Terra Ignota - Perhaps the Stars
Feb. 19th, 2024 04:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunasarielPerhaps the Stars, by Ada Palmer.
Jesus fucking Christ this book! Everything we know about Hives, space, and/or the universe in general gets re-written about once every couple of chapters. We discover that there was an entire other war being fought under cover of this war. Significant chunks of dialogue are written in perfect iambic pentameter. One chapter is in code; as in, computer code. At one point, it just becomes the Odyssey. At another, it turns out that it was the Iliad all along. At yat another, I actually feel sorry for Dominic. I feel like my brain has been taken out of my head, given a brisk scrubbing, left out in the sun to dry for a bit, and then plopped back in.
Back in like 7S, I remember having a good inkling that war was coming, but being unable to fully believe it, or at least to see how all of these smart, sensible (with certain asterisks) people, in a society defined by freedom, harmony, and joy, could wind up physically fighting each other. I posited a lot of things - invaders from J.E.D.D.'s home universe looking to get their God back? Something/someone the Utopians stumbled across in their various sojourns? Tully Mardi getting a certain percentage of people to just fucking go berserk, possibly via the Canner Beat somehow? Then the overall conflict of Hiveguard vs. Remakers started to take shape, but I still couldn't see war war. Disharmony, certainly, and possibly some level of interpersonal violence, but I certainly never thought I'd be typing sentences like "after conquering Romanova in Spain's name, Ganymede is murdered by a bomb the Gordians planted in Cookie's corpse and rigged to look like a U-Beast to divert blame onto the Utopians," or "the Cousins are convicted of war crimes after planting nukes on all three of their space elevators, although said nukes were actually fired by Gordians posing as Cousins," or "Danaë, Lesley, and 9A meet for a virtual peace conference as heads of their various factions; one of them is nursing a baby, one of them is a widow, and one of them recently escaped after enduring several months of medical torture at the hands of Jung Su-Hyeon (who was, again, put up to it by Gordians)." Just the phrases "Cousin war crimes" or "secret Gordian plot to destroy Utopia" were nigh-unthinkable, back when everybody was playing sexy dress-up at Madame's and summoning the world's most infamous serial killer from his duties babysitting God for a spot of statistical analysis and/or multilingual translation.
Oh, speaking of which! I thought, right up until the very end, that Bridger was going to fulfill that Jesus metaphor and return from the dead. But nope, Ada Palmer is doing something much smarter and more unexpected, and on my next re-read, WOW is the end of 7S going to hurt. Hurt more, I mean. It actually wasn't that bad this time around, relatively speaking, because I thought that Bridger was just lying dormant somewhere, whether in the Major/Achilles, in Mycroft, or somewhere in the weave of the Universe itself (their native element, if you will), and would pop out if we, idk, clapped hard enough or something. But I guess my Sirius Black comparison was more apt than I thought, alas.
I finished PtS maybe a month an a half ago (WOW it’s taken me a while to write this review), and it's just been kinda sitting in my head, slowly percolating away, since then. Which I guess is fair, since I read it in maybe a couple of weeks and it's like 600 pages. It's definitely the kind of book where, the longer you think about it, the more connections you start to see, and the more in awe of its technical achievements you become. I have a whole channel in my personal Discord dedicated to Ada's Galaxy Brain Moments; I may or may not have written "Canner Device = Bridger's ability to rewrite people = sacred/profane transgression???" on my arm when the idea hit me at like 3 AM. And I just keep finding more and more to be :O about - like, just today I realized that J.E.D.D. calling all humans (especially Utopians) "little authors," and Utopians setting their coats to static in mourning for a lost world when a Hivefellow dies feeds into the overarching theme of "would you destroy this world to save a better one?", or, more appropriately, "would you destroy innumerable better worlds to save this one?," because that's exactly what Utopia and/or J.E.D.D. are doing - destroying myriad little authors in hopes of preserving the world of the capital-a Author.
One of the best things about Ada Palmer is that she asks these really big questions, and manages to avoid both whanging you over the head with her One Correct Answer and going "well, fuck if I know" and chickening out. She really does seem well-equipped to grapple with big questions of good and evil, if/when the ends justify the means, the possibility of free will, fate, narrative causality, and other big, thorny issues. And she does so not by asking the question and then promptly dropping the whole thing like a hot potato so she doesn't actually have to deal with answering it (like Certain Other Authors do), but by presenting half a dozen equally plausible, and equally contradictory, answers.
Like, take J.E.D.D., for example! Is he an actual alien? A supernatural messiah? A normal (if likely neurodiverse) dude raised in a severely fucked-up setting? Some combination thereof? I've read reviews that assume all three, and then some; me, I lean more towards actual alien/supernatural being, but not any sort of predestined messiah. I actually see him as deeply, deeply tragic - he and Bridger both had such excellent intentions, and things went and/or ended so terribly for them both. They both just wanted to make people, their loved ones first and foremost, safe and happy. Bridger tried to use his powers to keep his loved ones from harm, and to help people who he saw being hurt or threatened, and look where it got him. And J.E.D.D., similarly, I think really did love each human soul as individually miraculous and precious; it's just a shame that the only language he had to express that love was the language of conquest. Although I think it does say something that Bridger, who was raised by two serial killers and a bunch of traumatized toy soldiers, saw the world as an ultimately hopeful place full of good and kind people, and was eventually struck down by a cruel twist of fate, more or less, while J.E.D.D. was raised by the finest minds the world had yet produced (plusone two one and a half Evil Social Scientists) and basically saw the world as a never-ending hellscape of torment and constant strife that must be remade to be saved from itself.
And, similarly, Ada Palmer has some very complicated things to say about guilt, culpability, and the difficulty of good and evil. Like, the Gordians and the Cousins both meet Terry Pratchett's definition of "evil begins when you begin to treat people as things," and in ways that I personally found blood-boilingly reprehensible. The Cousins had literally one job - do no harm - and they use that to... do quite a lot of harm, actually; they just couldn’t acknowledge that there’s more to doing harm than shedding blood. There’s their creepy “pacification villages,” where everybody they’ve projected could be a threat is kidnapped to grow vegetables and make medicines and generally live in (enforced, very enforced) peace and harmony. Then there’s the mysterious after-effects of their Tiring Guns, which they either a) fucked up royally, b) lied about, or c) both. And every time they were called out on it, their reaction was "We didn't do it, and if we did it, we didn't mean to do it like *that*, and if we did mean to do it like *that* it was for your own good anyway, so stop complaining and eat your soup." And the Gordians, too, were trusted as one of the few Hives who had wisely chosen to sit out the worldwide scrum... but it turned out that they had been quietly, kindly, reasonably talking people into things like blowing up Atlantis, murdering U-Beasts (that dead little unicorn in Romanova lit a fire in me that isn't easily put out, let me tell you), betraying everything that they holdsacred dear, and imprisoning and torturing their own loved ones. And yet, and yet! They both care so much! Neither of them was going out and committing crimes against free will/sentient life for funsies; they were willing to take on the burden of doing terrible things if they thought it was literally the only way to save the world. And, to an extent, they were right - the Cousins' internment camps and Tiring Guns and other soft-power weapons did save lives and prevent atrocities, even while committing (arguably lesser? less fatal, anyway) atrocities. And Felix Faust really did believe, not wrongly, that every mind lost is a tragedy, and that the Utopians' resources could indeed be used to prevent this loss, if only they would stop faffing about with the Moon and Mars and whatnot. And, again to an extent, I even agree with him! I'm perfectly content to stay on Earth; there's plenty of beauty and wonder to explore down here. But just because Felix's position is a right position doesn't mean that it's the only right position. In this, I do think that J.E.D.D. is right, that committing all of our resources to either the inpath or the outpath would achieve that result a lot faster, and with much less wasted time/life/resources, but committing to both is necessary for our survival as complete beings.
Which brings me right back to J.E.D.D.. In general, his reforms are good, necessary even. ...Right up until the part where they put him in control of a functional majority of the world, and what was that about majority being the death-knell of freedom? I'm definitely with Papa on this, let's just say. J.E.D.D. functionally controlling the world, even if he uses it to heal the wounds of the war(s) and enact the Ten-Hour Servicer rule and generally bring about peace and harmony and a brighter future, is actually a somewhat ominous end to the book. Even if Madame is no longer around to pull J.E.D.D.'s strings (at least not directly) and he seems to have learned better than "obey me or be made to obey", he's made a One Enlightened Despot-shaped hole in the geopolitical fabric of the world; what's going to happen when he inevitably gets old and dies? Will someone else, and likely someone a lot less well-intentioned, step into the power vacuum? Or will J.E.D.D., in his infinite wisdom, figure out a way to well and truly dismantle the power structure he's built up? He's already taken steps, like appointing Martin his Co-Emperor (good choice on that, btw - more below), and it's certainly not an impossible task - Su-Hyeon proved it when they took up the Censor's mantle, if nothing else - but let's just say I'm inclined to view the whole "the Hives remain free and independent, but one person controls two-thirds of the Senate" thing with a jaundiced eye.
It says something about PtS, and Ada Palmer in general, that I'm now three pages into my review, and I haven't even talked about the plot or characters yet. Well, a little bit, but not fully.
