Seven Surrenders - (Terra Ignota) by Ada Palmer (Paperback)

About the Book

"It is a world in which near-instantaneous travel from continent to continent is free to all. In which automation now provides for everybody's basic needs. In which nobody living can remember an actual war. In which it is illegal for three or more people to gather for the practice of religion--but ecumenical "sensayers" minister in private, one-on-one. In which gendered language is archaic, and to dress as strongly male or female is, if not exactly illegal, deeply taboo. In which nationality is a fading memory, and most people identify instead with their choice of the seven global Hives, distinguished from one another by their different approaches to the big questions of life. And it is a world in which, unknown to most, the entire social order is teetering on the edge of collapse. Because even in utopia, humans will conspire. And also because something new has arisen: Bridger, the child who can bring inanimate objects to conscious life"--

Book Synopsis

*2018 LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL CATEGORY*

From 2017 John W. Campbell Award winner, Ada Palmer, the second book of Terra Ignota, a political science fiction epic of extraordinary audacity

"A cornucopia of dazzling, sharp ideas set in rich, wry prose that rewards rumination with layers of delight. Provocative, erudite, inventive, resplendent." --Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings

In a future of near-instantaneous global travel, of abundant provision for the needs of all, a future in which no one living can remember an actual war...a long era of stability threatens to come to an abrupt end.

For known only to a few, the leaders of the great Hives, nations without fixed locations, have long conspired to keep the world stable, at the cost of just a little blood. A few secret murders, mathematically planned. So that no faction can ever dominate, and the balance holds. And yet the balance is beginning to give way.

Mycroft Canner, convict, sentenced to wander the globe in service to all, knows more about this conspiracy than he can ever admit. Carlyle Foster, counselor, sensayer, has secrets as well, and they burden Carlyle beyond description. And both Mycroft and Carlyle are privy to the greatest secret of all: Bridger, the child who can bring inanimate objects to life.

Shot through with astonishing invention, Ada Palmer's Seven Surrenders is the next movement in one of the great science fiction epics of our time.

"Seven Surrenders veers expertly between love, murder, mayhem, parenthood, theology, and high politics. I haven't had this much fun with a book in a long time." --Max Gladstone, author of Three Parts Dead

Terra Ignota
1. Too Like the Lightning
2. Seven Surrenders
3. The Will to Battle
4. Perhaps the Stars

Review Quotes

Praise for Book 2 of Terra Ignota, Seven Surrenders

"A breathless and devious intellectual page-turner, Seven Surrenders veers expertly between love, murder, mayhem, parenthood, theology, and high politics. I haven't had this much fun with a book in a long time." --Max Gladstone

"Wonderful 18th-century style narrative voice....a richly and highly sophisticated novel that calls for repeated re-readings." --SFRevu

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

"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

Praise for Book 3 of Terra Ignota, The Will to Battle

"It is increasingly clear that we are in the hands of a new master of the genre....There's a resonance and richness to the Terra Ignota series that is like almost nothing else being written today." --RT Book Reviews, 5 stars

"Innovative, mesmerizing and full of fun. Ada Palmer lets her imagination weave a truly great political science story in an imagined world - full of lessons from real-world history." --Washington Book Review

"One appreciates the wry humor and the ingenious depth of her worldbuilding. The interplay between reader and narrator is especially enjoyable." --Publishers Weekly

"Any reader who has ever thrilled to the intricate machinations of the Dune books, or the Instrumentality tales of Cordwainer Smith, or the sensual, tactile, lived-in futures of Delany or M. John Harrison... will enjoy the mental and emotional workout offered by Palmer's challenging Terra Ignota cycle." --Locus

"This series is one the best things that has happened to science fiction in the 21st Century and I can't hardly wait to see where Ada Palmer is going to take us with Perhaps the Stars." --SffWorld

Praise for Book 1 of Terra Ignota, Too Like the Lightning

"Bold, furiously inventive, and mesmerizing...It's the best science fiction novel I've read in a long while." --Robert Charles Wilson

"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

"Astonishingly dense, accomplished and well-realized, with a future that feels real in both its strangeness and its familiarity."--RT Book Reviews (Top Pick)

"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

"Excellent." --Craig Newmark

"Devastatingly accomplished...An arch and playful narrative that combines the conscious irreverence of the best of 18th-century philosophy with the high-octane heat of an epic science fiction thriller." --Liz Bourke

"Palmer proves that the boundaries of science fiction can be pushed and the history and the future can be married together." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

ADA PALMER is the author of the Terra Ignota series, including The Will to Battle. She 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 music, 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.