Beyond Reality discussion

If you've finished reading Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer, this is the place to share your thoughts with the group.

Caution: There will likely be **SPOILERS** in this thread

This is a complex and convoluted ride, but an addictive one. There's a huge cast of characters, many with multiple names and titles. The worldbuilding is full of big ideas …. very fast world-wide travel has made national identity irrelevant, individuals choose to identify with political groups and housemates and often wear conspicuous items to show their unique backgrounds, vocations, and avocations, there's a 20 hour work week (unless you choose to spend more time at your vocation). It should be Utopia. And yet …


There's a lot of philosophy in Too Like the Lightening, enough that sometimes I felt my eyes glaze over. Some sections seem needlessly violent or sexually graphic. Having now read the second book Seven Surrenders, however, I see that it all ties together. Even the uncomfortable bits are needed to understand the motivations of our huge but interrelated cast of characters. This is masterful worldbuilding with an intriguing plot; not an easy read, but a worthwhile one.

I could tell that Mycroft was an unreliable narrator, but the size of his lies, revealed about halfway through the book, changed everything -- or that's my opinion. The direction of the book didn't change, but everything got a lot more intense. What did you think?

I agree. The worldbuilding is so dense, it's hard to get this story rolling. But it continues to pick up steam, and there's no predicting where it's headed. The reader's relationship with Mycroft's character, in particular, covers the entire emotional spectrum, and his relationships with all the other (many) major players give us a window to the other points of view. I don't know that we can ever come to like or even trust Mycroft but, in the end, we may at least understand his motivation to a degree.

Chris wrote: "I don't know that we can ever come to like or even trust Mycroft but, in the end, we may at least understand his motivation to a degree."

I really love to hate Mycroft, now that I've finished the book. What I found really frustrating is that I still don't understand his motivation at all. I find his past actions incredibly interesting (and horrific) as I would with any serial killer, but his motivations and thoughts about that time remain a mystery to me and it bugged the hell out of me that I was kept at arm's length about them in the first book. Finding out more about his killing spree would be one of the things to motivate me to read the next book.

Hopefully there will be fewer dry philosophy lessons in the sequels...

This book reminded me a lot of Niccolò Rising. Why? There is a lot of similar type of things in ‘Too Like the Lightning’ of what 15th-century Italy was supposed to be like historically. ‘Niccolò Rising’ is actually about a character in the 15th century, and the 15th century was a cultural potboiler for its time. I am no scholar but I found out Palmer is and so is author Dorothy Dunnett. I have a tremendous curiosity about this particular century and place. So, naturally I read about it.

Palmer wrote Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance.

Bingo. Historically deep 2454 CE setting.

I hate to say it, but I am of the opinion if you have studied 15th century Italy this book is easier to follow.

I had forgotten until I finished it that this book is the first in a series, so I keep expecting some answers but only got more questions.

The world-building is dense, maddeningly and somewhat unnecessarily so, I think. I made the comment in the non-spoilers thread that I would have appreciated some infodumps (which I normally don’t like)—there was just so much to absorb without much explanation. Even trying to figure things out from context was challenging, especially at first.

I get that the writing style is meant to be like 18th century literature but I found it wearying. I also didn’t enjoy the scenes in Madame’s brothel and the juxtaposition of political plotting with sexual activity. It felt contrived and I found it hard to believe that the characters, based on what we knew of them so far, would behave as described.

At this point, I find the many threads of the plot hard to follow and I keep asking myself if all that convoluted-ness is necessary. I don’t know if continuing the series will result in a big enough payoff for me. Other than Bridger, I don’t like any of the characters and find I din’t care about most of them. The characters to whom I did feel some connection turned out to be other than they seemed.