Seven Surrenders
The second book of Terra Ignota, a political SF epic of extraordinary audacity
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.
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Ada Palmer
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 capella music, most of which she performs with the group Sassafrass. Her personal site is at adapalmer.com, and she writes about history for a popular audience at exurbe.com and about SF and fantasy-related matters at Tor.com.
Terra Ignota
John W. Campbell and Compton Crook award-winning author Ada Palmer presents a political science fiction epic of extraordinary audacity in the Terra Ignota series.
In a utopian future, the leaders of the great Hives, nations without fixed locations, have kept 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. Mycroft Canner and Carlyle Foster are aware of this conspiracy - as well as the secret that could end it: Bridger, the child who can bring inanimate objects to life.
Terra Ignota consists of four books — considered a complete series. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
