Too Like The Lightning

[brainwane]

I read an advance reader's copy of Ada Palmer's debut novel Too Like the Lightning, which comes out today. It's good in a lot of ways. But it also deserves tons of content notes and trigger warnings, for, among other things, graphic depictions of sexual assault and murder and incest. And, specifically, you as the reader will be asked to sympathize with and share in the perspective of someone who committed rape and murder and cannibalism, and does not seem to feel remorse about it. I wish more of the reviews of this book specifically and clearly said this.

Good things: In some ways it feels like Stephenson's The Diamond Age in a good way (world-spanning and engaging with the futures of Asian civilizations, rethinking of nation-states, an important child, touches of Enlightenment retro discourse), and it also reminds me of how I enjoyed Locke's Up Against It (mystery investigation driving the plot along urgently, musings on vocation, the alienness of a sub-society that innovates with bodymods, easy transport across long distances, lots of characters in their 70s or older, high-stakes intrigue among kings and their viziers). More about Palmer's interaction with history in her blog posts about the book.

This is the kind of scifi-of-ideas that award-nominatey people will be talking about, I predict. And I may well write more about it sometime.

Comments

[wild_irises]

Wow! I've been looking forward to this book (and still am), but that's quite a warning ...

Will read with more care than I had expected to.