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A review by tomasthanes
Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
5.0
Wow. Just wow! I can't remember a book in the last couple of years that had such creative world building and good characters with their own voice.
This book (the first of four) is set in the distant future, in the year 2454 and the book describes a 7 day period in that year.
Nations are gone (sort of - they've been demoted and you identify with them as a nation "strat"). Religions are gone (sort of: "Let us create a new creature! Not a preacher, but a teacher, who hears a parishioner's questions and presents the answers of all the faiths and sects of history, Christians and pagans, Muslims and atheists, all equal." - this would be more plausible if all religions (or religions in denial) were equal). In their place are Hives: Humanists, Cousins, Masons, Gordians, Europe, Mitsubishi, and Utopians along with [ Whitelaw | Graylaw | Blacklaw ] Hiveless. Membership in a hive is entirely voluntary.
Rather than nuclear households we're familiar with (which we've done a really good job of destroying), there are "bashes" (from the Japanese word i-basho). Like hives, membership in a bash (at least for adults) is voluntary.
In fact, another reviewer of this book quoted John Lennon's song "Imagine" and posited that the author was, in some sense, inspired by that song.
Transportation is fast and ubiquitous via flying cars. There are two transportation systems: Six-Hive and Utopians. A Humanist bash, Saneer-Weeksbooth, runs the Six-Hive transportation system. The Utopian system is slower but has 100% fewer accidents.
One of the things that makes the book harder to grok is the un-gendered language. Pronouns are almost exclusively "they/them" though the narrative will, upon occasion, provide gendered pronouns for the aid of the reader. Like the present day, de-genderizing or multiplying genders doesn't really solve the root problem and only makes things more complex.
Because of or despite these things, the book was excellent and I'm moving onto the second book in the series.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Ignota (which is excellent (and contains spoilers))
This book (the first of four) is set in the distant future, in the year 2454 and the book describes a 7 day period in that year.
Nations are gone (sort of - they've been demoted and you identify with them as a nation "strat"). Religions are gone (sort of: "Let us create a new creature! Not a preacher, but a teacher, who hears a parishioner's questions and presents the answers of all the faiths and sects of history, Christians and pagans, Muslims and atheists, all equal." - this would be more plausible if all religions (or religions in denial) were equal). In their place are Hives: Humanists, Cousins, Masons, Gordians, Europe, Mitsubishi, and Utopians along with [ Whitelaw | Graylaw | Blacklaw ] Hiveless. Membership in a hive is entirely voluntary.
Rather than nuclear households we're familiar with (which we've done a really good job of destroying), there are "bashes" (from the Japanese word i-basho). Like hives, membership in a bash (at least for adults) is voluntary.
In fact, another reviewer of this book quoted John Lennon's song "Imagine" and posited that the author was, in some sense, inspired by that song.
Transportation is fast and ubiquitous via flying cars. There are two transportation systems: Six-Hive and Utopians. A Humanist bash, Saneer-Weeksbooth, runs the Six-Hive transportation system. The Utopian system is slower but has 100% fewer accidents.
One of the things that makes the book harder to grok is the un-gendered language. Pronouns are almost exclusively "they/them" though the narrative will, upon occasion, provide gendered pronouns for the aid of the reader. Like the present day, de-genderizing or multiplying genders doesn't really solve the root problem and only makes things more complex.
Because of or despite these things, the book was excellent and I'm moving onto the second book in the series.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Ignota (which is excellent (and contains spoilers))