It takes some work to get used to, but it's worth it.
Despite its frenetic intelligence, the first half of the book is bogged down by too much, too fast. Lightning is dizzying, and not always in a good way. Not to mention plenty important to say about our current debate on the issue. Yet as Mycroft tells the story, he consistently uses gendered pronouns - unreliably, it turns out - and what seems at first to be a minor detail winds up having more profound consequences. Her eye for political dynamics goes all the way down to the personal: Gender-specific pronouns are considered obscene and have become taboo. It's a thrilling feat of speculative worldbuilding, on par with those of masters like Gene Wolfe and Neal Stephenson. Like the Enlightenment from which it draws inspiration, 'Lightning' is in awe of the fundamental questions of human civilization, chief among them: Can society be engineered? And if it can, should it? (Don't worry, there's a handy chart, including a detailed statistical analysis, provided within the story itself.) Advanced transportation allows people to cross the Atlantic in an hour that system helps facilitate a largely conflict-free arrangement between Hives.
Rather than nations as we know them, humanity has divided itself into Hives: Masons, Cousins, Humanists, and the list goes on. That said, Palmer's utopian vision of Earth isn't exactly the best of all possible worlds. Ostensibly a utopia, this new world order isn't entirely new its blueprint is drawn from the philosophies of Enlightenment thinkers such as Diderot and Voltaire, in the same way Canner's narrative frames the tale as if he were Dr. It imagines Earth in the year 2424 as a radically different place, with every facet of society reordered from top to bottom. This jarring form of narrative is just one of the many challenging things about Lightning. Yes, Canner addresses the reader throughout the book as the main character and narrator, he breaks the fourth wall so pervasively that he feels compelled to explain himself. "I am grateful, so grateful, tolerant reader, that you read on," says Mycroft Canner halfway through Too Like the Lightning, Ada Palmer's awe-inspiring debut novel. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Too Like the Lightning Author Ada Palmer
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