Too Like the Lightning

Written by:
Ada Palmer
Narrated by:
Jefferson Mays

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
12
Narrator
6
Release Date
May 10, 2016
Duration
20 hours 21 minutes
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.
Reviews
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Anonymous

I am sinking my teeth into this series, and I predict that I won't be letting go of it for a while.

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Anonymous

Naw, it’s not a “mad combination of heaven and hell,” it’s just an authoritarian hellscape, period. Its as if the story were written for an audience of pseudo intellectuals who don’t care (can’t tell?) if half the sentences are meaningless gibberish. “Humanist boots?” What the hell are humanist boots? Does the author know what humanist means? I doubt it. Apart from the postmodern wankery, the writing is awful and it is depressing that this won awards. Regarding some of the book’s themes, I’m a gender non-conforming atheist, but I struggle with the ridiculously immature level of discourse on such topics as this book represents. People who know nothing about language, civics, or human biology want to re-engineer society to suit their own imagination. That’s not a thing 500 years in the future that people living today couldn’t possibly comprehend, that’s happening right now. This book is a love letter to the author’s intellectual vanity. Not insightful, not innovative, and very badly written. Not recommended.

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markus järve

i got turned off by the constant jabbering and porn discussions in third wall breaks. it is extremely annoying. without those i think the story would be good but i can not get over being pulled out of it to listsen some random jabbering

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