Too Like the Lightning

Book Details

71.4% complete

Author(s):

Ada Palmer

First Pub:

2016

Genre(s):

Science Fiction

First Read:

2023

Times Read:

1 time

Rating:

Chapters:

See 33

1 - A Prayer to the Reader

2 - A Boy and His God

3 - The Most Important People in the World

4 - A Thing Long Thought Extinct

5 - Aristotles House

6 - Rome Was Not Built in a Day

7 - Canis Domini

8 - A Place of Honor

9 - Every Soul That Ever Died

10 - The Sun Awaits His Arrival

11 - Enter Sniper

12 - Neithr Earth not Atom, But

13 - Perhaps the Stars

14 - The Interlude of the Interview with Retired Black Sakura Reporter Tsuneo Sugiyama, as Related by Martin Guildbreaker

15 - If They Catch Me

16 - Thou Canst Not Put it Off Forever, Mycroft

17 - Tocquervilles Valet

18 - The Tenth Director

19 - Flies to Honey

20 - A Monster in the House

21 - The Which is Caesers

22 - Mycroft is Mycroft

23 - Pontifex Maxima

24 - Sometimes Even I Am Very Lonely

25 - Madames

26 - Madame d'Arouet

27 - The Interlude in Which Martin Guildbreaker Pursues the Question of Dr. Cato Weeksbooth

28 - The Enemy

29 - Julia, Ive Found God!

30 - Deo Erexit Sade

31 - Dominant Predator

32 - That There Are Two

33 - Martin Guildbreakers Last Interlude: The Utopians Arent Dirty like the Rest of Us

Internal ID:

13626

Series:

Seven Surrenders ->

Terra Ignota*

#1 of 4

Terra Ignota*

A science-fiction series by Ada Palmer.

View this series in the book list

1) Too Like the Lightning
2) Seven Surrenders
3) The Will to Battle
4) Perhaps the Stars

Copyright:

Dedication:

This book is dedicated to the first human
who thought to hollow out a log to make a boat,
and his or her successors.

First Sentence:

You will criticize me, reader, for writing in a style six hundred years removed from the events I describe, but you came to me for explanation of those days of transformation which left your world the world it is, and since it was the philosophy of the Eighteenth Century, heavy with optimism and ambition, whose abrupt revival birthed the recent revolution, so it is only in the language of the Enlightenment, rich with opinion and sentiment, that those days can be described.

Last Sentence:

May contain spoilers

Seven is enough."

Comments:

Comments may contain spoilers

I'd heard some good things about this book (can't remember from where). Glad I didn't buy this one. It was the worst book I've read since Beauty by Sheri S Tepper (okay it's worse than that one). I'll not pick up the series and I actually quit this one about 100 pages from the end. First book I DNF in about 40 years.

Synopsis not on file
Extract not on file

Added: 04-May-2023

Last Updated: 14-Dec-2023

Publications

10-May-2016

Recorded Books

Audiobook

Date Issued:

10-May-2016

Format:

Audiobook

Cover Price:

$29.30

Length:

20 hrs 19 min (443 pages)

"Read":

Once

Reading(s):

1) 16 Oct 2023 - 31 Oct 2023

Cover Link(s):

amazon.com

Internal ID:

23203

Publisher:

Recorded Books

ISBN:

Unknown

Country:

United States

Language:

English

Credits:

Jefferson Mays - Narration

From audible.com:

Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets.

Carlyle Foster is a sensayer - a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away.

The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labeling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world's population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competition is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life.

And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destabilize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life.

Cover:

Notes and Comments:

Author(s)

Ada Palmer

Awards

2017

Baltimore Science Fiction Society

Compton Crook Award

Winner

I try to maintain page numbers for audiobooks even though obviously there aren't any. I do this to keep track of pages read and I try to use the Kindle version page numbers for this.
Synopses marked with an asterisk (*) were generated by an AI. There aren't a lot since this is an iffy way to do it - AI seems to make stuff up.
When specific publication dates are unknown (ie prefixed with a "Cir"), I try to get the publication date that is closest to the specific printing that I can.
When listing chapters, I only list chapters relevant to the story. I will usually leave off Author Notes, Indices, Acknowledgements, etc unless they are relevant to the story or the book is non-fiction.
Page numbers on this site are for the end of the main story. I normally do not include appendices, extra material, and other miscellaneous stuff at the end of the book in the page count.