Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)

by Ada Palmer

seven factions or ‘hives’ co-govern the world,

this is a fragile Utopia

Convicted for his crimes, celebrated for his talents, Mycroft Canner is the indentured instrument – and confidant – of some of the world’s most powerful figures.

For how will a world that has banished God deal with a child who can perform miracles?

Romanova Seven-Hive Council Stability Committee

Mitsubishi Executive Directorate

morning of March the twenty-third in the year twenty-four fifty-four.

Carlyle Foster

one of many lies in which Carlyle daily wrapped himself.

More voices rose now, clearer, voices of men, soft as whispers but urgent as screams.

Eleven men stood on that table, battered men, strong, hard-boned and hard-faced as if reared in a harder age, and each five centimeters tall.

Before Carlyle’s eyes the last breath left the soldier, and with it softness and color, the red of blood, the peach of skin, all faded to green as the tiny corpse reverted into a plastic toy soldier, complete with stand.

He saw the transformation, as real as the page before you, impossible and undeniable.

This is even more meta when you read it on a Kindle. ;)

“Sensayers live for metaphysics,

Just as three unrelated women living in the same house was once, in some places, legally a brothel, three people in a room talking about religion was then, as now, a “Church meeting,” and subject to harsh penalties, not in the laws of one or two Hives but even in the codes of Romanova.

The police insist that I add a disclaimer, reminding you not to do what Carlyle did.

Pointer fought like a hero, but heroes die.”

I raised my eyes and looked directly at the Cousin at last, happy to find few insignia at all beyond his Hive wrap and vocational scarf: he wore a red-brown mystery reader’s bracelet, a tea enthusiast’s green striped socks, and a cyclist’s clip on one shoe, but nothing political, no nation-strat, not even a campus ring. I smiled my approval, and on the table the Major nodded his.

Master, do you believe that Chance alone, without Providence behind it, would have sent this child, in this moment, so suitable a guide?

get attached to a character they shouldn’t bring to life.” He nodded. She nodded back. Does it distress you, reader, how I remind you of their sexes in each sentence? ‘Hers’ and ‘his’? Does it make you see them naked in each other’s arms, and fill even this plain scene with wanton sensuality?

I think Cielo de Pájaros is a success because it was the first city designed for those who don’t like city centers, whose perfect evening is spent by a window, watching gulls and black waves crashing down. What need is there for bustle in a city built for bash’es who prefer to be alone?

“It’s Black Sakura’s titular tradition,” I answered. “The folklore is that the sakura cherry tree blooms pink because its roots drink the blood of the dead, so the premise is that a dedicated reporter is so steeped in ink their veins would stain the blossoms black.”

Here seven perfect lotus blossoms rise against the sea, glowing from within with clean, warm light like happy ghosts and dusting the ground around their roots with shimmer. Only as the car curves down to land does the eye realize each petal is a skyscraper blazing with commerce’s neon fire, while the shimmer around their roots is the pulsing streetscape of a metropolis.

«The Patriarch wrote that the halfwit is always happier than the philosopher, but the philosopher would not trade knowledge for ignorance, not for all the happiness in the world. Your son seemed to me half a philosopher, but still half happy.»

“Life is special kind of miracle,” he repeated, half-whispered, like a prayer.

I rose; some things should not be said while on one’s knees.

You’re right that we have to talk about this, about what we think it means, that we have to use words like ‘miracle,’ ‘metaphysics,’ ‘fate,’ as well as ‘magic’ and ‘phenomenon.’ But you haven’t pushed me to actually do it yet.”

HERE ENDS THE FIRST DAY OF THIS HISTORY.

The office of Censor is just as paradoxical in our age as it was in ancient Rome: neither executive nor lawmaker, commander nor judge, yet more potent than any in its own way.

If you see violence here, it is not Vivien’s violence, rather I infect those around me with a shadow of my own.