First, let's talk about the whole Homeric thing. Apparently I tossed out "hey, wouldn't it be funny if Mycroft was Actually Odysseus" way back early on in 7S, although I was thinking of a time traveler kind of scenario. And I did hang onto my favorite tinfoil hat theory for a long-ass time, but I can't claim full credit, since I thought that a) he would be some random ancient Greek person, not Actually Odysseus, and b) see above re: time traveler vs. Bridger-style confluence of personalities. But, hey, at least partial credit! And I definitely didn't foresee the whole thing turning into the Iliad (and briefly the Odyssey) whole cloth, up to and including Sniper being, at various times, both Paris and the Trojan Horse (a duality it would be extremely happy with, I think, if someone less obviously batshit insane than Mycroft managed to explain the whole thing to it).
Oh, brief digression re: Sniper! It did end up being one of my favorite characters of the series ("Screw easy, let's go to space!" Oh, my heart <3 <3 <3), and I'm trying really hard to use its preferred pronouns, although I keep having to backspace and replace "they" or "he" with "it." But it does seem that Sniper is one of the few people to whom pronouns are actually really important, so I'm doing my best, even though "it/its" still makes me think indelibly of Murderbot. But overall, I'm still trying to follow the flowchart of:
1. Using the pronouns the character has expressed as theirs (so it for Sniper, he/him for Dominic, she/her for Danaë);
IF NONE EXPRESSED:
2. Using the gendered pronouns Mycroft uses for people affiliated with Madame's gender brothel (he/him for Spain, Vivien, Felix, Cornel MASON, Andō; she/her for Bryar, Madame, Heloïse);
OR
2a. Using the non-gendered pronouns 9A uses for people not affiliated with Madame's gender brothel & who haven't expressed a preference otherwise (Jin Im-Jin, 9A themself, Charlemagne No-Longer-Guildbreaker, most of the Mitsubishi, Papa);
UNLESS
3. Word of God contradicts both Mycroft and 9A (specifically Carlyle, whose transition to she/her and generally feminine gender presentation seems deeply coerced to me and she defaults to gender-neutral/they when outside of Dominic's influence. But WoG is that they're a trans woman by early 21st century standards, so she/her it is, although this is another one I'm having to backspace on a lot);
OR
3a. They weren't exposed to Madame's bullshit but seem to express a strong gender preference anyway (ex. Martin and Xiaolu No-Longer-Just-Guildbreaker, both of whom read as he/him, and Thisbe leans hard enough into the whole ~feminine mystique~ thing that it seems that she would prefer she/her).
Soooooo basically wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey, except gender. I am having trouble with some of these, but basically I'm going by the character's stated preference, even when I'm a little *raised eyebrow* about it.
Anyway, back to Suddenly Everything is Homer! A lot of the character/event parallels were true galaxy brain moments for me (with the exception of Bryar as Hector, which I'm still trying to reconcile - maybe that's why she was suddenly acting a lot more aggressively than was her Cousinly wont?), especially the "oh SHIT" realization that Cornel MASON, Achilles' boon companion, brother-in-battle, and lover, was Patroclus. (MUCH more on this scene, and this whole chapter, below.) Saladin as Penelope maps, I guess, but it did make me LOL - he did indeed wait patiently and steadfastly for Mycroft, but I have an inkling that his solution to a whole bunch of boorish unwanted suitors would be, uh, a lot more direct than the whole weaving/unraveling thing. XD
I find it incredibly sad that Mycroft, who has managed to miraculously cheat death by a hair's breath a dozen times, has actually died - twice! And it took the sacrifices of of Saladin and 9A, his Penelope and Telemachus, to bring him back long enough to bring the story to its conclusion. Poor Mycroft, which is a phrase I never thought I'd write in seriousness - even after it's implied that Cato or somebody will be able to replicate Bridger's resurrection potion and bring back Achilles/the Major and Patroclus/Cornel MASON, Mycroft will never be able to see Saladin or 9A again. Of course, there's enough wiggle room in that line about getting the resurrection potion to work even without a body that there's hope he'll be able to get them back. But it really is terribly poetic, in a way, that Odysseus, pretty much the one person who canonically ends up alive, happy, and with at least the majority of their loved ones also alive, is left so alone. Even his Homer-canonic losses, like the crew of the Shearwater and Argos/Boo (BOO!!! Who lived just long enough to see Mycroft once more, and then died/reverted to plastic T.T), seemed extra-heartbreaking in hindsight. Especially since his previous death-defying escapes have previously been joyous “whew, thank G/god[s] Mycroft made it!” moments, and they’re now horrifying in hindsight.
When Mycroft professed to not recognize the Odyssey parallels in his own journey across the Mediterranean, I thought he was lying on purpose, rather than...lying to himself, I guess? I honestly don't know whether he was starting to get inklings of his own role in the story and was desperately trying to deny it, or whether he truly didn't see it (and again, whether this was actual obliviousness since his reasoning is iffy at the best of times, or willful ignorance/his unconscious mind trying to protect his conscious one), but either way, that was right about where the parallels started to get inescapable. I'm not the greatest Homeric scholar, so I'm sure there were plenty of others that flew right over my head. But even as-is, both the Odyssey and Iliad parallels (although maybe "confluences" might be a better word?) were inescapable enough that I had an "ohhhhhhh" moment when it turned out that, once again, it all comes back to Bridger and their attempts to understand the world through the lens of fiction.
One last Homeric "oh SHIT" moment that I can't not mention (omg I am going to plaster this post with spoiler warnings) is the role of Troy itself. I think Mycroft was drawing parallels between Utopia and the city that set itself against the entire world as far back as 7S, but of course I didn't realize just how literal that would become. His continued, anguished entreaties to Utopia to "not make yourself Troy" hits a bit different when it becomes clear that positioning themselves as Troy in this narrative dooms them inescapably, to the point where big-A Author fiat is necessary to save them from total annihilation. (Again, more on that chapter below.) But then, later on, Mycroft figures out how to turn the story around, surrender Cato-Helen and the Sniper-Trojan Horse to Utopia, in a stroke of absolute motherfucking genius. It really did seem all sewn up in favor of the Gordians, who had planned everything so meticulously, who could predict (and have in fact already predicted) every possible more their enemies could make - the Gordians had every advantage, and negotiations were underway to spare as much of Utopia as possible. So they wisely, reasonably surrendered, just as Gordian had put them in a position to. They surrendered so much of their wonderful technology, including Bridger's relics, especially including the Sniperdoll that he had animated. ...And this is really the point where Ada Palmer walks that fine line between luck and Providence - it really had to all come together perfectly; Mycroft had to become Odysseus in order to plan it, Sniper had to have developed a fear of getting trapped in one of its own boxes years ago (necessitating all Sniperdoll boxes to be constructed with a set of escape tools quietly built into the packaging), a largely-Greek contingent had to deliver all of these treasures, and before you know it, the Gordians have themselves become Troy by accepting the gift containing their downfall! Ada Palmer's Galaxy Brain, I tell ya.
It's hard to do a properSeven-Ten List list of favorite characters, since things shifted in PtS so drastically - 9A wasn't anywhere near the top of my list before, and neither were Lesley or Danaë, and yet here we are (Sniper was kinda middle-of-the-pack but has also shot up like whoa); meanwhile, a lot of my previous favorites, like Spain, Ockham, Papa, Vivien, and Martin, either got drastically reduced screentime or didn't appear at all (more or less). The screentime they did get was certainly memorable, and even offscreen they were clearly doing interesting/impressive things. For example, very canny of the Gordians to realize that Spain was basically holding Europe together by sheer force of personality; as soon as they kidnapped him, most of Europe promptly burst into flames. And then, when he does reappear, he finally kills Fucking Perry-Kraye Again once and for all (I hope, at least???), and indirectly (sort of) Madame, too. Speaking of which, Spain, as much as I love him, continues to have the worst taste in women in human history - he literally walked in on his wife sleeping with the man who seduced and then murdered his son, most of his colleagues, and a significant number of random people, and, after his first (entirely appropriate and warranted, imho) rage-blackout, he settled on "we can work through this :)" reconciliation. I have much higher hopes for him and Danaë, though - he seems to enjoy the "wearing my lady's handkerchief as a mark of favor" style of chivalry, and Danaë certainly seems to enjoy being courted/paid court to. But at the same time, he's not actually from the year 1754 or whenever, and he both wants and needs a strong and savvy political figure as his spouse. And Danaë, after a lifetime's worth of being told that her value was in her dowry, her genetics, and her abilities as a hostess/consort, has finally gotten a taste of more direct power, and it seems that she likes it. So, yeah; power couple in the streets, "milady" in the sheets.
