Perhaps the Stars - (Terra Ignota) by Ada Palmer (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From the 2017 John W. Campbell Award Winner for Best Writer, Ada Palmer's Perhaps the Stars is the final book of the Hugo Award-shortlisted Terra Ignota series.

World Peace turns into global civil war.

In the future, the leaders of Hive nations--nations without fixed location--clandestinely committed nefarious deeds in order to maintain an outward semblance of utopian stability. But the facade could only last so long. The comforts of effortless global travel and worldwide abundance may have tempered humanity's darkest inclinations, but conflict remains deeply rooted in the human psyche. All it needed was a catalyst, in form of special little boy to ignite half a millennium of repressed chaos.

Now, war spreads throughout the globe, splintering old alliances and awakening sleeping enmities. All transportation systems are in ruins, causing the tyranny of distance to fracture a long-united Earth and threaten to obliterate everything the Hive system built.

With the arch-criminal Mycroft nowhere to be found, his successor, Ninth Anonymous, must not only chronicle the discord of war, but attempt to restore order in a world spiraling closer to irreparable ruin.

The fate of a broken society hangs in the balance. Is the key to salvation to remain Earth-bound or, perhaps, to start anew throughout the far reaches of the stars?

Review Quotes

"The eloquence of Palmer's reflections on social issues cannot be denied." --Library Journal, starred review, on Seven Surrenders

"Palmer crafts one of the most compelling narrative voices around in describing this impossible, fascinating and plausibly contradictory world." --RT Book Reviews, 4-1/2 stars, on Seven Surrenders

"More intricate, more plausible, more significant than any debut I can recall...If you read a debut novel this year, make it Too Like the Lightning." --Cory Doctorow

"The Terra Ignota books are is the kind of science fiction that makes me excited all over again about what science fiction can do." --Jo Walton on Too Like the Lightning

About the Author

Ada Palmer is a professor in the history department of the University of Chicago, specializing in Renaissance history and the history of ideas. Her first nonfiction book, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, was published in 2014 by Harvard University Press. She is also a composer of folk and Renaissance-tinged a cappella vocal music on historical themes, most of which she performs with the group Sassafrass. She writes about history for a popular audience at exurbe.com and about SF and fantasy-related matters at Tor.com. Too Like the Lightning is her debut fiction book.