Perhaps the Stars

By Ada Palmer

The final instalment in Ada Palmer's award-winning, critically acclaimed Terra Ignota series.

For years, the leaders of the Hive clandestinely committed terrible deeds in order to maintain an outward semblance of utopian stability. But the facade could last only so long. Global travel and worldwide abundance may have tempered humanity's darkest inclinations, but conflict remains deeply rooted in the human psyche. A catalyst – in the form of a special little boy – was all it took to ignite half a millennium of repressed chaos.

Now war spreads across the globe, splintering old alliances and awakening sleeping enmities. All transportation systems are in danger, fracturing a long-united world and threatening to obliterate everything the Hive system built.

With Mycroft Canner nowhere to be found, his successor must attempt to restore order in a world spiralling ever closer to irreparable ruin. But is the key to salvation to remain Earth-bound or, perhaps, to aim for the stars?

'Incredibly ambitious and groundbreaking... Palmer writes gloriously lush prose stuffed with asides, allusions and nods to the reader' Guardian

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Oct 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781786699596

Ada Palmer

Ada Palmer (she/her) 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 was her debut fiction book.

Reviews for Perhaps the Stars

[dcunning11235 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

What a train wreck. Why did I finish this entire series?

[quondame · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As readable and engaging as this book is, it is still way longer than its content requires unless the energetic passionate invention of the author's voice through seemingly endless elaborations is necessary to your fulfillment. The base internal realities of a caring outsider and the worthiness of some humans for the stars, well, they aren't the sells for me that Palmer seems to expect and the length at which they are advanced diluted what I found worth reading.