FREE TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING PDF Ada Palmer | 416 pages | 10 May 2016 | Tor Books | 9780765378002 | English | New York, United States Fiction (Science Fiction & Fantasy) - Ada Palmer Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Too Like the Lightning. 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 Mycro Mycroft Canner is a convict. 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 Too Like the Lightning s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of Too Like the Lightning 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. Too Like the Lightning us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it Too Like the Lightning like normal life. And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle Too Like the Lightning stumbled on the wild card that may destablize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life Get A Copy. Hardcoverpages. More Details Original Title. Terra Ignota 1. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what Too Like the Lightning friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Too Like the Lightningplease Too Like the Lightning up. Ummm, so does this book imply approval or disapproval of divergent gender identities and the validity or lack thereof of religion? Too Like the Lightning will determine whether or not I'll be interested in reading. Ada Palmer Great question! World peace! All people are expected to have religious opinions, and have religious discourse with licensed "sensayers" in a one-on-one therapy setting, but to even discuss it in a group is both taboo and illegal. The book then looks at the effects this has on people, and looks especially at the problems created by stifling discourse, especially when something which appears to be a genuine miracle occurs but no one is allowed to talk about it, let alone deal with its global consequences. I've had a mixture of reactions to the book, from some readers who say it feels like a paradise having religion be silenced and private like that, to others who say it feels like an oppressive dystopia with no place for them if they can't Too Like the Lightning religious gatherings or wear a religious symbol in public. That split is precisely what I was aiming for, since much of my goal is to look at a tension within our own society that isn't discussed much, and to demonstrate how people who want religion to be public and people who want it to be private can be in tension with each other even if they both happen to be believers, or even share the same faith. As for gender, this Too Like the Lightning only begun in book 1 and really fleshed out in book 2, but this is intended to be a future that botched its gender development, where a our current efforts to secure more openness toward gender variation, our transgender rights efforts, our feminist efforts, a vast array of social efforts related to gender, all failed without people realizing that they failed. While people in this world believe that gender is a thing of the past, the narrator believes that gender is still a powerful force in how people think, creating tensions, inequalities, vulnerabilities, and suppressing self-expression. Because the society has declared that gender is gone, all dialog about the issue ended, so all efforts toward improving on it are now impossible. The conversation ended too soon, and now people who want to express gender can only do so in secret or transgressive ways. Over the Too Like the Lightning of the book, the reader is supposed to think about the narrator's opinions about gender in this society, and decide whether we believe his analysis. Sometimes he oscillates or professes uncertainty about which to use. Gender identities other than Too Like the Lightning and "female" come into play more in book 2, and we see some of our narrator's ineptitudes in dealing with them. This narrator seems to be comfortable with "he" and "she" being related to personality rather than anatomy, but struggles when people are in-between, demonstrating how he too is trapped in this future's failure to complete gender liberation. The whole reading experience -- experiencing this gender-silenced world and the narrator's inept obsession with gender -- are supposed to show the possible negative consequences of us giving up the conversation too soon. From time to time you hear people say things like "Feminism is finished" or "Women have the vote, feminism is done, it's time to move on," which is, of course, deeply false, and indeed dangerous, since we have so much further to go. Looking at a world that failed on gender is uncomfortable, intentionally so, but I hope it will help people come away with the conviction that we must do better than this, offering a new way to prove how important it is to keep fighting. Hope these answers help? This book seems like a slow read with its antiquated writing style. Too Like the Lightning it worth the whole read? Mike A belated answer. While the narrator says he's writing in an 18th century style, that's not how the book reads. If you imagine a knob where 0 is 21st c …more A belated answer. If you imagine a knob where 0 is 21st century prose, and 10 is Jonathan Swift or Laurence Sterne, or whoever: for most of the book, the knob is set at around 2. Just Too Like the Lightning to make the language a bit distant, but not enough to make it difficult. It's a good choice, and it works well. However, during the asides to the reader, that knob gets turned to These asides are mostly short. But you also need to think about what's happening. These "dear reader" moments are, first, not anything I remember in 18th century lit. We're talking 19th century: Tony Trollope, not Larry Sterne. And Trollope's dear readers never argue back. Mycroft's do. Sterne pushes the envelope, before there even was an envelope. But again--that is absolutely part of a very complex game the author is playing. And, if you really know how 18th century English language works, they're not Too Like the Lightning correct. The knob is turned to 11, not 10, and that's not an accident. Even given that Mycroft is a brilliant polyglot, he can't always be right about everything. But what games is he playing? What games is his language playing? If the question is simply "will Too Like the Lightning antiquated language slow me down," I'd say probably not. But there is a much Too Like the Lightning question: what is that language doing, and why is it doing it? Nothing in this book is accidental; it's been a long time since I've read anything this carefully written. Thinking about the problem of language in this book: that might indeed slow you down. See all 16 questions about Too Like the Lightning…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Mar 28, Bradley rated it it was amazing Shelves: sci-fiToo Like the Lightningfanboy-goes-squeeworldbuilding-sfmetaphysics. And one thing I can definitely say without hesitation? It's still mightily dense with ideas and worldbuilding and truly fascinating characters that always manage to surprise, surprise again, tease me Too Like the Lightning death with hints and portents, and then managing to slam me up against the wall in a very civilized fashion before disemboweling me. It's Too Like the Lightning that kind of novel. I'm loving the Marquis De Sade commentary as much this time as before, the extra commentaries on how to Too Like the Lightning effectively, right down to the philosophical underpinnings of Too Like the Lightning and Apollo's aphorisms, and yet this novel still manages to be both firmly 18th century and 25th century to the hilt. I firmly believe that now. It was just a glimmer before, but now on the second read, I'm a firm believer that this novel is just about perfect as it is. I'm going to be recommending it for this year's Hugo nominations. It's wilding Too Like the Lightning and strange and very intelligent, and beyond that, it shakes me nearly to the core. I will also admit that it isn't an easy novel to read or enjoy superficially.