Too Like the Lightning

This is a temporary DNF, and one of my big disappointments of the year. I read to approx. p220, giving up during an extended (and frankly inane) overstuffed dialog sequence.

I like the author. Palmer is intelligent, and passionate about her chosen subjects. I share a stack of the same interests, particularly censorship (she has a couple of great lectures on YouTube about the subject, explaining what censorship regimes really do, how they work, how universally slipshod they are, etc.)

I also like the book's key ideas. My social milieu DOES matter more to me than the country on my birth certificate, and that SHOULD count for something. But I couldn't grok her writing style. It's baroque. Too wordy, too 'mannered'. The framing device she employs is original (a history of events, about which extraneous details are included, like editorial decisions and commentary on people) but I can't help but feel it got in the way of the story. Pacing is weird: I read practically half the book and it felt like only a couple of things had happened.

The extensive cast doesn't help things either. Then add in alternate names for certain characters, used in the same paragraph. Then add unconvential punctuation. The book has an obsession with names and titles.

I might pick up the book and the series again later on and discover a favorite. But I know it didn't hold me on the maiden read. A pity.

This book only covers the first part of a two-part story. At the end of it, none of the big mysteries have been solved and several of the characters are in trouble. I wish I had known that before starting it. I probably would not have finished the book. But I kept on reading despite my misgivings (more on that in a second) because I wanted to know who was behind the criminal case at the heart of the story.

The two things that put me off this book (and its sequels) are the gory descriptions of several murders and the way this book in the form of the narrator deals with gender. Very stereotypical views and a ton of misgendering. Not sure what the point of that was.

I'll end with a positive aspect: the worldbuilding is done very well.

I reread this book for the SFFBookClub this month.

Personally, I deeply enjoyed this book and series, but I think it is not for everybody. I highly recommend folks read the first two chapters online here to get a taste of the voice: www.tor.com/2016/04/12/excerpts-ada-palmer-too-like-the-lightning-chapters-1-and-2/. Mycroft the narrator is self-deprecating, frequently addresses the reader, and is most definitely a very unreliable (and heavily edited) narrator. You can read it in the link above, but never ever have I ever seen a book do so much world-building via content warnings.

This book (and series) is trying to do so much, and regardless of whether you feel like it worked or not, it's hard not to be in awe of the ambition and the sheer density of ideas threaded together here. In the first chapter we've got flying cars, a secret magic kid who can turn toys into real life, mention of a Church War and sensayers (religious therapists) in the wake of it, Mycroft letting the reader know that he's misgendering everybody for ~reasons~, legal punishment alternatives in a Servicer system, questions about free will, and alternative family structures called bashes. This is before we get into 18th century philosophy, ethics, religion, and Greek myth. FOOF

This book is really catnip for me even on a reread; I find Mycroft to be extremely engaging as a narrator, and I appreciate so much how all of these details are spooled out at just the right pace to keep me intrigued but not overwhelmed. It felt like each chapter was carefully crafted to introduce a new location, bring in some world details and history, focus on a slightly different set of world leaders, and push the mystery investigation of the 7-10 list theft forward. It never felt like too much, and I constantly hungered to find out more about the world.

I talked about this after reading Infomocracy for SFFBookClub, but I really appreciated how much flying cars in this story drove so many social changes. If people can be flown across the globe in a few hours, then borders lose meaning. And if borders lose meaning, then what does that mean for governments that are based on geography. Clearly, the hive system is not meant to be posited as some ideal government solution, but for me at least there's something idealistic and positive about the idea of people being able to (more) freely choose their own laws and government in ways that aren't constrained by the power of geography.

I enjoyed the rest of the series as well, but I feel like the first two books are by far the strongest for me as a reader. The final two books are no longer an edited history and so Mycroft becomes even more of an unreliable narrator (if such a thing is possible) and the fourth book goes off on some epic :drum: diversions. I enjoyed the final two books a lot (and the ending lands SO well) but in some ways it wanders much more philosophically and is not as tight of a story as the first two books for me.

Unsurprisingly, I have a bunch of gender thoughts on this book too, which I'm going to put separately, because there's a lot of them: books.theunseen.city/user/picklish/status/87074

This is a gorgeous setting, with a vast cast of characters, extremely ambitious. I enjoyed it but I was often confused. I want to reread, though, and then tackle the other books in the series. I had the good fortune to be on a couple of panels with the author--moderating one panel on utopias--at Kansas City's Worldcon in 2016, when the book was being launched. As an academic and writer, she is so much smarter and sharper than I've ever been.

3.5?

I have a hard time rating this book. On the one hand, I'm definitely going to read the second part, so I guess that means I liked it. On the other, there are so many things in this "political science fiction" book that rub me the wrong way -- the second person narrative that keeps going meta and generally being annoying, and I just don't see it having any reward; the pointless erotica (not even sex scenes, really); some annoying world-building pet peeves (the "one significant event that changed all human society around the globe immediately and completely" trope, for example).
There a lot of suspend disbelief in here, but ultimately, it's worth it for an intriguing world and an engaging story (when Palmer doesn't decide to stop it in its tracks for some meta discussion).

What is it about? In the 25th century, human society has gone through some interesting changes - instead of nation-states, there are now hives - specifically, seven hives - which are kind of like what would happen if nation states stopped having territories and you would pick your nation the same way you pick your facebook feed. But what started with lots of little hives with like-minded people ended up converging into a paltry seven: the Mitsubishi corporate hive, the arts and jocks Humanists, the benevolent cousins, the hierarchical Masons, the psychologistic Gordians, the Europeans (yes, well), and the futurist Utopians (plus the independent hiveless). With such a small number of groups, inter-hive politics become incestuous in the most literal sense.

In addition, a religious world war has lead to a complete ban on proselytizing, going so far as to consider any group of three people discussing religion without supervision to be an illegal cult.

Into this mess enters Mycroft Canner, whose infamy I will not spoil for you, a servicer (convicted felon who must provide services to whomever wishes in return for basic necessities) who is highly connected to the leaders of all hives, and then some. He finds himself in the midst of an investigation of a burglary and an attempt to frame the family ("Bash'") that runs the biggest transportation service on the globe. That, alongside his attempt to protect Bridger, a child with special powers, embroils him deep in the politics of this, shall we say, brave new world.

Too Like the Lightning is interesting if only because it is essentially a utopian book, rather than a dystopia. This is not to say it's perfect, but this book is a very interesting attempt to explore the limits of utopian ideas, see where they break without thrusting the world into a full-fledged dystopia. I'll have to wait for the second part to decide whether the discussion was worth it, but it is wrapped in an interesting story and an intriguing world, so all in all it is worth the read, despite its flaws.