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oleksandr 's review for:
Too Like the Lightning
by Ada Palmer
This is a strange book. It starts great, introducing great many themes at once. And unlike many other SF novels, which may introduce a world-changing device/event but never think out the consequences, this one does a great job of polishing its concepts. And they are many:
- from the style, intentionally made to sound like 18th century (at the same time mocking some of the writing styles of the day)
- to a bit of god powers and responsibilities (the book starts with witnessing a boy, who made toy solders alive and sentient)
- to gender identities (the [fictional] writer insists on using he/she in the culture that shifted to neutral they but the genders are disconnected from biological sexes)
- to effects of extremely fast transportation (destruction of current notion of a country as a territory because everyone is able to go to work across the globe and then have a dinner half across a globe again on daily basis)
- to enlightenment philosophy (including de Sade)
- to nurturing children linked to machine Matrix-style.
These points were great and I planned to give a well-deserved five stars, but then the book abruptly halted with a cliff-hanger and without resolving a lot of the questions. This is not fair! :) I always thought that if a book is a part of a series it is still a good style to either complete each novel or notify in advance that it is part of a longer book.
I plan to read the second volume, [b:Seven Surrenders|28220647|Seven Surrenders (Terra Ignota, #2)|Ada Palmer|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1517514624s/28220647.jpg|48249332]
- from the style, intentionally made to sound like 18th century (at the same time mocking some of the writing styles of the day)
- to a bit of god powers and responsibilities (the book starts with witnessing a boy, who made toy solders alive and sentient)
- to gender identities (the [fictional] writer insists on using he/she in the culture that shifted to neutral they but the genders are disconnected from biological sexes)
- to effects of extremely fast transportation (destruction of current notion of a country as a territory because everyone is able to go to work across the globe and then have a dinner half across a globe again on daily basis)
- to enlightenment philosophy (including de Sade)
- to nurturing children linked to machine Matrix-style.
These points were great and I planned to give a well-deserved five stars, but then the book abruptly halted with a cliff-hanger and without resolving a lot of the questions. This is not fair! :) I always thought that if a book is a part of a series it is still a good style to either complete each novel or notify in advance that it is part of a longer book.
I plan to read the second volume, [b:Seven Surrenders|28220647|Seven Surrenders (Terra Ignota, #2)|Ada Palmer|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1517514624s/28220647.jpg|48249332]