Ada Palmer’s fiction gets a lot of attention for its voice and ideas, but I think her greatest strength is actually characterization. The Will to Battle features a large ensemble cast and somehow manages to give all the characters devastating and/or moving moments. Structure-wise it’s a bit off (suddenly a lot of things happen in the last quarter that are not resolved) and the engagement with Hobbes simply doesn’t work, but what do I care when I can wallow in characterization?

Furthermore (and this extends the comparison with Hugo I made in my review of Seven Surrenders), her characters, while all in conflict with one another, are mostly of an elevated, well, character. The few base ones stick out, and undoubtedly have a role to play as the true villains of the story (though I wish Perry/Kraye would just GO AWAY ALREADY, he’s no fun to read about). This is made explicit when Mycroft, the narrator (more passive than usual in this book) confronts Thisbe, the woman with whom he raised Bridger. There’s no love lost between them, however, and Mycroft says of her family members, “…Sniper’s a noble creature, and Propero’s a noble creature. They’re all noble creatures, Thisbe, except you, you’re a….You’re a tick…..A tick, and you feed, and you bloat, and you crawl, and you think it makes you something poetic and exciting, like a vampire, and you’re so wrong.”

They’re all murderers, Mycroft, Prospero, Sniper, and Thisbe, so the difference isn’t in their deeds but in their–there’s the word again–character, their position on the scale of nobility to baseness. Their motives, and their acceptance of consequences. It reminds me, as I said, of Victor Hugo’s novels, where one must never confuse a Javert with a Thenardier, however much they’re both antagonists.

Aside from all that, there’s also some great humor in this book. Achilles, or a version of him, features in this book, and one of the characters has an obvious crush on him. Thus the following bon mot: “‘I know my sister broke your heart, and a rebound is natural, but Achilles? Really? There is such a thing as asking for it!’ Death in the guise of MASON blushed.”

I don’t know that this review will convince anyone to read the book–at this point in the series, either you’re thoroughly enjoying yourself or you’re off the hype train. There’s only one book left to go, and I hope it resolves some of the mysteries of this one. Moreover, I can’t wait to read it and immerse myself once more in the world of these fascinating people.

How long ago Too Like the Lightning seems. How much I loved that book, how much I wanted to get stuck right into the story. How little I trusted Mycroft Canner to tell an impartial story, how much I trusted Ada Palmer to stick a landing. How completely caught up I was into the world-building, how diverse and interesting everything felt. How much The Will to Battle disappointed me.

After the explosive events and reveals of Seven Surrenders , I was absolutely ready to jump straight into the next book. I spoke in my last review that I wasn't sure how the final book would fit in, but it transpires that The Will to Battle and Perhaps the Stars are a duology, to mirror the first two books. In a way, this definitely explains the absolute cliffhanger of an ending (even if the reveal that Mycroft isn't actually dead seriously ruins it and I see absolutely no reason for it) but it doesn't excuse the massive bloat that comes before. I almost feel like Palmer is going to excruciatingly great lengths to make sure we hate all the characters that she spent two books bigging up for us: Mycroft is now nearly unbearable on the page, Dominic's every scene is basically a cringefest of slavish devotion, Madame should have never made it out of Seven Surrenders alive, JEDD is now basically so insufferable that it's a miracle I didn't throw my Kindle across the room and this is without even touching on the Hive leaders.

It's clear that Palmer knows her Philosophy and History, that they're her strong points and she enjoys displaying that knowledge. But where the fourth wall between the reader and Mycroft was broken rarely and to great effect in the first two books, now the interruptions are just that: interruptions. Having the Reader, Mycroft and Thomas Hobbes debate the events of the book not only takes you straight out of the narrative, but it also completely turns into another opportunity to Palmer to flex her knowledge, often to deleterious effects (look, I get it, you're genuinely clever, you know what you're doing, but we knew this beforehand! We're on book 3, we don't need you to continue flexing your extensive knowledge). This also happens in large set pieces, where one character (usually, but not always JEDD), bloviates on a given topic for several pages: the Senate for example feels like it could have been cut by a good editor and not much would have been lost.

