Perhaps the Stars
2021 • 586 pages

Ratings15

Average rating4.3

15

Let's do this then, shall we?

Terra Ignota is a full meal, a book series that excites the senses of every reader who is passionate about the Craft of Writing, History, Philosophy, Poetry, and everything in between.

Watch as Mycroft, our Richard III, charms the reader with his soliloquies under the guide of future hatred. They warn us, beloved reader, that any empathy we may feel for this object of our affection will soon fade as the reality of his actions reveal itself in gore and anger. This same Shakespearean protagonist that will confide in us his insecurities and their life of servitude. Watch him as he plays with God, as he lifts the curtain on a most curious conspiracy that would delight all and any who distrust the powers that be, whichever epoque they may inhabit.

Watch Voltaire exulted and Dumas avenged. Send us Aramis and make her dance into our home, afraid. Watch the marble-infused Masons and the mothers of the world, regardless of gender. Watch the cyborgs. Are they cyborgs? Watch the lust of the clerics and the androgyny of beauty. Watch Diderot paint and Rousseau negotiate a treaty, and show us how the land starved devour all.

Watch as we witness the corruption of Utopia, as we are lead to support murder for the sake of the common good. Watch as we are complicit on torture, and blood, and cannibalism. And watch as marvel at the foundations of Olympia, cemented in corruption and sex, and political games too gruesome to conceptualise without being present. Watch us witness this second Enlightenment, on the shoulders of the original, the great Renaissance, where our Giants transform and adapt to the realities of the Future.

And then Watch it all fall apart.

Watch Mycroft, our Odysseus, reenact the stage and map of this new Iliad and this new Odyssey. Watch Bester's influence in a World War that reminds us there is no glory in nations, only in Men, and only just. Watch us fail Mankind, and the Stars. See us at Mankind's best and worst. Here is a Weapon of Mass Destruction! Watch us hate with sufficient vigour to demand its use, annihilate all who oppose us.

Oh, wait, we were wrong.

War. War never changes.
It hasn't changed since Sun Tsu.
It hasn't changed since Hobbes (oh, Hi Monster of Malmesbury!)

And meet God.

Fucking Hell.
This is awesome.

December 3, 2022Report this review