Martin is another character who only appears on a very small number of pages, but who really makes it count. Like I said above, good decision on J.E.D.D.'s part to make Martin Co-Emperor; with faith in the world's leaders so deeply shaken, who better to lead the Masons than a guy so deeply honest and loyal that he blew the whistle on his own bash', once he had firm evidence against them, knowing full well that they would be killed and their names erased from memory? (Another thing to add to the Gordians' account, btw.) The fact that they didn't all die was a surprise to all involved, tbh, especially Xiaoliu and MASON. I admit I got a little "oh, you Masons" lol out of "Accursed-Through-The-Ages-Guildbreaker," (what do you want to bet that nobody outside of the Masons actually calls them that?) but mostly I was just glad that Martin got to come home and find his spouse and ba'kids alive and well, not to mention recognition for his truly extraordinary devotion. And I think he'll be an exceptional Emperor/Co-Emperor - his inquisitive and scrupulously just mindset will nicely counterbalance the usual Masonic trend towards "no, we didn't just invent this rule, it's been this way since Time Immemorial and we just didn't tell you for Reasons >:|"
My favorite Saneer-Weeksbooth has generally shifted around a fair amount, but Lesley has never been near the top; it was always Ockham or Cato, with Sniper and Eureka coming in second, Lesley a distant third, and Sidney Koons (who apparently died???) and the Typer twins not appearing enough for me to get a read on them. But Lesley really shot up in my estimation in this book, not least because we weren't seeing her through Mycroft's distinctly misogynistic lens. (More on this below, btw.) But with Ockham in jail, Cato and Eureka god knows where, and Sniper Going Through Some Shit, Lesley really got a chance to shine. The summit between her, Danaë, and 9A was one of my favorite scenes in the book, not least because it shook up my perception of the entire Hive system and most of the major players therein at least five or six times. Like, what do you mean Martin and Xiaoliu are both biologically female (along with a ton of other people who Mycroft had decided are dudes)? What do you mean Danaë has transformed from Andō's helpmeet and hostess to Mariscala and/or Acting Chief Director? And whoa, I guess they really did defeat Madame's gendered bullshit without even trying, look at that! But it was a couple of lines of Lesley's that really cut me to the bone - “They’re hesitating.” Hiveguardian Lesley Saneer spoke, as grim as storm. “Your chosen dictator is hesitating about human extinction. I think you should all reconsider your choices.” and “I still say”—Lesley’s words were keen as steel—“you should rethink your choices if your leader thinks the deaths of one and five and five billion are identical." These both get right at the heart of why I would 100% be Hiveguard (aside from the fact that, y'know, Hives are a cool and uniquely successful form of government) - no matter how personally compassionate the One Enlightened Despot is, they still think in absolutes in a way that doesn't actually lead to good outcomes. Also, in-universe, there are good reasons why Actual Alien J.E.D.D. MASON is hesitating when asked if there will be humans in their brave new world, but if you're not one of the, like, six or seven people who actually know *why* they're hesitating, then asking that question, and having them pause to think it over, would be Very Concerning. And even then, they only really become functional when said six or seven people are there to run interference between J.E.D.D.'s world of absolutes and, y'know, reality. So I would be much more inclined to follow Lesley than J.E.D.D. anyway.
Speaking of Saneer-Weeksbooths! Cato, man. Cato holds a very special place in my heart. They've suffered so much, endured so much, and they never stop being a teacher and a healer at heart. Their last wish, and last action, was to become something that could save the world, and were subsequently gifted/cursed with a body full of miraculous futuristic tech and the mind of what a twelve-year-old raised on a steady diet of narrativium though a Mad Scientist should be. And even then, he never stops trying to heal the world's hurts. The first thing we see Cato-Helen do is heal/repair Achilles'/the Major's synthetic body and their CMOA (yes, I know that the year is no longer 2012, but I still have yet to find a better phrase than this to describe the phenomenon) is when Achilles/the Major fulfills the tragic arc of the Iliad and kills Hector/Bryar Kosala in revenge for the death of Patroclus/Cornel MASON... and then Cato-Helen promptly reverses it by bringing Hector/Bryar (who, I cannot emphasize enough, was really most sincerely dead) back to life through their magitek body. But perhaps the moment that got to me most of all was during one of The Most Oh Shit Chapters Of All Time when the space elevator that Cornel, Cato-Helen, and a Utopian who used to be one of Cato's CMSIJSS students are riding in starts to disintegrate, and said student, now a certified space wizard, is trying frantically to save one of the most important people on the planet (Cornel) and/or one of the most important people to them personally ("Doctor Weeksbooth!"). And Cato-Helen, who has replaced their beloved Doctor Weeksbooth but still remembers being them, is trying so hard to convince their former student not to give up their helmet, and that they (Cato-Helen) will be fine in space for a little while! And they just don't want any more people to die, especially not one of the kids they nurtured and launched into space! I, just, aaaaaaaahhhhhhh! Now *this*, ladies and gentlemen and sundries, is some masterclass writing. I don’t think we get confirmation whether or not the student survives, but I really, really hope so.
OK, I guess it's about time that I finally talk about The Real Most Oh Shit Chapter Of All Time - The Second Battle for the Almagest, or I Do Not Know How to Call ‘Friend’ One Who Does This. Ada Palmer has pulled off some really impressive technical feats in the past - from the very first chapter, when she brings an action sequence to a screeching halt for a brief digression on etymology before resuming, to the Worldbuilding Filibuster in 7S, to that sort of pinwheeling three-conversations-at-once bit from WtB, to the long stretches of near-perfect iambic pentameter throughout. But holy fucking shit I never expected anything like this - Mycroft recalling hearing time-delayed communications bursts from Utopia describing a battle that they were witnessing/involved in, culminating in J.E.D.D. threatening God into providing a (quasi-literal) Deus Ex Machina to save Utopia from utter annihilation. And I was *riveted* throughout - seriously, I don't think I've read such elegant, powerful prose since the destruction of Atlantis, and this had the added bonus of a framing device that really shouldn't work at all, let alone be as brilliant as it is. The litany of Utopian stations falling silent, Naismith and Le Guin Station and even Laputa having to be replaced by Xuánlóng, the sudden breaks in the action between Faustbursts, the escalating horror as every time you think things can't get worse they do (the Cousins put nukes on the space elevators! the Gordians fired them! but the Utopians had already weaponized space! Luna City is going to be destroyed! Luna City *and* the gateway to Mars *and* the Mars colony itself are going to be destroyed, along with Bridger's relics and almost every living Utopian!), and then that particular kind of catharsis that Ada Palmer is so good at, that seems to come out of nowhere until you realize how meticulously foreshadowed it was, where J.E.D.D. wins a staring contest with God and suddenly disaster is fortuitously averted by a hair's breadth.
This is one of the most jaw-dropping things about Ada Palmer, at least for me - the way she can hold such wildly disparate ideas in balance, and in tension, with each other. Like, this is a book that she's writing! She can have anything happen at any time, because she's the author and she says so! This idea of miraculous escapes and beyond-lucky rescues, in-universe deus ex machinas and last-minute twists of fate, should feel incredibly cheap and unsatisfying, reducing the stakes to zero. But instead, they raise the stakes and engender yet more questions - are these actual acts of G/god(s)? And if so, which one? J.E.D.D.'s Peer, this universe's monotheistic Creator? Or the Greek pantheon? Or is this an aftereffect of Bridger having existed and influenced the world as he did? Because I don't think for a second that Bridger would have allowed Utopia to truly be lost. (But then again, that raises the question, which Ada Palmer also grapples with, of why Bridger or God or J.E.D.D. or whoever would allow so much suffering and loss in the first place.) Or was it all just an incredibly lucky series of coincidences, with no supernatural explanations needed? Clearly the Alexander had always been there, and just happened to activate at that precise moment. ...Or was it?
My point is, Ada Palmer provides watertight arguments both for and against every one of the above positions. And she keeps doing this!!! Whether it's the argument of inpath vs. outpath, the existence of set-sets, the nature of J.E.D.D. and/or Bridger's existence, or Mycroft's own experiences, she does such a marvelous job of constructing a vast multitude of viewpoints, and an equally vast number of fully-realized people to hold these viewpoints. It's impressive as absolute shit - I don't think I've seen another author who's written like this, ever. Even her villains feel fully realized and internally consistent, and even the characters you love the most sometimes do things that are stupid, or despicable, or both. Like, I don't like the S-Ws as much as I do because I think they're right (they're not) or they're morally unassailable (they're definitely not); I just think they're smart, competent, interesting people who succeeded at what they set out to do. And this goes double for Mycroft! His crimes were definitely not the Standard Misunderstood Protagonist variety, where a) he didn't do it, b) if he did it, it was because somebody forced him to, and either way c) he feels super bad about it. He's not the Morally Correct Option; there *are* no Morally Correct Options (with the possible and partial exceptions of Spain, Martin, Papa, and Bridger). I like him because I've truly never read another character like him - brilliant but genuinely insane, a genius polymath whose hobbies include statistical analysis, improving life for his fellow Servicers, reading Homer and Victor Hugo to God, and erotic cannibalism, whose most basic sense perceptions can't be relied upon by either either the reader or himself, who doesn't even know how many people he is. He's an utterly fascinating person, capable of both immense compassion and immense cruelty, sometimes simultaneously, and Ada Palmer somehow manages to wrap this all up in one cohesive whole. I can be repulsed by his crimes and his misogyny, and yet I can cry honest-to-Bridger tears at his death.
Similarly, I wouldn't be European Hiveguard because those are the best, or most correct, factions; they would just be the options that most closely align with what's important to me, and what information I would have available in this verse. Ada Palmer's is a fully functioning world to match its fully functioning characters. When I've beenfrothing enthusing about these books to people, sometimes they ask questions that I can't answer - A-my-sibling asked if any set-sets have ever tried to take off their interfaces and integrate into normal society, and R2 has asked, if he were to join the Humanists and then leave, would he be able to keep the boots? I don't know, but not because I get the impression that the author hasn't thought of these questions (I'm dead sure she has), but because the narrator isn't interested in these facts and thus doesn't convey them to us. I've rarely found such a fully-realized world, where there are no questions that you the reader aren't "supposed" to ask. It's so rare to find a world like this, where you can wander around at will, without accidentally knocking over a storefront and realizing the whole thing is a movie set built of plywood. It's a living, breathing world, with all sorts of things clearly going on outside of the purview of the events of the books - the struggle for octopus civil rights, hearing aids for whales, figuring out if (and how) to try a sentient AI for murder, Utopian-sponsored Birthright Israel-like trips to the moon for non-Utopians. There are even things well within the purview of the novel that Myrcoft simply doesn't care about, or clearly doesn't understand well enough, to report on. "Oh, the trial. Ockham goes free," anyone? Or how our understanding of Danaë changes, going from Mycroft's misogynistic and archaic (and that far more archaic than we originally thought) view of her to 9A's more modern, more closely gender-neutral one.
