Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer
Jan. 28th, 2018 04:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightreadsSeven Surrenders
4/5. Oh man. Oh man oh man. This is so great. And so batshit. Like, currently 8/10 on the WTF scale, and I am pretty certain Palmer is still only revving up. I can’t wait to be boggled and croggled and outraged and exasperated and delighted by the next two books in the series.
So the thing I really like about this series is that it’s science fiction set centuries from now, and many of the characters are obsessed with seventeenth and eighteenth century French philosophers. And the book plays – and cosplays – with historicity. There’s a single house, for example, where – it is a shock and a scandal, I know – but in this house, people use gendered pronouns.* And what I really like is that the historicity this book is playing with is ultimately not play. And not cosplay either. Because the questions the characters wrestle with are seventeenth and eighteenth century questions. If God is benevolent, how could they be the silent watchmaker who never shows their hand to anyone? What role can providence – as a force, not just a belief – play? Are humans capable of living without violence? These are not the questions modern science fiction is concerned with, and I love the way this book sent me tumbling way out of my familiar ruts.
I get why a lot of people bounced off of Too Like the Lightning because this whole thing is, uh. A very particular flavor. But I am so here for it.
*Still processing a lot of the gender stuff. The first book indulged in a lot of gender play. This one was less playful and more interested in a particular point about the vulnerabilities that people are left with when gender is taken off the table as a topic of acceptable discussion or even of language. Still processing.
4/5. Oh man. Oh man oh man. This is so great. And so batshit. Like, currently 8/10 on the WTF scale, and I am pretty certain Palmer is still only revving up. I can’t wait to be boggled and croggled and outraged and exasperated and delighted by the next two books in the series.
So the thing I really like about this series is that it’s science fiction set centuries from now, and many of the characters are obsessed with seventeenth and eighteenth century French philosophers. And the book plays – and cosplays – with historicity. There’s a single house, for example, where – it is a shock and a scandal, I know – but in this house, people use gendered pronouns.* And what I really like is that the historicity this book is playing with is ultimately not play. And not cosplay either. Because the questions the characters wrestle with are seventeenth and eighteenth century questions. If God is benevolent, how could they be the silent watchmaker who never shows their hand to anyone? What role can providence – as a force, not just a belief – play? Are humans capable of living without violence? These are not the questions modern science fiction is concerned with, and I love the way this book sent me tumbling way out of my familiar ruts.
I get why a lot of people bounced off of Too Like the Lightning because this whole thing is, uh. A very particular flavor. But I am so here for it.
*Still processing a lot of the gender stuff. The first book indulged in a lot of gender play. This one was less playful and more interested in a particular point about the vulnerabilities that people are left with when gender is taken off the table as a topic of acceptable discussion or even of language. Still processing.