Science fiction often has asked contemporary questions of an imagined future. In the four-volume Terra Ignota novel series, author Ada Palmer has reflected this tradition back upon itself, exploring the questions the brilliant world of 2454 might ask when faced with its own unknowable future. After citizenship and religion, family and language, law and freedom have been utterly reformed over half a century of war and three centuries of peace, where do the denizens of a near-Utopia turn for answers when their world order faces upheaval? A notorious criminal genius is the historian of the world’s remaking; a mysterious spiritual counselor seeks truth in a world that has atomized religion; carnality and high politics join to preserve the old order as a rumored god, an omnipotent child, a celebrity assassin and a living myth struggle to shape the future as a rediscovered orator calls for inevitable war.
Perfect for fans of Gene Wolfe, Jo Walton, Robert Charles Wilson and Kim Stanley Robinson, Too Like The Lightning is a challenging philosophical and political science fiction epic. Much like Homer telling of heroic deeds and wine dark seas, Mycroft Canner’s narration will draw you into the world of Terra Ignota—a world simmering with gender politics and religious fervor just beneath the surface, on the brink of revolutionary change.
The second volume of the Terra Ignota series, Seven Surrenders continues Mycroft Canner’s history begun in Too Like the Lightning. In 2454, the leaders of the great globe-spanning Hives, which have replaced geographic nations, have long conspired to keep the world stable, but that balance is giving way. In the face of global collapse a prostitute, a noble king, a despised criminal, a theological spy, and a hive of techno-utopian future-builders seek for a rumored miracle child in search of answers.
The Will to Battle is the third book in the Terra Ignota series. In Books 1 and 2, convict Mycroft brought us his history of the seven days of change that remade the world. Now comes his chronicle of the days that follow, reporting the events at the start of the new world, as the remnants of the old cling to the structures of their civilization and maneuver for advantage in the new order.
Perhaps The Stars is the fourth and final novel in the Terra Ignota series. World Civil War engulfs humanity in a struggle for the shape of the future. Soldiers walk the world for the first time in centuries, accompanied by living legends, artificial intelligences, and strange gods whose conflict is known only to the innermost circle of world influencers. Mycroft and 9A bring their dedicated Reader to the conclusion of war and the dawn of the newly-shaped future.