I've been trying to find a good place to talk about 9A, Mycroft's editor, protégé, and eventual successor on many fronts, and this seems as good a place as any. In another Ada Palmer's Galaxy Brain moments, this is one of those rare instances where the same author can write two different narrators in the same story, and have them genuinely sound like completely different people (even if people who work closely together and share some literary tastes), not just The Author In A Slightly Different Hat. 9A's friendly, slightly bewildered, definitely overwhelmed approachable-ness stands in such high contrast to Mycroft's breathless polysyllabic flights of fancy and/or madness. Like, ashamsterwoman said, 9A is definitely the one you would rather grab a beer with, and not having to suss out whether Mycroft is a) hallucinating, b) lying on purpose, c) thinks he’s telling the truth but is biased to the point of (further) unreliability, d) technically telling the truth but eliding Certain Important Facts, or e) actually talking to dead people was certainly A Change. But, of course, as the novel goes on, 9A starts to sound more and more Mycroft-like. Which, at first, makes perfect sense in-universe - they clearly admire Mycroft a great deal, artistically as well as personally, and they've clearly picked up a thing or two from their time as Mycroft's editor. But also, as events get more, er, Homeric in scope, equally Homeric language is called for, so it makes sense that they would go from Mycroft would have made all this seem smaller. Or bigger. Both. They would have given this the smallness of warring ants, of pieces on a chessboard, puppets acting out a script, while the bigness lies in the Authors, Providence, the Great Conversation Mycroft believed in with such precious certainty. I don’t quite have that, to Sniper wasn’t alone. So many fans all over the world were wishing for sniper to be safe, so many people cared, and loved them, all those invisible wishes hovering around like friendly ghosts. Time and distance make us ghosts to one another even when we’re still alive and here, but while it makes us ghosts it doesn’t make us nothing. And then, of course, later on they start sounding a lot like Mycroft for very sad reasons. But even before that, there were some very neat technical feats wherein Mycroft and 9A would hand off narrative duties to one another, like the Battle of Romanova, and the different ways they described/experienced the same events were illustrative and/or alarming.
I think the biggest change 9A brought was the chance to step back from Mycroft's deeply warped worldview, not just in terms of "no, the ghosts of Apollo Mojave and Thomas Hobbes are not yelling at you," but in terms of gender. 9A is certainly aware of the G7 brothel gender shenanigans, but doesn't seem to have them as deeply ingrained as Mycroft, so they do apply gendered pronouns to those who have expressed a strong preference (ex. Heloïse, Dominic), but almost everybody else gets the neutral "they." And, like, I certainly knew going in that a lot of Mycroft's gender bullshit was, well, bullshit (such as assigning she/her to Charlemagne Then-Still-Guildbreaker and he/him to Jin Im-Jin because the former is cuddly and nurturing and the latter is forceful and decisive, while making a point to mention that this doesn't align with their biological sex), but there were so many points where I hadn't realized that Mycroft had gotten me good and proper, and it took 9A's perspective to break me out of that. Like, with Heloïse and Danaë in particular, I had no idea how much I was discounting/dismissing them until 9A somewhat shamefacedly pointed out that they were doing it to. And then there was the summit between 9A, Danaë, and Lesley (“and not a dick among us”!) that I mentioned above, where we found out that so many characters that Mycroft had deemed masculine were in fact women, or at least biologically female - Martin *and* Xiaoliu At-That-Point-Still-Guildbreaker! Huang Enlai! Castel Natekari! And all this was even after the big Papa reveal in WtB. And then there are those who either genuinely do not give a shit (Eureka and Cato) or those who would mark Other/None of the Above (Carlyle, Dominic, Cookie, and Sniper), at least according to 9A.
Oh, Sniper! I meant to talk about Sniper earlier, when I was talking about other S-Ws, but I got distracted by Cato Emotions. I know everybody says this is the book where Sniper becomes their favorite, and idk if it's now my all-time favorite S-W (Ockham and Cato, man), but wow is it at the very least tied for my favorite for this book. In TLTL, I thought it was just sparkly and flighty and odd. In 7S, I had to sit with my discomfort over its living doll/noncon kink, and I was kind of annoyed with it at how tough it was being on poor Cato, although the circumstances at least partially justified its urgency. In WtB, it became clear that Something Is Wrong With Sniper, even after it escaped/was returned. I remember mulling over possible suspects at the time, and wondering who would be crazy enough to risk the whole world going up in flames by taking Sniper, or maybe that was their goal all along. I remember I posited Julia Again as a suspect, but I didn’t think it was her, since she was already Suspect #1. I also posited Madame, but discarded her as well, on the assumption that she just wouldn’t give Sniper back, since she clearly doesn’t give a single good goddamn about the world in general to begin with. Well, I was kind of right on both! It was Julia, and she certainly wasn’t planning on giving Sniper back - she had to be blackmailed into it by Caryle, of all people.
(Brief aside, this was where I felt that Carlyle really earned her Blacklaw sash and Cousin patch simultaneously - "I have evidence that you committed a heinous crime, and I could get you arrested and/or horribly killed for it, but instead I'm'a blackmail you into becoming a wonderful person and working very hard every day of your life for the common good otherwise I'm gonna leak the videos of your crime to a deeply unstable and violent man who will do unspeakable things to you, k? K! :)")
But, point is, Julia had Sniper all along. 9A’s discovery of the videos of Sniper’s confinement and torture, and their own similar experiences, were honestly hard to read, as bad as the Almagest or the destruction of Atlantis, or any of the other large- and small-scale calamities that Mycroft and 9A document. There was just something so grindingly horrific about Julia’s cheeriness, and Su-Hyeon’s false(?) solicitude. (Was it false? And would it make things better or worse if it was genuine?) I had no idea Sniper had such strength (like a lot of other people, I imagine), and seeing 9A drawing on that strength and repeating “Sniper made it through” for 54 days, until that ominous “no login” on the 55th day was one of Ada Palmer’s “HOW does she do this???” triumphs.
I really, really wish Sniper and 9A had had more time to talk and get to know each other, because the one conversation they had was on par with the 9A/Lesley/Danaë summit for “favorite standalone conversations” in the book. One of Ada Palmer’s phrases that I really like is “we both took off the brakes we use with everybody else” - it’s such a great way of encapsulating how freeing it is to be able to spend time with someone, whether platonic or romantic, who just gets you, who you don’t have to slow down or squinch yourself into a narrow little box for. 9A and Sniper clearly found this in each other, and I wish they had so much more time to explore how they’ve been changed by their experiences, which the other person is maybe the only one on the planet who can fully comprehend. And on top of that, it was just such a great meeting of the minds - 9A, the war’s chronicler (and, apparently, a huge Sniper fan even before *handwaves at everything*), and Sniper, one if its leaders. I feel like we got a closer look into Sniper’s psyche than we ever have before, even in the videos, which were…perhaps indicative of the core of its being, but certainly not of its day-to-day internal life, if you know what I mean. And, yes, Sniper is always performing, but I felt like what we got here was its friends-and-family performance, not its “ilu, fans ;) <3” performance - both of which are genuine, mind you! But there was just such a tantalizing glimpse of the great leader Sniper has become/will become, not just their sexy celebrity persona. Ooooh, I just now realized that Mycroft is always commenting on how provocatively and sexily Sniper poses/dresses/acts, even here with his It looks so like a photo shoot: a prison costume this time, sexy handcuffs and other restraints, a ‘bad boy’/‘bad girl’ series is it this time, prince of poses?. Since Mycroft has Gender Issues like whoa, I wonder if he gave Sniper male pronouns in his sections of the narrative so that he wouldn’t feel weird about being attracted to it. 9A, although they’re a Sniper fan, seem to admire Sniper more than they want to bang it - their conversation actually read more like the old days between 9A and Su-Hyeon, more friendly or quasi-ba’sib like (and remember, 9A’s original crime was murderous vengeance for their beloved dead original ba’sib); there didn’t seem to be much awareness of attraction or attractiveness on either side. I, just, aurgh, even after suffering so much, and after being on different sides of this horrible devastating war, they both found so much joy in meeting each other and connecting with a fellow Humanist who has endured the unendurable!
…and then 9A left the room, and Mycroft had arguably the most horrifying moment of his life (which is really saying something).
