SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer

 

Short Review: Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer: https://t.co/tdszlimHQW

Short Review: 5.5 out of 10
1/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) October 27, 2021

Short Review (cont): The final book in Palmer's Terra Ignota SciFi tetralogy spin on enlightenment ideas is an overly long mess, as factions finally go to war and figure out what that means. At times it tries to correct for its past errors, but it just feels worse for it.
2/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) October 27, 2021

Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on October 19, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.


Perhaps the Stars is the fourth and final book in Ada Palmer's "Terra Ignota" quartet, which began with 2016's Too Like the Lightning, which won Palmer the Astounding Award for Best New Writer.  That book, along with its sequels Seven Surrenders and The Will to Battle (reviewed here), was a fascinating example of philosophical scifi, imagining a 25th century world whose major political groups lived according to the ideals and philosophies of Enlightenment thinkers (Voltaire and Hobbes for example), where openly discussing religion is verboten and most of the world belongs to one of various "Hives", which have no specific geographic tie, but only a shared concept of ideals of humanity.  For this reviewer, the books' interest in exploring how these philosophies play out often came into conflict with the effort of telling a story, with the first two books essentially feeling like a single story oddly cut in half, and the third book also feeling incomplete as a result.  And then the 3rd book was published in 2017, and this fourth book kept getting pushed back and back......

And now, in 2021 the fourth book is finally out, in Perhaps the Stars.  Now part of my review here is definitely colored by the fact I did not reread the first three books coming into this novel, relying instead on my recollection of what happened within - I did not have the time for a reread, nor do I expect many others will make time for such.  But even had I done a reread, I suspect my impressions would still be the same: Perhaps the Stars is overly long (basically twice the size of any of the other books), an utter mess, and its few efforts to correct for what were clearly correct complaints about the story just seem a bit jarring.  It also features further adherence to the works of Homer than before, in what doesn't really seem to add much.  On the other hand it's still a fascinating at times exploration oh philosophies, especially in its latter half, so if you really liked the first three books - and especially if you've an interest in enlightenment philosophy - you'll like Perhaps the Stars.  

Spoilers for the first three books are inevitable, to the limited extent they matter.

-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
War has begun, between those who support Sniper, OS, and the rights of the old Hive Order - the "Hiveguard" - and those who support JEDD Mason's quest to remake the world - the "Remakers".  Mycroft Canner is seemingly lost or dead, and the chronicle of what comes next can only be taken over by their successor, the Ninth Anonymous (9A).  But for a world which hasn't known war in centuries, the very prospect is subject to mass confusion - what is acceptable in such a state?  How should one act towards one's enemy?  Towards one's friend?  Towards one whose allegiance is uncertain?

But perhaps bigger problems threaten the world, because someone is taking advantage of the war to enact their own agenda, to fight their own war at the cost of various hives and the futures they present to the world.  And when they enact as the first step of their scheme a plot that cuts the world off from communication, from quick transportation, everything will fall into chaos.  Can forces on either side - or the ostensibly neutral forces of the alliance and 9A manage to keep the order?  

Or is Thomas Carlyle's Hive system fated to lead to a conflict so infamous it will make the Church War look tame, and will devastate the futures once dreamed of by both humankind and those other beings that make up the Earth?  
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Books 1-2 of Terra Ignota explored the Hive system, a system based upon enlightenment thinking (Voltaire, Thomas Carlyle) in which people in much of the world chose various political nation-type "Hives" based upon their various philosophies - Empire, Invention and building towards space and the future, psychology of the mind, doing good for others, etc.  The story, told by the unreliable narrator Mycroft Canner, told how the systems were setup....and how they may have been founded based upon lies, with a group of individuals secretly assassinating others to ensure the peace, with the leaders of the Hives all being in a close relationship with a sinister old-time loving Madame, and with a child of seemingly inhumanity having grips on the reins of all the hives in secret.  And so a world seemingly beyond religion, beyond gender, and beyond war finds itself once more on the verge of war - a war whose beginnings were explored in book 3, The Will to Battle.  Under Mycroft's narration, the books were rife with philosophy and would very frequently change narration style in ways that were fascinating if not always logical.

Perhaps the Stars tells of that war, waged between peoples without communication who were used to it, between peoples who have little understanding of the rules of war, of what waging war means and who have different conceptions of what they are all fighting for - even if they're on the same side.  For the First part of the book, our narrator isn't the confident, unreliable Mycroft Canner, but the well meaning younger servicer 9A, who simply wants desperately for a short war that is as bloodless as possible, even as he also does believe in the Remaker cause.  This is perhaps a bit of a misstep, as 9A isn't really as committed to philosophies or of unique styles of explaining the story, which kind of makes the story a whole lot less interesting.  Mycroft does return (and this is not a spoiler as the last book revealed he would in a footnote) and when he does, the narration style of being all over the place, the dialogue with both the reader and randomly Thomas Hobbes, and much of the quirks of the prior novels returns, for the better.  

Unfortunately, even when Mycroft returns, and especially beforehand, the book is an utter mess, even more so than previously.  The book is nearly twice as long as any of the prior novels, and the extra length doesn't always make sense - for example, there's one chapter that's devoted to the last few moments to a doomed AI on a suicide mission that I guess is meant to deal with philosophy, but really could've excised with no impact whatsoever.  The secret secondary war that goes on features one side in it which is basically the series' least explored group, so I never really understood their motives or why they'd be doing something or that they'd be capable of it, and various important characters from prior books just meet random ends just seemingly to get them out of the picture.  And the book, which mainly focused on enlightenment philosophy previously, dives even deeper into the stories of Homer (The Iliad and the Odyssey) to the extent that such stories provide guidelines for characters to act out this future....with little reason whatsoever (sure there's a character magically created in the form of Achilles, but does he really need to have a Hector?  A Paris?  What does this add?)  The book also seemingly attempts to address criticisms of how Eurocentric this portrayed society is, with African nations, and people with religious ideals basically pushed to the outside, and Empires treated like ideals, but this feels almost too little too late after everything that's come before.  

Perhaps the Stars took seemingly the longest of any of these books to write, and it feels like Palmer couldn't decide what ideas to fit in, and just gave up and threw them all in.  What results is a book that carries some of the interesting ideas of its predecessors, and ends in an interesting way, but is frustrating as hell in the process of getting there.  If like me you're committed to this series after three books you may power through anyway, but if you aren't, this book won't change your mind and will probably make you angrier.