If you cannot imagine numbers have such power to move a man, imagine instead one of his historical counterparts: you are the tutor who has sensed something strange about this youth Caligula; you are the native who sees a second set of white sails on the horizon following the first; you are the hound who feels the tremors of the tsunami about to crash on Crete and erase the Minoan people, but you know no one will heed you, even if you bark.

It was the comfort of having a plan—no, less than that—the comfort of having a plan to have a plan, of facing the looming darkness of the labyrinth but feeling prepared because we had a ball of twine in hand.

To understand what follows, you must anchor yourself in this truth, that, by the standards of the era which sculpted him from childhood, the woman Dominic Seneschal is the boldest and most masculine of men.

He answers happily enough to Canis Domini, Hound of the Lord, the old pun on Domini-cani, the Dominican monks who hunted truth and heresy in Heaven’s name and that of their great founder.

They did not see Dominic again, they said. Nor did the others in the bash’. He might have searched just Thisbe’s room, or he might passed through the whole house, silent as a plague. Either way, he vanished without another question.

“What is a people?” the speech continues, the actor’s voice resonating through the dome. “It is a group of human beings united by a common bond, not of blood or geography, but of friendship and trust. What is a nation? It is a government formed by a people to protect that common bond with common laws, so its members may enjoy life, liberty, happiness, justice, and all those rights we love.

Bryar Kosala just likes helping people, and is good at running things, and when invited to become the world’s Mom she said, “Sure.”

The European Union has long recognized that it is absurd to force someone with a father from one country, a mother from another, raised in a third, and working in a fourth to pledge allegiance to one arbitrary geographic nation. More than sixty years ago we instituted floating citizenship, so children of mixed parents would not be compelled to choose between several equal fatherlands. It was not the end of our countries. Almost everyone still prefers to have a homeland to love and return to, and the legal possibility of life without a homeland does not destroy the bonds of culture, language, and history which make a homeland home.

citizenship should be voluntary, not forced.

What we choose means more than what is handed to us by chance.

“Green versus Yellow.” The Major nodded to Stander-Y, who still wore the desert beige of the opposing force. “The world has seen more causeless wars.”

“The Major and the soldiers and Mycroft told me what war is like. They say it’s the second worst thing in the world.” Man: “That’s an interesting definition. What did they say is the worst thing?” Child: “Not having anything worth fighting for in the first place.”

Humanist boots are a custom nearly two hundred years old, created when the Olympian Hive, which lived for sport, merged with World Stage, which lived for concert and spotlight, to form the ‘Humanists,’ united by the passion to excel, achieve, improve, and constantly surpass the past limits of human perfection.

Amazon, a common enough practice among female Humanist athletes who aim at mixed sports early in life, so have the doctors prevent breasts from developing, opting out of their varied inconveniences.

Golden Ganymede is a particular kind of perfection, glorious but overpowering, unable to be anything but Sun King.

Sniper has the more versatile perfection of the all-accommodating toy. Childlike and sexless, you can dress him as a monster, a princess, a Cousin, a Mitsubishi, a good boy, a bad girl, whatever your desire. Think of the nonthreatening fantasy lover every budding teen invents when not quite ready for the first time.

“Since when are we powerful enough to battle rumor? Truth is water in a sieve. It’s not enough to put your hand across the holes and hope.”

Felix Faust can do a full Brillist reading, pinpoint a new acquaintance on all eight developmental scales, in nine minutes, often less. If you are not a Brillist, you must know the discomfort of feeling your inner self exposed by a method you can’t completely disbelieve in, as if you knocked the deck from a Tarot reader’s hand,

and she gave a penetrating look at the fallen cards, and then at you.

Not even I (and I have tried) can track that organized anarchy which is more a unit of measure than a hierarchy: a school of fish, a gaggle of geese, a constellation of Utopians. They did not pick the name for the reason you think. A constellation is a group of distant objects which form a tight whole