And this is the main detraction: for a book about Hives preparing for war, it doesn't feel like much actually happens. Instead we have scenes that don't really connect to each other, all suffused with opportunities for characters to give rousing speeches but... without any actual connection to the plot. The impressive world Palmer spent time building up throughout Too Like the Lightning, the interesting connections and ethical quandaries of Seven Surrenders, all fall to the wayside so instead we have cardboard cutouts recite their lines and then disappear off stage until they're next needed. We should also talk about JEDD: does seriously no one else question that he is 100% Madame's creature and not some actual "God"? Why does everyone just accept this as truth? I don't just mean the Hive leaders here (clearly their ability to "subvert the subverted gender roles" or whatever is enough of a draw for them to just go with her plan), I mean the regular people in Hives or otherwise. Everyone just buys the line of JEDD as God as if it's well, gospel. So either Mycroft is lying or everyone in Palmer's world has taken stupid pills between the second and third books and decided to just completely buy in to everything. My own hunch is that JEDD is not a God, far from it: that like Danae and Ganymede he is a creature of Madame's making and that no matter what, he will be exposed for a fraud.

Which leads me neatly to Bridger. The events at the end of Seven Surrenders were almost magical in appearance and the existence of Achilles in The Will to Battle does lend credence to it. Unlike others, I'm not really convinced as to whether Bridger's 'powers' were real or not. There is a part of me that seriously feels that the existence of actual magic or even a real God will cheapen the entire experience and I have a feeling that there won't really be any explanation for this. I hope I am wrong, because it feels like Palmer doesn't want to provide all the answers, but equally I don't feel that she's really dropping hints here and there and if Mycroft is the only person to actually provide the narrative, then really I'm not expected to actually believe him, am I? I really hope Perhaps the Stars actually ties up all the narrative threads and gives a satisfying conclusion, but the way this book played out doesn't give me much hope.

We should also talk about the women of Palmer's world. For something that wants to subvert gender so much (and okay, the use of pronouns does help with a bit of that, especially when they clearly don't match physical representations of the characters), the three women who embrace, for lack of a better world, their femininity, are all pretty much one-dimensional and evil: Julia, Thisbe and Madame all rely on "female wiles" to get their way, in a way that cheapens what Palmer comes across as wanting to portray. It's boring. It's unoriginal. It's not even trying to subvert a "femme fatale" archetype, it's leaning into it to the point where most of them become interchangeable. It feels like there was some intent here, but it hasn't really played out quite the way that Palmer intended. It should also be said that in all the scenes where one character or another spends page upon page expounding on some philosophical dilemma, it's the male (or male coded) characters who speak. Madame flounces about or faints, Thisbe is all but absent except for two scenes and Julia is a non-entity.

Finally, for how much it gets hyped up and how much hinges on it, the trial of Ockham is a complete and utter disappointment. Over in practically a chapter, with basically not much said about it. Which I feel quintessentially sums up The Will to Battle. There is a part of me that isn't sure about whether I'll continue with the series. On the one hand, there is just the final book left but on the other hand if it's anything like this one, I will probably DNF it well before the end. I'm sorry Ada Palmer, but a good 10% doesn't make up for the rest of the 90% being that... pointless.

Ada Palmer is a goddess. The things she does with this world are outstanding. The third book is every bit as enjoyable as the first two.

Surprised at how well this book was written. After the amazing first two books I didn't know if this book would come through with my expectations but it sure did.

Felt a bit slow occasionally. And sometimes I lost touch with what was happening but besides that, it was great.

Looking forward to the next books in the series.

Provocative, political, philosophical and almost too clever for its own good, The Will to Battle is the third installment in Ada Palmer’s ambitious Terra Ignota quartet and, as a fan of this series from the beginning, I wasn’t disappointed at all.

