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Cargando... Too Like the Lightningpor Ada Palmer
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Complex, futuristic world filled with interacting characters whose motives are hard to understand. The narrator is admitedly unreliable. A tiny bit of magic, the rest is futuristic and surprising. No nations left, religion rejected, morality left to self-chosen groups who all have differing ideas. A hard read, but a deeply intriguing one. ( ) Too Like the Lightning is such a niche science fiction book and it happens so rarely that I am truly amazed by such an original work. Ada Palmer has clearly put an immense amount of work into this book. She is a historian and an erudite in general, especially in philosophy and religious studies, so this was such a treat. But, to say that this book was an easy read would be a lie. This is a kind of book to discuss in seminars at university, to be reread and written about, as there are so many layers to unpack. Palmer purposefully builds a universe which is both a dystopia and a utopia. It is a sandbox universe for me, not realistic or believable, but intriguing as a thought experiment. The world we read about is the one where people don't live in nation-states but in "hives" of their own choosing. Hives are huge, almost like continents, with capital cities connected with super-fast travel networks. People don't live in families but in groups they choose based on their preferences and vocation called "bash'es". Following religious wars in the 22nd century, organized religion is the ultimate taboo. Instead of religion, the human need for spirituality is "taken care of" by spiritual advisors, sensayers. The part I struggled the most with about this book was the style. The narrator of the book is a convict, who in the 25th-century future lives his punishment by doing public service. (The nature of his crime was shocking to me, completely unexpected.) Mostly he is a servant for people in high offices, so he seems to be the perfect person to retell the events we read about. However, he is telling this story in the manner of 18th-century literature which makes it difficult to follow in the context of futuristic sci-fi. But, the most confusing part was the novel's treatment of gender, and this was done on purpose. In this world gender is considered obsolete, everyone is referred to as "they". However, Mycroft is using gendered pronouns, but not always "correctly" or as expected. It takes a while to get used to this, especially because Mycroft is not always a reliable narrator, as he claims himself very early on (so not a spoiler). Books like this can feel gimmicky and pretentious and this one does, too. You truly can have too much of a good thing. I feel it is asking a tremendous effort from the reader, but the payoff is not that great. This is still an intriguing read, esp. for lovers of heavy politics and philosophy. I wonder if sequels redeem this heavy start, but have no time or patience to go there just yet. Well, I have a lot of feelings about this book. I was fascinated by the world building, but felt it got in the way of the story, which didn't really start until page 200, and got dark and weird pretty quickly. I appreciate that this was written by a history professor, but overall, this book got bogged down in histories and philosophies and I cannot even give it stars because It does not fit into a simple 5 star category. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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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. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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