Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract tonight.
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say “It lightens.”Juliet to Romeo, Act 2, scene 2
Last year, narfna reviewed Too Like the Lightning and requested that we all read it. I was intrigued, but the book wasn’t close enough to my price point of free. Fortunately, Tor.com offered it as a free download in March. I snapped it up.
Narfna summed up her initial reaction to the book as, “What the fuck.” I feel like I was suitably warned. Even so, what the fuck, indeed. It is dense. There are deeply imbedded references to history and philosophy. The narrator makes a huge effort to explain events clearly, but he is writing for a different audience than the author, so the clarifications add layers rather than strip them away. This book comes together like an intricate origami. I would think I knew what I didn’t know, and then I would realize that there are unknown unknowns. My poor brain hasn’t had to work this hard to follow a story in a couple of decades. I could not stop reading, but it was a slow read. I’m looking forward to getting ahold of the next book, even though I fear for the safety of several characters.
Too Like the Lightning is set on Earth a few hundred years in the future. Transportation and technology have made the world even smaller than it is now. The nation state has disappeared and people divide themselves into Hives, or are hiveless. The foundations of this civilization that grew up after religious wars destroyed so much are primarily the Enlightenment philosophers of the 18th century and future looking technologies.
The narrator is a Servicer – a convict who spends their life in service to the world, fed only upon completion of a task.
My many masters don’t always remember they must feed me, that their toil-earned handouts are the only sustenance permitted to we the unfree. But Danaë—this monster from a more barbaric time—always remembers the protocols of servitude.
With no Hive allegiance and a life of service ahead of him, our narrator, Mycroft, is positioned to flow from hive to hive. He serves many masters and is both as clear eyed a narrator as we could hope for, but also, unreliable in his own way.
The book ends at the moment when a few people have realized the world is on the precipice of disaster, but most people do not. I don’t want to say too much more. You should read this and you should know as little as possible. It’s one of the more interesting books I’ve read in a long time.
