so it's tough to accept that 400 years in the future not just one person but EVERY person will.
The worst example is a 15-page conversation between 9A and Sniper, which is some of the most saccharine, cringiest dialogue I've ever seen in an adult novel, broken up by frequent meaning-laden soul-staring and eye-gazing. It builds up to an important plot point so I get it on some level, but there's at least 10 pages too much of it. One of the reasons I feel such a strong aversion to this scene and Palmer's general abuse of poignance is because it reminds me of my own (bad, unpublished) novel. Given the success of this series maybe I should start shopping it again (lol yeah no).
Last, so much of the events of this novel happen in extremely long speeches. This recalls a similar problem from previous entries in which the plot points occur through exposition. A lot of that is due to the narrative device that Palmer uses, a definite double-edged sword toward which I am correspondingly ambivalent. It works a lot of the time and is fairly inventive, and impressively consistent in application. But there are other times when the actual plot takes a distinct back seat to the device, and I'd rather get a more detailed synopsis of what's actually going on in the weeks/months between journal entries.
In conclusion, Terra Ignota is a land of contrasts. Despite it being one of the truly original and exciting scifi worlds I've ever encountered, I can't strongly recommend it to anyone. I wanted to give it 4 stars because in intelligence and audacity it is a distinct tier above most other scifi/fantasy I've ever read, but ultimately there were just too many flaws. Instead I'd suggest you just (re-)read The Dispossessed and see if that doesn't scratch your itch for bold, exciting scifi utopias.
Not Bad Reviews
@pointblaek
December 30, 2021
Absolutely incredible. One of my top 5 favorite series. (Also my fav book published in 2021.)
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