Other sundry things I noticed but don’t have much to say about, other than “lollll” or “awwww”:
So, TL;DR: Ada Palmer sets herself a Utopia-level difficult task, and succeeds with Humanist-level flying colors. This was a glorious book, charming and readable and funny, and yet haunting and devastating too. This is the kind of scifi I don’t often see anymore, the kind that really stretches itself to ask some big questions about where we’re going and why, and what we’ll do when we get there, and then answers them, in multifarious ways. A lot from these books are really going to stay with me, I think - the whole Hive system and the Homeric parallels and Ada Palmer’s stunt writing for sure, but also Martin’s “weakness in the face of cauliflower,” and his and Papa’s detective routine. Him getting hit in the face with a Peacedove. The fall of Atlantis, and “Laputa silent.” “Hi. Bye. Sorry. Math.” “Not yet awake enough to achieve pants.” “we both took off the brakes we use with everybody else.” “Screw easy, let’s go to space!” Vivien renouncing Greylaw for Humanist. Spain stepping off the shuttle through the shattered window of the Parliamentary offices. Ockham surrendering with grace and dignity. Sniper and Dominic’s rooftop duel, and Sniper’s subsequent flight. Bridger and Carlyle discussing the afterlife in a trench full of wildflowers. Mycroft casually parkouring down two stories to rescue a couple of Utopians from a bunch of drunken Humanists. “This world is a utopia, not perfect, not finished, but still a utopia compared to every other era humanity has seen.” Kenzie Walkiewicz and their beacons and the Ten-Hour Servicer program. “The seeds have flown.” Holy shit, the seeds have flown. <3 <3 <3
Jesus fucking Christ this book! Everything we know about Hives, space, and/or the universe in general gets re-written about once every couple of chapters. We discover that there was an entire other war being fought under cover of this war. Significant chunks of dialogue are written in perfect iambic pentameter. One chapter is in code; as in, computer code. At one point, it just becomes the Odyssey. At another, it turns out that it was the Iliad all along. At yat another, I actually feel sorry for Dominic. I feel like my brain has been taken out of my head, given a brisk scrubbing, left out in the sun to dry for a bit, and then plopped back in.
Back in like 7S, I remember having a good inkling that war was coming, but being unable to fully believe it, or at least to see how all of these smart, sensible (with certain asterisks) people, in a society defined by freedom, harmony, and joy, could wind up physically fighting each other. I posited a lot of things - invaders from J.E.D.D.'s home universe looking to get their God back? Something/someone the Utopians stumbled across in their various sojourns? Tully Mardi getting a certain percentage of people to just fucking go berserk, possibly via the Canner Beat somehow? Then the overall conflict of Hiveguard vs. Remakers started to take shape, but I still couldn't see war war. Disharmony, certainly, and possibly some level of interpersonal violence, but I certainly never thought I'd be typing sentences like "after conquering Romanova in Spain's name, Ganymede is murdered by a bomb the Gordians planted in Cookie's corpse and rigged to look like a U-Beast to divert blame onto the Utopians," or "the Cousins are convicted of war crimes after planting nukes on all three of their space elevators, although said nukes were actually fired by Gordians posing as Cousins," or "Danaë, Lesley, and 9A meet for a virtual peace conference as heads of their various factions; one of them is nursing a baby, one of them is a widow, and one of them recently escaped after enduring several months of medical torture at the hands of Jung Su-Hyeon (who was, again, put up to it by Gordians)." Just the phrases "Cousin war crimes" or "secret Gordian plot to destroy Utopia" were nigh-unthinkable, back when everybody was playing sexy dress-up at Madame's and summoning the world's most infamous serial killer from his duties babysitting God for a spot of statistical analysis and/or multilingual translation.
Oh, speaking of which! I thought, right up until the very end, that Bridger was going to fulfill that Jesus metaphor and return from the dead. But nope, Ada Palmer is doing something much smarter and more unexpected, and on my next re-read, WOW is the end of 7S going to hurt. Hurt more, I mean. It actually wasn't that bad this time around, relatively speaking, because I thought that Bridger was just lying dormant somewhere, whether in the Major/Achilles, in Mycroft, or somewhere in the weave of the Universe itself (their native element, if you will), and would pop out if we, idk, clapped hard enough or something. But I guess my Sirius Black comparison was more apt than I thought, alas.
I finished PtS maybe a month an a half ago (WOW it’s taken me a while to write this review), and it's just been kinda sitting in my head, slowly percolating away, since then. Which I guess is fair, since I read it in maybe a couple of weeks and it's like 600 pages. It's definitely the kind of book where, the longer you think about it, the more connections you start to see, and the more in awe of its technical achievements you become. I have a whole channel in my personal Discord dedicated to Ada's Galaxy Brain Moments; I may or may not have written "Canner Device = Bridger's ability to rewrite people = sacred/profane transgression???" on my arm when the idea hit me at like 3 AM. And I just keep finding more and more to be :O about - like, just today I realized that J.E.D.D. calling all humans (especially Utopians) "little authors," and Utopians setting their coats to static in mourning for a lost world when a Hivefellow dies feeds into the overarching theme of "would you destroy this world to save a better one?", or, more appropriately, "would you destroy innumerable better worlds to save this one?," because that's exactly what Utopia and/or J.E.D.D. are doing - destroying myriad little authors in hopes of preserving the world of the capital-a Author.
One of the best things about Ada Palmer is that she asks these really big questions, and manages to avoid both whanging you over the head with her One Correct Answer and going "well, fuck if I know" and chickening out. She really does seem well-equipped to grapple with big questions of good and evil, if/when the ends justify the means, the possibility of free will, fate, narrative causality, and other big, thorny issues. And she does so not by asking the question and then promptly dropping the whole thing like a hot potato so she doesn't actually have to deal with answering it (like Certain Other Authors do), but by presenting half a dozen equally plausible, and equally contradictory, answers.
Like, take J.E.D.D., for example! Is he an actual alien? A supernatural messiah? A normal (if likely neurodiverse) dude raised in a severely fucked-up setting? Some combination thereof? I've read reviews that assume all three, and then some; me, I lean more towards actual alien/supernatural being, but not any sort of predestined messiah. I actually see him as deeply, deeply tragic - he and Bridger both had such excellent intentions, and things went and/or ended so terribly for them both. They both just wanted to make people, their loved ones first and foremost, safe and happy. Bridger tried to use his powers to keep his loved ones from harm, and to help people who he saw being hurt or threatened, and look where it got him. And J.E.D.D., similarly, I think really did love each human soul as individually miraculous and precious; it's just a shame that the only language he had to express that love was the language of conquest. Although I think it does say something that Bridger, who was raised by two serial killers and a bunch of traumatized toy soldiers, saw the world as an ultimately hopeful place full of good and kind people, and was eventually struck down by a cruel twist of fate, more or less, while J.E.D.D. was raised by the finest minds the world had yet produced (plus
And, similarly, Ada Palmer has some very complicated things to say about guilt, culpability, and the difficulty of good and evil. Like, the Gordians and the Cousins both meet Terry Pratchett's definition of "evil begins when you begin to treat people as things," and in ways that I personally found blood-boilingly reprehensible. The Cousins had literally one job - do no harm - and they use that to... do quite a lot of harm, actually; they just couldn’t acknowledge that there’s more to doing harm than shedding blood. There’s their creepy “pacification villages,” where everybody they’ve projected could be a threat is kidnapped to grow vegetables and make medicines and generally live in (enforced, very enforced) peace and harmony. Then there’s the mysterious after-effects of their Tiring Guns, which they either a) fucked up royally, b) lied about, or c) both. And every time they were called out on it, their reaction was "We didn't do it, and if we did it, we didn't mean to do it like *that*, and if we did mean to do it like *that* it was for your own good anyway, so stop complaining and eat your soup." And the Gordians, too, were trusted as one of the few Hives who had wisely chosen to sit out the worldwide scrum... but it turned out that they had been quietly, kindly, reasonably talking people into things like blowing up Atlantis, murdering U-Beasts (that dead little unicorn in Romanova lit a fire in me that isn't easily put out, let me tell you), betraying everything that they hold
Which brings me right back to J.E.D.D.. In general, his reforms are good, necessary even. ...Right up until the part where they put him in control of a functional majority of the world, and what was that about majority being the death-knell of freedom? I'm definitely with Papa on this, let's just say. J.E.D.D. functionally controlling the world, even if he uses it to heal the wounds of the war(s) and enact the Ten-Hour Servicer rule and generally bring about peace and harmony and a brighter future, is actually a somewhat ominous end to the book. Even if Madame is no longer around to pull J.E.D.D.'s strings (at least not directly) and he seems to have learned better than "obey me or be made to obey", he's made a One Enlightened Despot-shaped hole in the geopolitical fabric of the world; what's going to happen when he inevitably gets old and dies? Will someone else, and likely someone a lot less well-intentioned, step into the power vacuum? Or will J.E.D.D., in his infinite wisdom, figure out a way to well and truly dismantle the power structure he's built up? He's already taken steps, like appointing Martin his Co-Emperor (good choice on that, btw - more below), and it's certainly not an impossible task - Su-Hyeon proved it when they took up the Censor's mantle, if nothing else - but let's just say I'm inclined to view the whole "the Hives remain free and independent, but one person controls two-thirds of the Senate" thing with a jaundiced eye.
It says something about PtS, and Ada Palmer in general, that I'm now three pages into my review, and I haven't even talked about the plot or characters yet. Well, a little bit, but not fully.
First, let's talk about the whole Homeric thing. Apparently I tossed out "hey, wouldn't it be funny if Mycroft was Actually Odysseus" way back early on in 7S, although I was thinking of a time traveler kind of scenario. And I did hang onto my favorite tinfoil hat theory for a long-ass time, but I can't claim full credit, since I thought that a) he would be some random ancient Greek person, not Actually Odysseus, and b) see above re: time traveler vs. Bridger-style confluence of personalities. But, hey, at least partial credit! And I definitely didn't foresee the whole thing turning into the Iliad (and briefly the Odyssey) whole cloth, up to and including Sniper being, at various times, both Paris and the Trojan Horse (a duality it would be extremely happy with, I think, if someone less obviously batshit insane than Mycroft managed to explain the whole thing to it).
