just another guy looking for hot takes / opinions on this very interesting book! i haven't read the sequels yet and don't care about spoilers, so happy to take insight from those who have read the whole series.
i feel like because of Mycroft's POV it's like super hard to get a sense of what daily life is like for the average person because nobody he hangs with is average. and i feel like without that daily life / normal person perspective it's really hard to get any texture to the "gender taboo" and the different Hive politics that they proclaim differentiate them. which i'm not saying is intrinsically a problem, but i definitely struggled with it personally.
i think cause we only get Mycroft's wackadoodle perspective where he hyperfixates on people's nations, genders etc., i don't think we meet anyone who convincingly behaves like they were truly were raised under conditions where religion and gender and nation no longer exist. this made it hard for me to buy in to the world as stated, i think. there might be an intentional critique here, foucault-style, of how repression only further engenders fascination, even fetishism (see Madame's gender parlor). I felt like this book presented people with ascetic, bloodless ascriptions to ideology, but without culture and subculture to color it in, actual gender abolition or creation, actual culture to replace what is abolished ... for ex. people wear all these fashion signifiers of their interests in fencing or certain political projects, but it feels like a very individualistic act; about being a fencer, not being part of a specific idk, fencing organization or community outside of the Hives? Palmer does an excellent job creating this isolating, alien sense of libertarian 'every man for himself and their own ideals/religions/interests in relation to themselves, the social manufacture of culture and ideas doesn't exist' qualia that leaves the characters seeming very devoid of textured believable humanity. i just can't tell if she's doing that on purpose?
on the political structures side, i don't feel like it seems to matter that there is a corpocracy and a monarchy in this world wrt to who chooses to join which HIves why, or if this book is tryna tease out anything about how society *should* be organized. it doesn't seem ideologically the heads of any of the Hives particularly care or represent their own Hive's beliefs. the larger takeaway is a really cool critique of the utopian (or perhaps just consumer capitalist!) ideal of "free choice" in this way i suppose. the reveal at the end is it doesn't matter if you're Mitsubishi or Humanist; your leaders are all incestuously in bed with one another (literally) and perhaps don't care about you or your beliefs at all. at the end its about material power, not ideas or freedom; and the power has been collected at the top.
anyway please be nice to me and tia for any thoughts <3
(ps a lot of this post is just cribbed from my goodreads "review" of this book which is even longer than this post, but for the interested: here it is)
Hi, I’ve read the series twice and have gotten to talk to Palmer about it at length in person. Still, what I say it my interpretation.
Some of what you’re saying is right, some I think is a misreading, though it’s hard to pull apart. Here’s how I would explain it to someone: In Terra Ignota, Palmer tries to imagine a future that resolves some of the fundamental problems of politics. It’s so pluralist that you can have any political ideology and live consistently within that ideology. It’s a wild fantasy, a world where people understand their own political beliefs and live mostly consistently with them.
But as you note, she’s interested in the way in which that might fail too. We’re seeing a cataclysmic break in this society, not its zenith. She is exploring the inescapable tendencies toward any system being captured or manipulated given enough time and motivations. And yes, she’s skeptical that there is any such thing as banishing religion or gender.
It’s a bit unclear how ideologically rigorous the population in general is, but Mycroft has specific purposes that he’s recording the narrative for, and it wouldn’t serve his purposes to follow ordinary people, it would likely not tease out the ideas he wants to express or respond to their moment sufficiently. All of this continues to be clarified right up to the end of the series.
All to say, it’s an odd mixture of ideas that she actually likes and criticisms of some of those ideas.
It’s interesting that she picks a philosopher to focus on for each book. I’m doing a re-read of the series and am on the one with Hobbes right now. The topic isn’t gender in this one, it’s war. It’s easier if you treat the characters as concepts and each book as a series of reflections on philosophy removed from the lens of our present time than like depictions of real people and a plot with sides to cheer for and a narrative arc. She badly wants you to read the authors she discusses: Arthur Conan Doyle, Voltaire, de Sade, Hobbes, Homer, etc.
The further books give you more slice of life, or at least explain how the hives work.
It was criticized for some of its predictions but the scandal is now prescient in regards to US and global politics.
I listened to it and I couldn't take in what was happening. I plan to go back and read it as I've heard nothing but good things
I finished the series last week — so many great ideas that got bogged down or maybe pushed out of the narrative to make room for her to gush about philosophies. I really did love the series and the way the writing tickled my brain, but the payoff might not be what most readers want. I could have dealt with more back room orgy intrigue with all the world leaders than 200 jarring interjections to Thomas Hobbes.
Unrelated to the topic at hand; has anyone seen a box set of Terra Ignota available?