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Too Like the Lightning
- Terra Ignota, Book 1
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 20 hrs and 19 mins
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Too Like the Lightning
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Publisher's Summary
Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets.
Carlyle Foster is a sensayer - a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away.
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. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world's population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competition is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life.
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.
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What listeners say about Too Like the Lightning
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Daniel
- 2019-10-13
A Masterpiece
I think I am at 150 audiobooks completed on audible, and I can honestly say this has been the most though provoking and engrossing series I have listened to so far. Only Three Body Problem has given me as much to think about after finishing a series or a book.
This book drops you into a political scene centuries in the future, and the characters do not sit around explaining how the world works. Ada Palmer expects you to work as hard understanding this future world as a 16 century person might have to work in order to understand our political interconnections. While it might not be easy, the pay-off is truly the most rewarding of any series I have read.
It is not boring; its masterfully woven art. Give it a shot. If you feel like you're lost, then you're supposed to be lost. Ada Palmer will get you to where you need to go, I promise.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Jason L
- 2018-08-24
painfully boring
took three attempts to make it through. Extremely boring. how is this remotely science fiction?
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Eric Welch
- 2022-04-13
Boring distopia
I read this book because people called it thought provoking.
Most characters are painfully self-focused and seem to add nothing to society. They constantly focus gender, despite their society supposedly having moved past gender... Nothing was done to make me care what gender people were, so why is there so much focus on it? And most characters are so fragile that they need a psychologist to consult with constantly.
The worldbuilding is also mostly nonexistent. You have no idea what level their civilization is even at... Their overall technology seems pretty bad, but their bioengineering has to be super advanced. However, almost none of the obvious nongender uses of this tech are even mentioned. They make a big deal about the transport system, but it only seems a few decades ahead of the modern day. They hint at good space tech, but it's not even considered for surveillance/weaponry/commerce/trade/transport purposes.
So, with a million possible futuristic things the characters could talk about, the main topic of discussion is how a tabloid article got leaked early.
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1 person found this helpful