2021/122: Perhaps the Stars -- Ada Palmer

...before I've sweated out my term as oarsman on Apollo's flagship, I must lead Utopia to some new world untouched by Distance, where the very oars and sails we use to battle grim Poseidon are undreamed. [loc. 12074]

The long-awaited (and long) finale of the Terra Ignota series. (Too Like the Lightning, Seven Surrenders, The Will to Battle.) I will not attempt to summarise the tetralogy here, except to note that it's set in a 25th century that thinks it's small-u utopian but has elements of dystopia. There are gods (some more Present than others) and monsters (oh, Mycroft), a World War and an ideological war conducted simultaneously, a villain in an underground lair (hmm, more than one of those), reversals and twists, blurred identities, mythic resonances, metamorphoses and miracles, space elevators, and -- regrettably -- spreadsheets, which have not yet gone extinct.

The war subtracts two of the key technologies that society relies on: the car system, which had made it possible for individuals to live and work anywhere in the world with at most a two-hour commute, and the tracker system, which connected (and monitored) everybody. Chaos, in the form of riot and prejudice, ensues, and old alignments and alliances shift and change: the calming influences aren't necessarily those one might expect. The twin toxicities of gender and religion are further explored, and some of the limitations of the various approaches to both acknowledged. The existence and treatment of Servicers is also addressed, and by the end of the novel there are credible expectations of a better world. Or worlds.

Not all endings are happy, but happiness is not necessarily the point.

There were some conclusions that weren't wholly satisfying (Madame, reminiscent of Lady Macbeth; Thisbe; Ráðsviðr), and some developments -- those relating to the narrative voices, and the various Readers who interrupt and interrogate the primary narrative -- which felt slightly rushed: but the latter might simply be because I raced through the novel and missed foreshadowing. Conversely, it was cheering to spot a resonance or reference before it was made explicit. There's a lot of the Iliad here, as well as its in-universe sci-fi reimagining by Apollo Mojave (which was read and reimagined, in turn, by an impressionable adolescent). Apollo never, thankfully, got as far as the Odyssey, which is mirrored in Mycroft's tale. I cheered when Helen was revealed, and teared up at Odysseus' dog.

...Perhaps the Stars is a densely-written, complex, philosophical novel which I suspect I'll be assimilating for some time. It doesn't answer all the questions I hoped it would: it doesn't neatly tie off all the threads. But it is profound and provocative, tragic and triumphant and, literally, marvellous.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this honest and unbiased review which I'm posting out of sequence for publication day!