Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1) in Beyond Reality

May 17, 2016 Kdawg91 rated it really liked it

Incredibly deep and thought provoking debut by Ms. Palmer. I am not a guy who is deep into the philosophical things of life, but Ada Palmer has created an incredible story that makes you think. Thinking is way more rare in fiction nowadays that it used to be.

I will have to read this book again, its very similar in tone to the Thessaly series by Jo Walton. It sort of feels like science fiction should be more like this, strange and worms its way into your brain and changes you from the inside out. ...more

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Mar 16, 2017 Tani rated it really liked it

Shelves: female-author, scifi, 2017-novels

This was a really slow start for me. I think part of that is because it is a slow start. The emphasis is on introducing the characters and the world, and on setting the scene for events and revelations that will come later. Part of it was also a huge disconnect between my expectations and what I actually got. I'd read reviews, but I still had only a vague idea of what to expect when I started, and I was overly focused on the far-future aspect of the story. I expected something far more technolog This was a really slow start for me. I think part of that is because it is a slow start. The emphasis is on introducing the characters and the world, and on setting the scene for events and revelations that will come later. Part of it was also a huge disconnect between my expectations and what I actually got. I'd read reviews, but I still had only a vague idea of what to expect when I started, and I was overly focused on the far-future aspect of the story. I expected something far more technological and scientific. What I got was much more like a fantasy of manners, although even that is not really accurate at all. So, I had a bit of literary whiplash for the first little bit, which also hindered my settling into the story.

The writing style is also a bit of an adventure. Mycroft will warn right at the beginning that the writing style is weird, and it is, but not just for the reasons that he cites. First, he writes in a 18th century style, which is what he warns about. However, there are also issues of pronouns that lend some serious confusion. In this society, gendered pronouns are not a thing done in polite society. Everyone should be 'they.' However, Mycroft insists of using 'he' and 'she', which shouldn't be confusing, except that he often uses the pronoun that corresponds to a given character's personality, rather than anything physical. So in one breath he may talk about a character's breasts, and in the next he may call that same character 'he.' Confused yet?

But once I settled in, maybe a little over a third of the way through, this was very enjoyable indeed. The characters, for one thing, were fantastic. So many of them were highly developed and fleshed out that during the day, when I was away from the book, I would of think of them as real people. Once I became acquainted with them, particularly Mycroft, they took on a sense of reality that was almost startling.

Which makes the revelations and twists of the story just that much better. This is a story that delights in reversing your expectations. It will build you up toward certain ideas and expectations, and then make a revelation that completely turns that on its head. The first one is around halfway through the book, and it will completely call into question all of the conclusions that you've drawn in the earlier parts of the book. That was the point where I really was drawn into this book and knew that I hadn't made a mistake in picking it up.

This is a book that aims to make you think, and philosophy plays a part in that. Thankfully, for those of us who haven't read a ton of philosophy, Palmer is really good about introducing the ideas fully and understandably, which I appreciated. However, even without the philosophical connections, I think that this is a book that would have always had me asking questions. Some of the societal changes that are shown here are ones that seem very positive on the surface. However, Palmer explores them with a depth that really made me question whether they were as positive as I would have expected. I'm still not sure what conclusions I'd like to draw from this book, if any. Things are definitely complicated, and I like that this book reflects that.

So yeah. Despite a slow start, this is a rich and complex book, and I am excited to read the next one in the future! ...more

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Nov 15, 2015 Jenny T rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction, read-in-2016

December 13, 2021: Things coalesced better for me the second time around. The world building is brilliant, our narrator wonderfully unreliable, and the writing style is just gorgeous.

May 26, 2016: I'm still not quite sure what it was I just read, but as incomplete and complicated and utterly drenched in philosophy and history and politics as it was, it was fascinating. With painstakingly detailed worldbuilding, this is one I'll have to read again (and possibly a third time) to fully understand ...more

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Oct 08, 2017 Aaron rated it liked it

If you bought a copy absent any marketing about this title being a 'book 1' of some larger series--as I did--you may have been puzzled as the pages became fewer and fewer with no effort by the author to end plotlines or resolve mysteries. You may also have been less than impressed as the narrative simply ceases at a point that bears little relation to a logical authorial choice or strategy. So I'm not as charitable as I might otherwise be to a text that, care for it or not, I could agree that th If you bought a copy absent any marketing about this title being a 'book 1' of some larger series--as I did--you may have been puzzled as the pages became fewer and fewer with no effort by the author to end plotlines or resolve mysteries. You may also have been less than impressed as the narrative simply ceases at a point that bears little relation to a logical authorial choice or strategy. So I'm not as charitable as I might otherwise be to a text that, care for it or not, I could agree that the author structured and completed it on her terms and can be judged on her ambition vis a vis her grasp and so on.
Because this is the most ambitious SF book published this decade that I've read. There have been books that reach a higher water mark of speculative fiction accomplishment in general (Jeff Vandermeer), or that have bound themselves to the world that climate change is bringing us, and in so doing continue the 'if this goes on' prophetic strain of SF, but 'Lightning' is inspired by zero of the usual suspects.
'Lightning' is a near future earth (the 2400s, I think) world-building novel. Unlike most world-building novels, it refuses to signal the moral flavor that the reader should assign to the vast array of social structures, leaders, lesser characters, motives, or projects. There is no through-line from how you live today to the desired or unwanted remnants of our time still resident in the future. There's been an extended period of crisis between our time and their's, but it's only obliquely referred to in the text. What is important is that they have come out the other side of the crisis and now live in a hyper-enlightened (think the French englightenment, rather than english) and statutorily non-religous era. So...all those other future french enlightment sf novels about political intrigue and mystical events that you've been reading? Just another one of those. That's what I mean by ambitious because it really comes from nowhere.
The author's wish to fully realize this world is so intense that the cast of characters, events, social groups, taboos, economies, national security dangers, and does not end. It's hard to want to keep going when by page 400 you cannot remember if the character in the scene was 1 of any similar 50 other characters already introduced. We spend most of the narrative with a viewpoint character meeting all of the others, so you might think, alright, at least that's an anchor for the reader. Unfortunately the viewpoint character is so multi-faced, with such a bizarre collection of past actions current alliances, he's more like three characters under one name and the effect is disorienting.
If you have patience, enjoy dense worldbuilding, and believe that SF can still house imaginative gambits with no real precedents, give this a try. I may be waiting a while before I start the 2nd book though. ...more

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Dec 30, 2018 H. R. rated it liked it

If Philip K. Dick had written The Man In The High Castle in Haiku, many people would have admired it but fewer people would have enjoyed it.

A better example of this type of creative attempt (writing style from an earlier era) is The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron.

The Author can be forgiven with context of the cross-discipline culture at the University of Chicago. The editors, less so.

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Dec 18, 2016 Deedee marked it as to-read

Shelves: p, 0000scifi-and-fantasy-club-unread, fantasy, hugo-award-nominee, beyond-reality-science-fiction, series-1st, scifi-and-fantasy-book-club, beyond-reality-unread, compton-crook-balticon-nominee, compton-crook-balticon-winner

intelligent, ambitious and complex
with antiquated writing style

I've laid it aside for now -- I'll try it again later when I have big blocks of time where I can read it slowly, puzzling out what is going on from the hints in the text ...more

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Feb 14, 2018 Richard rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, ebook, sffbc, sffbc-cloud-9

Interesting and intriguing...
and more than a little disturbing.

Also a lot of clever thought provoking fun.

But... ‘Here ends ‘Too Like the Lightning,’’ is NOT an ending.

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