The acknowledgements of the final book in the series, Perhaps The Stars, implore us not to read it too soon. That we should take time to mull over the climax and bask in its glow. Then when you read the acknowledgements they too are audacious, a thematic continuation, a conclusion, an Acknowledgment. The reason I am writing strangely is that I am trapped inside the literary style of Ada Palmer and cannot escape until I finish this review.

Our modern moths have bounced so many times off lightbulbs, they aren’t prepared for torches, and forget that wings can burn.

The narrator of these books is unreliable. He will tell you so himself, repeatedly. He talks directly to you, and sometimes you talk back, and sometimes Thomas Hobbes is there as well, because why not. When I began this series I had not read anything about it (and if at this point my review has already convinced you, then go! Read it! Return afterward!) so I was expecting something resembling a normal sci-fi book. I came to realise over time (but slower than I should have) that the characters were not meant to be people. They were meant to be concepts, arguments, and philosophies. This is a book that wants you to think. The upside of being a concept rather than a human is that almost everyone is so very reasonable, world leaders and enemies collaborate for the greater good, no one breaks their oaths, and everyone is in service to a greater idea or symbol rather than selfishness or greed. Somehow, this doesn’t make the characters feel any less complex - in part, I think, because it is unclear whether this is really what the world is like, or if we are reading a stylised version of events presented by an insane narrator. 

Oh, miraculous chameleon, science, who can reverse your doctrine hourly and never shake our faith! What cult ever battered by this world of doubt can help but envy you?

The world of 2454 has modelled itself on the culture and language of the Age of Enlightenment (or was it just our narrator reflecting himself on the world?) and while you may end up desiring to brush up on your Hobbes and Voltaire, the core arguments are familiar to anyone. Why must we endure Death, Distance, and Time? Does God exist, and what would He answer to the trolley problem? Should we reach for the stars, or should we first mend our home planet? It’s a mercy that the thematic core is fairly grounded, because the incredibly strange setting  falls somewhere between allegory and nonsensical. The Freemasons have taken over a fifth of the world, declared all Masonic conspiracy theory to be true, and have now taken on the thematic trappings of the Roman Empire. A Gundam style mech turns up at one point for a deus ex machina (a character notes that it’s a deus ex machina!). There’s a nation of mind-reading psychologists and another one of space-faring dragon riders. Anything can and will happen, because God may or may not be real.

The protagonist of every work of fiction is Humanity, and the antagonist is God.

The character the series (eventually) centers around is J.E.D.D MASON, whose entire nature I would consider a spoiler. In some ways I relate to him, perhaps because one of his names is Mike, (although it is short for Micromegas rather than Michael) - but then, Tai-kun is canonically just a name rather than taikun, “Great Lord”, so similarly we must reference Michael, “Who Is Like God”? -, but perhaps because sometimes I too feel like an incomprehensible alien. As, perhaps, do you. He is the strangest part of the book, partly because he’s not actually that strange (in that I’m sure I could find a real person who is stranger) but everyone within the text acts like he’s an alien. 

War is the thesis that there is a special time when causing death is normal, legal, heroic, accepted, right; I Hate this thesis and I cannot call it justice.

Complaints about this book largely fall under moral or worldbuilding inconsistencies.  J.E.D.D MASON generally seems to lack agency, emotional maturity, and some types of abstract reasoning, yet the characters in the book believe he is perfect in every way. In the book’s core conflict of going to space vs investing in immortality, Palmer is clearly extremely in favour of the former. The prose presents the space-faring group called Utopia as being powerful, noble and fierce, while they consistently fail to articulate anything more convincing to justify their place as the Good Guys other than “go to space, ???, utopia” (to paraphrase). Each nation is often just as 2-dimensional and driven by thematic symbolism as the characters. In any other book this would be quite a concern. In this one it feels natural.

This series is for people who are interested in a sci-fi book doused in philosophy, theology, and a lot of weirdness.