Seven Surrenders, by Ada Palmer

Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


So I found Too Like the Lightning a hard slog through the first half of the book, but in the second half it picked up enough for me to actually enjoy it and give it 4 stars. I find all the dense language distracting--it might be fine for the 19th century but I don't think modern authors bring it off all that well. I never finished Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle for not being able to get past that writing.

But to the topic at hand. I just finished Seven Surrenders, and this time I can't forgive Ada Palmer. I worked my way through the first half of the book, remembering the reward in the second. And indeed there was a shift halfway through. This time, what do we get? A batch of big reveals, heavily and I guess intentionally theatrical, one after the other. It's all a grand conspiracy by the great families. Oh, and our earthly Gods too.

I don't know, I don't know. We are 300 years into a utopia that started 300 years past our current time. Flying car networks managed by humans? Seems like that would have been necessary 500 years in the past of this book, but not in its current context. But mostly it's just never been very clear to me how we get from where we are to the society this book depicts. And if we're not meant to need that, then what makes us care about these people? These over-the-top caricatures?

It seems like a lot of folks are really looking for this sort of thing, and loving it. If you like your writing dense and florid, this may work better for you. For me, two weeks was way too long to spend for this payoff.



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