Too Like the Lightning (Part 2 of 2) (Dramatized Adaptation)

Terra Ignota, Book 1

By: Ada Palmer

Narrated by: Chris Stinson, Holly Adams, Lise Bruneau, Lydia Kraniotis, Nazia Chaudhry, Rose Supan, Scott McCormick, Wyn Delano, Kay Eluvian, Gabriel Michael, Valentina Vinci

From the winner of the 2017 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Ada Palmer's 2017 Compton Crook Award-winning political science fiction, Too Like the Lightning, ventures into a human future of extraordinary originality.

Adapted and produced by GraphicAudio with a full cast of actors, immersive sound effects and cinematic music!

Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer - a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away.

The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labelling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world's population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competition is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life.

And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destabilize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life....

Performed by Chris Stinson, Kay Eluvian, Nazia Chaudhry, Valentina Vinci, Wyn Delano, Lydia Kraniotis, Gabriel Michael, Lise Bruneau, Rose Supan, Holly Adams, Scott McCormick, James Konicek, Nora Achrati, Jacob Yeh, Jenna Sharpe, Neha Gargava, Stephon Walker, Bradley Foster Smith, Ryan Carlo Dalusung, Nanette Savard, Alejandro Ruiz, Carolyn Kashner, Christopher Walker, Zeke Alton, David Cui Cui, Marni Penning, Elena Anderson, Brandon Burton, Darius Johnson, Chris Davenport, Robb Moreira, Bianca Bryan, Matthew Schleigh, Rick Rohan, Eric Messner, Melody Muze, Colleen Delany, Michael John Casey, and Ken Jackson.

©2017 Ada Palmer (P)2022 Graphic Audio LLC

A must to listen to this edition. This is dense and Graphic Audio makes this feel more organized.

Graphic Audio got me back into this series.

I remember trying to read this in the past and being completely overwhelmed by the amount of characters, factions and following along with plot conflicts overlapping. Oof. I couldn't keep up.

The GA version though made this so much easier to get a feel for what was going on. I absolutely loved the production and the creative liberties that were made to get the vibe down with some of these characters.

For example some very masculine voice actors would voice feminine characters. Confusing at first but it would get across the concept of gender it was trying to reflect that the narrator just labeled the gender themselves to try and make this make sense but had made assumptions on how we as a reader would attribute it all. Or very feminine voices for some of the masculine characters to represent caring men, again the unreliable narrator would make assumptions on how our labels are used. Some characters also distinctly had flvery androgynous voices that could go either way. Again, I found it a neat edition that some thought actually went into all that. Reading it was confusing but hearing it through a production like this just finally made sense to me.

The first half is dense with world building and took a few pauses and review of a wiki to put pieces together. The author does a terrific job drip feeding details for such a massive world but even at a drip feed speed it took a while to get the feel of things.

The later half of the book was great! Finally pieces were coming together to form the conspiracy storyline that was being built up that totally had me entranced wanting to see where things were headed.

Biggest disappointment was it ended very uncompleted. Like there was not even a attempt to make this feel like a book that could stand on its own. It felt like the next chapters were missing with how suddenly it drops off right when it was getting exciting.

Also this Is a very slow moving drama. Nothing moves fast consistently. Took some adjustment to get used to the pacing. The denseness of it all though really makes it unnoticed initially until you step back and realize how little has happened amongst all that world building.

Overall can't wait to get into the next. Obviously will have to stick with Graphic Audio for this. This is not an easy book I'd ever think I'd be able to comprehend reading. The distinct voices and production really helps make it all feel more organized.