Description: "It is a world in which near-instantaneous travel from continent to continent is free to all. In which automation now provides for everybody's basic needs. In which nobody living can remember an actual war. In which it is illegal for three or more people to gather for the practice of religion--but ecumenical "sensayers" minister in private, one-on-one. In which gendered language is archaic, and to dress as strongly male or female is, if not exactly illegal, deeply taboo. In which nationality is a fading memory, and most people identify instead with their choice of the seven global Hives, distinguished from one another by their different approaches to the big questions of life. And it is a world in which, unknown to most, the entire social order is teetering on the edge of collapse. Because even in utopia, humans will conspire. And also because something new has arisen: Bridger, the child who can bring inanimate objects to conscious life"--
Brief description: ADA PALMER won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (now retitled the Astounding Award) in 2017 following the publication of her debut novel Too Like the Lightning. She has written extensively about storytelling on sites like Tor.com, her own Exurbe.com, and elsewhere. She is a professor at the University of Chicago specializing in the Renaissance and the history of ideas.
Review Quotes:
Praise for Book 2 of Terra Ignota, Seven Surrenders
"A breathless and devious intellectual page-turner, Seven Surrenders veers expertly between love, murder, mayhem, parenthood, theology, and high politics. I haven't had this much fun with a book in a long time." --Max Gladstone
"One appreciates the wry humor and the ingenious depth of her worldbuilding. The interplay between reader and narrator is especially enjoyable." --Publishers Weekly
"Any reader who has ever thrilled to the intricate machinations of the Dune books, or the Instrumentality tales of Cordwainer Smith, or the sensual, tactile, lived-in futures of Delany or M. John Harrison... will enjoy the mental and emotional workout offered by Palmer's challenging Terra Ignota cycle." --Locus "This series is one the best things that has happened to science fiction in the 21st Century and I can't hardly wait to see where Ada Palmer is going to take us with Perhaps the Stars." --SffWorld Praise for Book 1 of Terra Ignota, Too Like the Lightning
"Bold, furiously inventive, and mesmerizing...It's the best science fiction novel I've read in a long while." --Robert Charles Wilson "More intricate, more plausible, more significant than any debut I can recall...If you read a debut novel this year, make it Too Like the Lightning." --Cory Doctorow "Astonishingly dense, accomplished and well-realized, with a future that feels real in both its strangeness and its familiarity."--RT Book Reviews (Top Pick) "The Terra Ignota books are is the kind of science fiction that makes me excited all over again about what science fiction can do." --Jo Walton "Excellent." --Craig Newmark "Devastatingly accomplished...An arch and playful narrative that combines the conscious irreverence of the best of 18th-century philosophy with the high-octane heat of an epic science fiction thriller." --Liz Bourke "Palmer proves that the boundaries of science fiction can be pushed and the history and the future can be married together." --Publishers Weekly