Oh, brief digression re: Sniper! It did end up being one of my favorite characters of the series ("Screw easy, let's go to space!" Oh, my heart <3 <3 <3), and I'm trying really hard to use its preferred pronouns, although I keep having to backspace and replace "they" or "he" with "it." But it does seem that Sniper is one of the few people to whom pronouns are actually really important, so I'm doing my best, even though "it/its" still makes me think indelibly of Murderbot. But overall, I'm still trying to follow the flowchart of:
1. Using the pronouns the character has expressed as theirs (so it for Sniper, he/him for Dominic, she/her for Danaë);
IF NONE EXPRESSED:
2. Using the gendered pronouns Mycroft uses for people affiliated with Madame's gender brothel (he/him for Spain, Vivien, Felix, Cornel MASON, Andō; she/her for Bryar, Madame, Heloïse);
OR
2a. Using the non-gendered pronouns 9A uses for people not affiliated with Madame's gender brothel & who haven't expressed a preference otherwise (Jin Im-Jin, 9A themself, Charlemagne No-Longer-Guildbreaker, most of the Mitsubishi, Papa);
UNLESS
3. Word of God contradicts both Mycroft and 9A (specifically Carlyle, whose transition to she/her and generally feminine gender presentation seems deeply coerced to me and she defaults to gender-neutral/they when outside of Dominic's influence. But WoG is that they're a trans woman by early 21st century standards, so she/her it is, although this is another one I'm having to backspace on a lot);
OR
3a. They weren't exposed to Madame's bullshit but seem to express a strong gender preference anyway (ex. Martin and Xiaolu No-Longer-Just-Guildbreaker, both of whom read as he/him, and Thisbe leans hard enough into the whole ~feminine mystique~ thing that it seems that she would prefer she/her).
Soooooo basically wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey, except gender. I am having trouble with some of these, but basically I'm going by the character's stated preference, even when I'm a little *raised eyebrow* about it.
Anyway, back to Suddenly Everything is Homer! A lot of the character/event parallels were true galaxy brain moments for me (with the exception of Bryar as Hector, which I'm still trying to reconcile - maybe that's why she was suddenly acting a lot more aggressively than was her Cousinly wont?), especially the "oh SHIT" realization that Cornel MASON, Achilles' boon companion, brother-in-battle, and lover, was Patroclus. (MUCH more on this scene, and this whole chapter, below.) Saladin as Penelope maps, I guess, but it did make me LOL - he did indeed wait patiently and steadfastly for Mycroft, but I have an inkling that his solution to a whole bunch of boorish unwanted suitors would be, uh, a lot more direct than the whole weaving/unraveling thing. XD
I find it incredibly sad that Mycroft, who has managed to miraculously cheat death by a hair's breath a dozen times, has actually died - twice! And it took the sacrifices of of Saladin and 9A, his Penelope and Telemachus, to bring him back long enough to bring the story to its conclusion. Poor Mycroft, which is a phrase I never thought I'd write in seriousness - even after it's implied that Cato or somebody will be able to replicate Bridger's resurrection potion and bring back Achilles/the Major and Patroclus/Cornel MASON, Mycroft will never be able to see Saladin or 9A again. Of course, there's enough wiggle room in that line about getting the resurrection potion to work even without a body that there's hope he'll be able to get them back. But it really is terribly poetic, in a way, that Odysseus, pretty much the one person who canonically ends up alive, happy, and with at least the majority of their loved ones also alive, is left so alone. Even his Homer-canonic losses, like the crew of the Shearwater and Argos/Boo (BOO!!! Who lived just long enough to see Mycroft once more, and then died/reverted to plastic T.T), seemed extra-heartbreaking in hindsight. Especially since his previous death-defying escapes have previously been joyous “whew, thank G/god[s] Mycroft made it!” moments, and they’re now horrifying in hindsight.
When Mycroft professed to not recognize the Odyssey parallels in his own journey across the Mediterranean, I thought he was lying on purpose, rather than...lying to himself, I guess? I honestly don't know whether he was starting to get inklings of his own role in the story and was desperately trying to deny it, or whether he truly didn't see it (and again, whether this was actual obliviousness since his reasoning is iffy at the best of times, or willful ignorance/his unconscious mind trying to protect his conscious one), but either way, that was right about where the parallels started to get inescapable. I'm not the greatest Homeric scholar, so I'm sure there were plenty of others that flew right over my head. But even as-is, both the Odyssey and Iliad parallels (although maybe "confluences" might be a better word?) were inescapable enough that I had an "ohhhhhhh" moment when it turned out that, once again, it all comes back to Bridger and their attempts to understand the world through the lens of fiction.
One last Homeric "oh SHIT" moment that I can't not mention (omg I am going to plaster this post with spoiler warnings) is the role of Troy itself. I think Mycroft was drawing parallels between Utopia and the city that set itself against the entire world as far back as 7S, but of course I didn't realize just how literal that would become. His continued, anguished entreaties to Utopia to "not make yourself Troy" hits a bit different when it becomes clear that positioning themselves as Troy in this narrative dooms them inescapably, to the point where big-A Author fiat is necessary to save them from total annihilation. (Again, more on that chapter below.) But then, later on, Mycroft figures out how to turn the story around, surrender Cato-Helen and the Sniper-Trojan Horse to Utopia, in a stroke of absolute motherfucking genius. It really did seem all sewn up in favor of the Gordians, who had planned everything so meticulously, who could predict (and have in fact already predicted) every possible more their enemies could make - the Gordians had every advantage, and negotiations were underway to spare as much of Utopia as possible. So they wisely, reasonably surrendered, just as Gordian had put them in a position to. They surrendered so much of their wonderful technology, including Bridger's relics, especially including the Sniperdoll that he had animated. ...And this is really the point where Ada Palmer walks that fine line between luck and Providence - it really had to all come together perfectly; Mycroft had to become Odysseus in order to plan it, Sniper had to have developed a fear of getting trapped in one of its own boxes years ago (necessitating all Sniperdoll boxes to be constructed with a set of escape tools quietly built into the packaging), a largely-Greek contingent had to deliver all of these treasures, and before you know it, the Gordians have themselves become Troy by accepting the gift containing their downfall! Ada Palmer's Galaxy Brain, I tell ya.
It's hard to do a proper
Martin is another character who only appears on a very small number of pages, but who really makes it count. Like I said above, good decision on J.E.D.D.'s part to make Martin Co-Emperor; with faith in the world's leaders so deeply shaken, who better to lead the Masons than a guy so deeply honest and loyal that he blew the whistle on his own bash', once he had firm evidence against them, knowing full well that they would be killed and their names erased from memory? (Another thing to add to the Gordians' account, btw.) The fact that they didn't all die was a surprise to all involved, tbh, especially Xiaoliu and MASON. I admit I got a little "oh, you Masons" lol out of "Accursed-Through-The-Ages-Guildbreaker," (what do you want to bet that nobody outside of the Masons actually calls them that?) but mostly I was just glad that Martin got to come home and find his spouse and ba'kids alive and well, not to mention recognition for his truly extraordinary devotion. And I think he'll be an exceptional Emperor/Co-Emperor - his inquisitive and scrupulously just mindset will nicely counterbalance the usual Masonic trend towards "no, we didn't just invent this rule, it's been this way since Time Immemorial and we just didn't tell you for Reasons >:|"
My favorite Saneer-Weeksbooth has generally shifted around a fair amount, but Lesley has never been near the top; it was always Ockham or Cato, with Sniper and Eureka coming in second, Lesley a distant third, and Sidney Koons (who apparently died???) and the Typer twins not appearing enough for me to get a read on them. But Lesley really shot up in my estimation in this book, not least because we weren't seeing her through Mycroft's distinctly misogynistic lens. (More on this below, btw.) But with Ockham in jail, Cato and Eureka god knows where, and Sniper Going Through Some Shit, Lesley really got a chance to shine. The summit between her, Danaë, and 9A was one of my favorite scenes in the book, not least because it shook up my perception of the entire Hive system and most of the major players therein at least five or six times. Like, what do you mean Martin and Xiaoliu are both biologically female (along with a ton of other people who Mycroft had decided are dudes)? What do you mean Danaë has transformed from Andō's helpmeet and hostess to Mariscala and/or Acting Chief Director? And whoa, I guess they really did defeat Madame's gendered bullshit without even trying, look at that! But it was a couple of lines of Lesley's that really cut me to the bone - “They’re hesitating.” Hiveguardian Lesley Saneer spoke, as grim as storm. “Your chosen dictator is hesitating about human extinction. I think you should all reconsider your choices.” and “I still say”—Lesley’s words were keen as steel—“you should rethink your choices if your leader thinks the deaths of one and five and five billion are identical." These both get right at the heart of why I would 100% be Hiveguard (aside from the fact that, y'know, Hives are a cool and uniquely successful form of government) - no matter how personally compassionate the One Enlightened Despot is, they still think in absolutes in a way that doesn't actually lead to good outcomes. Also, in-universe, there are good reasons why Actual Alien J.E.D.D. MASON is hesitating when asked if there will be humans in their brave new world, but if you're not one of the, like, six or seven people who actually know *why* they're hesitating, then asking that question, and having them pause to think it over, would be Very Concerning. And even then, they only really become functional when said six or seven people are there to run interference between J.E.D.D.'s world of absolutes and, y'know, reality. So I would be much more inclined to follow Lesley than J.E.D.D. anyway.
