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A review by timinbc
Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
1.0
Althea Ann makes some good remarks here, but I am going to interpret my similar reaction differently.
Palmer gives us a boy who can bring inanimate objects to life. Wow, what's going to happen with THAT? Well, by page 95 (when I bailed out) we haven't seen the kid again. We've spent the time exploring an artificial society, introducing about 87 uninteresting characters, and learning the strange rules of a new way of using gendered pronouns (roughly speaking, we use he/she based on observed behaviour, and even then only if we know the people fairly well). And nothing of interest happens.
WHAT ABOUT THE MAGIC KID?
As I put this book down, I fantasized the boy (can I call them a boy?) bringing a plastic Godzilla to life 100' tall and telling it to kill all the characters we've met so far so we can get on with the story.
I award Palmer a point for noting that singular "they" requires "themself" as its reflexive.
But they has offered me a really interesting story, then withdrawn it in favour of 100 pages of "look what a clever author I am." Sorry, I want the story and I want it now.
There have been other stories that explored pronouns and artificial societies. They generally didn't impress me either, but the ones I recall didn't leave the story behind.
I won't say you won't like this book. Obviously many have and will, but I am not among them.
Palmer gives us a boy who can bring inanimate objects to life. Wow, what's going to happen with THAT? Well, by page 95 (when I bailed out) we haven't seen the kid again. We've spent the time exploring an artificial society, introducing about 87 uninteresting characters, and learning the strange rules of a new way of using gendered pronouns (roughly speaking, we use he/she based on observed behaviour, and even then only if we know the people fairly well). And nothing of interest happens.
WHAT ABOUT THE MAGIC KID?
As I put this book down, I fantasized the boy (can I call them a boy?) bringing a plastic Godzilla to life 100' tall and telling it to kill all the characters we've met so far so we can get on with the story.
I award Palmer a point for noting that singular "they" requires "themself" as its reflexive.
But they has offered me a really interesting story, then withdrawn it in favour of 100 pages of "look what a clever author I am." Sorry, I want the story and I want it now.
There have been other stories that explored pronouns and artificial societies. They generally didn't impress me either, but the ones I recall didn't leave the story behind.
I won't say you won't like this book. Obviously many have and will, but I am not among them.