Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)

by Ada Palmer

"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... 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..."--Book jacket.

• ISBN10: 0765378000
• ISBN13: 9780765378002
• Publish Date: 10 May 2016
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 7 August 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Tor Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 432
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

Even more brilliant the second time. The perfect book(s) to read during a world-upending pandemic.

I knew there was so much I had missed in the opening chapters; I didn’t realize it was SO MUCH. It’s all seeded throughout: The Junior Scientist Squad. 9A. Dominic, the archangel. Cato Weeksbooth and the nowheres. Would you destroy a better world to save this one?

A line on page 77 has new meaning because of the end of book 3; that’s how densely they’re mixed. I can’t wait to find out how much of book 4 is seeded throughout too, and how much the perspective will shift again. I’ve learned at least this much: it won’t be what I imagine. It will be a whole lot more.

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December 2019:

I never say review to come, but review to come. My brain is buzzing. Or, as Steinbeck put it: “Let me alone— let me think! Your damned bitch is having pups in my brain already.”