ybooks

Books

Too Like the Lightning

Ada Palmer

2 people have this book on the record — 1 of 2 verdicts positive. The dissent stays on the page.

The bar next to each date shows how long ago it was said: 6d is days, 4yr is years.

Jacob Falkovich mixed on it
This preamble is very pertinent to Lightning. The best facets of the novel are really good, and the worst parts are really bad.

on putanumonit.com · 21 Apr 2017

Cosma Rohilla Shalizi liked it affiliate
This is a deeply impressive effort to take seriously the line that "history is the trade secret of science fiction". That is, Palmer has tried to craft a 25th century which is as strange, as familiar, and as both-at-once-because-that's-not-what-we-meant, as our own time would have seemed to someone from the 17th century.

on bactra.org · 31 May 2016

Find it on Open Library →  ·  This book on rcmnd →

That little bar

It says how long ago something was said, so you can tell last month from 2014 without doing the arithmetic. Full and green is recent; it drains and cools as the date gets older, and empties completely at about 6 years.

A striped bar means the date itself is an estimate — the source did not carry an exact one. An entry with no date at all gets no bar.