Speaking of Saneer-Weeksbooths! Cato, man. Cato holds a very special place in my heart. They've suffered so much, endured so much, and they never stop being a teacher and a healer at heart. Their last wish, and last action, was to become something that could save the world, and were subsequently gifted/cursed with a body full of miraculous futuristic tech and the mind of what a twelve-year-old raised on a steady diet of narrativium though a Mad Scientist should be. And even then, he never stops trying to heal the world's hurts. The first thing we see Cato-Helen do is heal/repair Achilles'/the Major's synthetic body and their CMOA (yes, I know that the year is no longer 2012, but I still have yet to find a better phrase than this to describe the phenomenon) is when Achilles/the Major fulfills the tragic arc of the Iliad and kills Hector/Bryar Kosala in revenge for the death of Patroclus/Cornel MASON... and then Cato-Helen promptly reverses it by bringing Hector/Bryar (who, I cannot emphasize enough, was really most sincerely dead) back to life through their magitek body. But perhaps the moment that got to me most of all was during one of The Most Oh Shit Chapters Of All Time when the space elevator that Cornel, Cato-Helen, and a Utopian who used to be one of Cato's CMSIJSS students are riding in starts to disintegrate, and said student, now a certified space wizard, is trying frantically to save one of the most important people on the planet (Cornel) and/or one of the most important people to them personally ("Doctor Weeksbooth!"). And Cato-Helen, who has replaced their beloved Doctor Weeksbooth but still remembers being them, is trying so hard to convince their former student not to give up their helmet, and that they (Cato-Helen) will be fine in space for a little while! And they just don't want any more people to die, especially not one of the kids they nurtured and launched into space! I, just, aaaaaaaahhhhhhh! Now *this*, ladies and gentlemen and sundries, is some masterclass writing. I don’t think we get confirmation whether or not the student survives, but I really, really hope so.
OK, I guess it's about time that I finally talk about The Real Most Oh Shit Chapter Of All Time - The Second Battle for the Almagest, or I Do Not Know How to Call ‘Friend’ One Who Does This. Ada Palmer has pulled off some really impressive technical feats in the past - from the very first chapter, when she brings an action sequence to a screeching halt for a brief digression on etymology before resuming, to the Worldbuilding Filibuster in 7S, to that sort of pinwheeling three-conversations-at-once bit from WtB, to the long stretches of near-perfect iambic pentameter throughout. But holy fucking shit I never expected anything like this - Mycroft recalling hearing time-delayed communications bursts from Utopia describing a battle that they were witnessing/involved in, culminating in J.E.D.D. threatening God into providing a (quasi-literal) Deus Ex Machina to save Utopia from utter annihilation. And I was *riveted* throughout - seriously, I don't think I've read such elegant, powerful prose since the destruction of Atlantis, and this had the added bonus of a framing device that really shouldn't work at all, let alone be as brilliant as it is. The litany of Utopian stations falling silent, Naismith and Le Guin Station and even Laputa having to be replaced by Xuánlóng, the sudden breaks in the action between Faustbursts, the escalating horror as every time you think things can't get worse they do (the Cousins put nukes on the space elevators! the Gordians fired them! but the Utopians had already weaponized space! Luna City is going to be destroyed! Luna City *and* the gateway to Mars *and* the Mars colony itself are going to be destroyed, along with Bridger's relics and almost every living Utopian!), and then that particular kind of catharsis that Ada Palmer is so good at, that seems to come out of nowhere until you realize how meticulously foreshadowed it was, where J.E.D.D. wins a staring contest with God and suddenly disaster is fortuitously averted by a hair's breadth.
This is one of the most jaw-dropping things about Ada Palmer, at least for me - the way she can hold such wildly disparate ideas in balance, and in tension, with each other. Like, this is a book that she's writing! She can have anything happen at any time, because she's the author and she says so! This idea of miraculous escapes and beyond-lucky rescues, in-universe deus ex machinas and last-minute twists of fate, should feel incredibly cheap and unsatisfying, reducing the stakes to zero. But instead, they raise the stakes and engender yet more questions - are these actual acts of G/god(s)? And if so, which one? J.E.D.D.'s Peer, this universe's monotheistic Creator? Or the Greek pantheon? Or is this an aftereffect of Bridger having existed and influenced the world as he did? Because I don't think for a second that Bridger would have allowed Utopia to truly be lost. (But then again, that raises the question, which Ada Palmer also grapples with, of why Bridger or God or J.E.D.D. or whoever would allow so much suffering and loss in the first place.) Or was it all just an incredibly lucky series of coincidences, with no supernatural explanations needed? Clearly the Alexander had always been there, and just happened to activate at that precise moment. ...Or was it?
My point is, Ada Palmer provides watertight arguments both for and against every one of the above positions. And she keeps doing this!!! Whether it's the argument of inpath vs. outpath, the existence of set-sets, the nature of J.E.D.D. and/or Bridger's existence, or Mycroft's own experiences, she does such a marvelous job of constructing a vast multitude of viewpoints, and an equally vast number of fully-realized people to hold these viewpoints. It's impressive as absolute shit - I don't think I've seen another author who's written like this, ever. Even her villains feel fully realized and internally consistent, and even the characters you love the most sometimes do things that are stupid, or despicable, or both. Like, I don't like the S-Ws as much as I do because I think they're right (they're not) or they're morally unassailable (they're definitely not); I just think they're smart, competent, interesting people who succeeded at what they set out to do. And this goes double for Mycroft! His crimes were definitely not the Standard Misunderstood Protagonist variety, where a) he didn't do it, b) if he did it, it was because somebody forced him to, and either way c) he feels super bad about it. He's not the Morally Correct Option; there *are* no Morally Correct Options (with the possible and partial exceptions of Spain, Martin, Papa, and Bridger). I like him because I've truly never read another character like him - brilliant but genuinely insane, a genius polymath whose hobbies include statistical analysis, improving life for his fellow Servicers, reading Homer and Victor Hugo to God, and erotic cannibalism, whose most basic sense perceptions can't be relied upon by either either the reader or himself, who doesn't even know how many people he is. He's an utterly fascinating person, capable of both immense compassion and immense cruelty, sometimes simultaneously, and Ada Palmer somehow manages to wrap this all up in one cohesive whole. I can be repulsed by his crimes and his misogyny, and yet I can cry honest-to-Bridger tears at his death.
Similarly, I wouldn't be European Hiveguard because those are the best, or most correct, factions; they would just be the options that most closely align with what's important to me, and what information I would have available in this verse. Ada Palmer's is a fully functioning world to match its fully functioning characters. When I've been
I've been trying to find a good place to talk about 9A, Mycroft's editor, protégé, and eventual successor on many fronts, and this seems as good a place as any. In another Ada Palmer's Galaxy Brain moments, this is one of those rare instances where the same author can write two different narrators in the same story, and have them genuinely sound like completely different people (even if people who work closely together and share some literary tastes), not just The Author In A Slightly Different Hat. 9A's friendly, slightly bewildered, definitely overwhelmed approachable-ness stands in such high contrast to Mycroft's breathless polysyllabic flights of fancy and/or madness. Like, as
hamsterwoman said, 9A is definitely the one you would rather grab a beer with, and not having to suss out whether Mycroft is a) hallucinating, b) lying on purpose, c) thinks he’s telling the truth but is biased to the point of (further) unreliability, d) technically telling the truth but eliding Certain Important Facts, or e) actually talking to dead people was certainly A Change. But, of course, as the novel goes on, 9A starts to sound more and more Mycroft-like. Which, at first, makes perfect sense in-universe - they clearly admire Mycroft a great deal, artistically as well as personally, and they've clearly picked up a thing or two from their time as Mycroft's editor. But also, as events get more, er, Homeric in scope, equally Homeric language is called for, so it makes sense that they would go from Mycroft would have made all this seem smaller. Or bigger. Both. They would have given this the smallness of warring ants, of pieces on a chessboard, puppets acting out a script, while the bigness lies in the Authors, Providence, the Great Conversation Mycroft believed in with such precious certainty. I don’t quite have that, to Sniper wasn’t alone. So many fans all over the world were wishing for sniper to be safe, so many people cared, and loved them, all those invisible wishes hovering around like friendly ghosts. Time and distance make us ghosts to one another even when we’re still alive and here, but while it makes us ghosts it doesn’t make us nothing. And then, of course, later on they start sounding a lot like Mycroft for very sad reasons. But even before that, there were some very neat technical feats wherein Mycroft and 9A would hand off narrative duties to one another, like the Battle of Romanova, and the different ways they described/experienced the same events were illustrative and/or alarming.I think the biggest change 9A brought was the chance to step back from Mycroft's deeply warped worldview, not just in terms of "no, the ghosts of Apollo Mojave and Thomas Hobbes are not yelling at you," but in terms of gender. 9A is certainly aware of the G7 brothel gender shenanigans, but doesn't seem to have them as deeply ingrained as Mycroft, so they do apply gendered pronouns to those who have expressed a strong preference (ex. Heloïse, Dominic), but almost everybody else gets the neutral "they." And, like, I certainly knew going in that a lot of Mycroft's gender bullshit was, well, bullshit (such as assigning she/her to Charlemagne Then-Still-Guildbreaker and he/him to Jin Im-Jin because the former is cuddly and nurturing and the latter is forceful and decisive, while making a point to mention that this doesn't align with their biological sex), but there were so many points where I hadn't realized that Mycroft had gotten me good and proper, and it took 9A's perspective to break me out of that. Like, with Heloïse and Danaë in particular, I had no idea how much I was discounting/dismissing them until 9A somewhat shamefacedly pointed out that they were doing it to. And then there was the summit between 9A, Danaë, and Lesley (“and not a dick among us”!) that I mentioned above, where we found out that so many characters that Mycroft had deemed masculine were in fact women, or at least biologically female - Martin *and* Xiaoliu At-That-Point-Still-Guildbreaker! Huang Enlai! Castel Natekari! And all this was even after the big Papa reveal in WtB. And then there are those who either genuinely do not give a shit (Eureka and Cato) or those who would mark Other/None of the Above (Carlyle, Dominic, Cookie, and Sniper), at least according to 9A.
