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  • Too Like the Lightning

  • Terra Ignota, Book 1
  • By: Ada Palmer
  • Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
  • Length: 20 hrs and 19 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (33 ratings)

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Too Like the Lightning cover art

Too Like the Lightning

By: Ada Palmer
Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
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Publisher's 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.

©2016 Ada Palmer (P)2016 Recorded Books

What listeners say about Too Like the Lightning

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loved it listened to it twice cant wait for #2 &3

loved the complex story and the beautiful characters. the narration was excellent- hope it gets made into a film

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Engrossing Complexity

I am engrossed in humanities diverse hopes, aspirations and beliefs disclosed in the politics of the authors many characters dissections. Book 2? Yes please!

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Keep listening

Once I got past my initial confusion at the alien social structures and fluid descriptors this book kept tickling me in all the right ways. Reads like an absurdist romp until it’s focus tightens to razor sharp social
observation. Is a philosophical treatise in its abstract beauty until the narrator pops every fragile reality she painstakingly constructs. I cannot give enough praise for this truly masterful work. The most enjoyable read I’ve had for a long time. I advise neuroplasticity when reading. Not inaccessible but never stops challenging convention, even the convention it sets itself. Thank you Ada!

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