Too Like the Lightning

Name: Too Like the Lightning
Brand: Recorded Books
Availability: InStock
Rating: 3.33 (3 reviews)
Author: Ada Palmer
ISBN: 9781501919749

Author: Ada Palmer

Series: Terra Ignota #1

Narrator: Jefferson Mays

Unabridged: 20 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 05/10/2016

Categories: Fiction, Science Fiction

Synopsis

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bradley on January 05, 2017

Update 1/5/17: Re-read complete! And one thing I can definitely say without hesitation? : Definitely better the second time around. It's still mightily dense with ideas and worldbuilding and truly fascinating characters that always manage to surprise, surprise again, tease me to death with hints and......more

Goodreads review by Althea on October 26, 2016

This is a hard one to review. It's a very ambitious, very complex, very intelligent novel. However, it also tries too hard. It's a bit too impressed with itself for being intelligent, ambitious and complex. More than once, I just felt like sighing and saying, "Relax! Drop all the meta- stuff and just......more

Goodreads review by Philip on June 02, 2017

4.25ish stars I won't even attempt a brief summary. The briefest summary I could manage would still be TL;DR. I'll say this: It's ambitious, it's complex, it's confusing, it's got a lot to say. There are still a lot of things I'm unsure about: 1) Can't quite tell if it's a mess or it's brilliant, pro......more

Goodreads review by Jo on October 05, 2019

Updated to add my Tor.com review: [URL not allowed]-futur... But the short version -- they're science fiction that has a solid and fascinating world, great characters, and also that make you think about all kinds of things. Since I read these, hardly a day has gone by when something has......more

Goodreads review by Samantha on January 02, 2019

I’m so conflicted about this rating that I’m more using this rating as a placeholder. I don’t think a book like this can be properly rated using a star rating system. That’s too simple for a book this complex and layered. I’ll be doing a full review on my channel :)......more