Oh, Sniper! I meant to talk about Sniper earlier, when I was talking about other S-Ws, but I got distracted by Cato Emotions. I know everybody says this is the book where Sniper becomes their favorite, and idk if it's now my all-time favorite S-W (Ockham and Cato, man), but wow is it at the very least tied for my favorite for this book. In TLTL, I thought it was just sparkly and flighty and odd. In 7S, I had to sit with my discomfort over its living doll/noncon kink, and I was kind of annoyed with it at how tough it was being on poor Cato, although the circumstances at least partially justified its urgency. In WtB, it became clear that Something Is Wrong With Sniper, even after it escaped/was returned. I remember mulling over possible suspects at the time, and wondering who would be crazy enough to risk the whole world going up in flames by taking Sniper, or maybe that was their goal all along. I remember I posited Julia Again as a suspect, but I didn’t think it was her, since she was already Suspect #1. I also posited Madame, but discarded her as well, on the assumption that she just wouldn’t give Sniper back, since she clearly doesn’t give a single good goddamn about the world in general to begin with. Well, I was kind of right on both! It was Julia, and she certainly wasn’t planning on giving Sniper back - she had to be blackmailed into it by Caryle, of all people.
(Brief aside, this was where I felt that Carlyle really earned her Blacklaw sash and Cousin patch simultaneously - "I have evidence that you committed a heinous crime, and I could get you arrested and/or horribly killed for it, but instead I'm'a blackmail you into becoming a wonderful person and working very hard every day of your life for the common good otherwise I'm gonna leak the videos of your crime to a deeply unstable and violent man who will do unspeakable things to you, k? K! :)")
But, point is, Julia had Sniper all along. 9A’s discovery of the videos of Sniper’s confinement and torture, and their own similar experiences, were honestly hard to read, as bad as the Almagest or the destruction of Atlantis, or any of the other large- and small-scale calamities that Mycroft and 9A document. There was just something so grindingly horrific about Julia’s cheeriness, and Su-Hyeon’s false(?) solicitude. (Was it false? And would it make things better or worse if it was genuine?) I had no idea Sniper had such strength (like a lot of other people, I imagine), and seeing 9A drawing on that strength and repeating “Sniper made it through” for 54 days, until that ominous “no login” on the 55th day was one of Ada Palmer’s “HOW does she do this???” triumphs.
I really, really wish Sniper and 9A had had more time to talk and get to know each other, because the one conversation they had was on par with the 9A/Lesley/Danaë summit for “favorite standalone conversations” in the book. One of Ada Palmer’s phrases that I really like is “we both took off the brakes we use with everybody else” - it’s such a great way of encapsulating how freeing it is to be able to spend time with someone, whether platonic or romantic, who just gets you, who you don’t have to slow down or squinch yourself into a narrow little box for. 9A and Sniper clearly found this in each other, and I wish they had so much more time to explore how they’ve been changed by their experiences, which the other person is maybe the only one on the planet who can fully comprehend. And on top of that, it was just such a great meeting of the minds - 9A, the war’s chronicler (and, apparently, a huge Sniper fan even before *handwaves at everything*), and Sniper, one if its leaders. I feel like we got a closer look into Sniper’s psyche than we ever have before, even in the videos, which were…perhaps indicative of the core of its being, but certainly not of its day-to-day internal life, if you know what I mean. And, yes, Sniper is always performing, but I felt like what we got here was its friends-and-family performance, not its “ilu, fans ;) <3” performance - both of which are genuine, mind you! But there was just such a tantalizing glimpse of the great leader Sniper has become/will become, not just their sexy celebrity persona. Ooooh, I just now realized that Mycroft is always commenting on how provocatively and sexily Sniper poses/dresses/acts, even here with his It looks so like a photo shoot: a prison costume this time, sexy handcuffs and other restraints, a ‘bad boy’/‘bad girl’ series is it this time, prince of poses?. Since Mycroft has Gender Issues like whoa, I wonder if he gave Sniper male pronouns in his sections of the narrative so that he wouldn’t feel weird about being attracted to it. 9A, although they’re a Sniper fan, seem to admire Sniper more than they want to bang it - their conversation actually read more like the old days between 9A and Su-Hyeon, more friendly or quasi-ba’sib like (and remember, 9A’s original crime was murderous vengeance for their beloved dead original ba’sib); there didn’t seem to be much awareness of attraction or attractiveness on either side. I, just, aurgh, even after suffering so much, and after being on different sides of this horrible devastating war, they both found so much joy in meeting each other and connecting with a fellow Humanist who has endured the unendurable!
…and then 9A left the room, and Mycroft had arguably the most horrifying moment of his life (which is really saying something).
Other sundry things I noticed but don’t have much to say about, other than “lollll” or “awwww”:
- Of course the S-Ws took the baby on the commando raid! Gotta start ‘em out right, after all.
- 9A HELD ON JUST LONG ENOUGH TO SEE SNIPER, just like Boo held on just long enough to see Mycroft. T.T
- I somehow got the feeling that the Masons were fucking delighted to finally have the chance to form up in perfect ranks before the Hospital Director, and gave their Inviolate Oaths to guard the staff and patients with their lives, and that, until the Director releases them from this duty, though Caesar themself stood on the opposing shore commanding them to turn, they would drown their swords in their hivefellows’ blood rather than stir one inch from their appointed task. These guys were, like, sanitation engineers and accountants and office workers and whatnot a few weeks ago, and now they are balls-to-the-wall ready to die in defense of A Noble Cause.
- On a related note, Tumblr has decided that the Masons are all Evil Oppressive Fascists, while the Utopians are Incorruptible Pure Dreamers, and wow did someone miss the point. Like, the Masons were more than due for being called to account, and UN Secretary-General Dembélé did so magnificently, but how does the Hive that actually put weapons in space first, blew up universities and bio labs, and kidnapped scientists with the potential to create harbingers get a free pass??
- Although 9A’s “meeting” with Saladin is terribly tragic in hindsight, I did get a lol out of 9A’s immediate reaction being, more of less, “wait, don’t kill me! I never slept with Mycroft! I never even thought about it! Well, ok, I thought about it, but only in an eww-never-ever kind of way!”
- I still have so many questions about Apollo Mojave - why does Bridger look so much like them, and what does it mean that Bridger was apparently born at the exact moment of their death? If the whole Mojave bash(/constellation?) was involved with First Contact, what was Apollo doing hanging out with the Mardis? Was it just Seine, or was there Something Else? What exactly was their First Contact work, and how did it intersect with Bridger’s existence? I mean, it must have somehow, right???
- Thisbe literally Villain Monologued herself to death! She was one of the most unambiguously evil people in the book (hell, the whole series), but I still got a literal lol at “Jehovah Epicurus all-important fuss fuss Mason”. Also, the image of her and her gas-masked cronies stalking through red-lit halls and scaring the living shit out of everyone is extremely striking.
- Dominic’s fate was a weird mix of horrifying (what the actual fuck, Felix), and …heartwarming, almost? Like, he lost everything that made him who he was - his fierceness, his competence, his physical prowess, even much of his self-awareness, and yet he got the one thing he’s ever truly wanted - J.E.D.D.’s tears. There’s no part of this situation that’s not deeply, deeply fucked up, and yet it works. Somehow. Ada Palmer’s brain, man.
- I choose to believe that, sometime in the next 2-5 years, Julia dies an impeccably natural death, for which each and every one of the S-Ws has an equally impeccable alibi.
So, TL;DR: Ada Palmer sets herself a Utopia-level difficult task, and succeeds with Humanist-level flying colors. This was a glorious book, charming and readable and funny, and yet haunting and devastating too. This is the kind of scifi I don’t often see anymore, the kind that really stretches itself to ask some big questions about where we’re going and why, and what we’ll do when we get there, and then answers them, in multifarious ways. A lot from these books are really going to stay with me, I think - the whole Hive system and the Homeric parallels and Ada Palmer’s stunt writing for sure, but also Martin’s “weakness in the face of cauliflower,” and his and Papa’s detective routine. Him getting hit in the face with a Peacedove. The fall of Atlantis, and “Laputa silent.” “Hi. Bye. Sorry. Math.” “Not yet awake enough to achieve pants.” “we both took off the brakes we use with everybody else.” “Screw easy, let’s go to space!” Vivien renouncing Greylaw for Humanist. Spain stepping off the shuttle through the shattered window of the Parliamentary offices. Ockham surrendering with grace and dignity. Sniper and Dominic’s rooftop duel, and Sniper’s subsequent flight. Bridger and Carlyle discussing the afterlife in a trench full of wildflowers. Mycroft casually parkouring down two stories to rescue a couple of Utopians from a bunch of drunken Humanists. “This world is a utopia, not perfect, not finished, but still a utopia compared to every other era humanity has seen.” Kenzie Walkiewicz and their beacons and the Ten-Hour Servicer program. “The seeds have flown.” Holy shit, the seeds have flown. <3 <3 <3