I won’t detail the plot too much because, at this point in the series, it’s so complicated that I would probably do a poor job. However, I will just disclose what the title already tells you about the book. This book is not about the battle but the will to battle: what precedes the battle and the calm before the storm. It is about the making of a war , it’s about preventing humanity from destroying itself, it’s also about the stars and the future of humanity beyond Earth. It’s about the ending of what was considered the perfect society.

I feel like this series represents what speculative fiction does the best: make us rethink our vision of the world. This series is based on a very simple question: how would the world be if you could make a world tour in a few hours? You could live in Tokyo, work in New York and visit your friends in Russia in a day. In this world, borders wouldn’t mean anything and countries would be rendered obsolete. How the world would end up looking like if you could choose your government and your laws not just thanks to your geographical location but simply with your true political beliefs?

In this utopian world where people have a complete choice of their leadership and values, live in peace and have access to universal education, healthcare and a world without crimes, what could draw you to war?

This book explores this issue while discussing the consequences of such a war on the future of humanity. Indeed, at this point in time and with the technology available, this war could be the end of humanity. The Will to Battle is about leaders doing their best to prevent things from getting too ugly and too deadly while dealing with the issues that lead to the conflict. This idea of a war solely based on ideas and not geographical location is fascinating because, since borders don’t exist anymore, who are you supposed to fight against or with?

As usual with Palmer’s work, this book features a ton of philosophical ideas and, as the war approaches, the philosophers mentionned become less and less idealistic, the first book heavily featured Voltaire, this one is much more focused on Hobbes.

This book is also very much focused on politics and laws. It features a couple chapters solely based on laws that I personally found very interesting but I can understand why a few readers didn’t find them as compelling as I did since those passages were quite long and detailed. Some might find them too info-dumpy but I really liked how knowing about the law in this world allowed me to understand how it all worked.

The Will to Battle took me just over a month to read and that’s not because I found it bad, on the contrary, I never wanted it to end. I just wanted to stay in this fascinating world and see how the events would unfold. The evolution of the events in this series are mindblowing and I am just amazed by the sheer scope of the story. I cannot wait to see how Palmer is going to end this quartet. This series was an achievement from book one and it keeps on getting better. I feel like Palmer is pushing the boundaries of science fiction and what it can do.

This book was great discussion starter, I had a lot of very interesting discussiions with reader and non-reader friends alike and that’s the best thing I could ever ask from a book. Sure this series is not for everyone, the books are complex and quite dense, it is political, philosophical and very odd but I love it. I want the next book, Perhaps the Stars, in my hands now. And I mean with a name like that, I know I’m not going to be disappointed…



Highly recommended.

So here's the synopsis so far: In the 25th century, geographic nation-states have been mostly replaced by the Hive System. Hives are non-geographic nations with their own legal systems, cultures, and voluntary membership, and their members live anywhere in the world. The series relates the events that lead to the first war in three hundred years, which is also the first war that the Hive System has faced.

In the first two books, Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders, the narrator, Mycroft Canner, relates the events of seven days that begin the breakdown. These books introduce Bridger, a mysterious boy who can bring objects to life, and JEDD Mason, the biological and adopted child of many Hive leaders, who is actually a visiting God from another world.

The big revelation from the first two books is that the Hives have been kept in balance by a secret organization, called O.S., that murders people by rigging the global transit system. At the end of Seven Surrenders, JEDD is publicly assassinated by one of Sniper's dolls (and Sniper is now head of O.S.), but then JEDD is resurrected by Bridger. Bridger then ends himself and at the same time, using his body, he resurrects Achilles, the soldier of legend who will teach the world how to wage war again.

The Will to Battle covers the fallout from the disclosure of O.S. The world is shocked to its core to realize that the Hive System was not a perfect system working on its own - it was held in balance with systematic murder that targeted some Hives over others.

This destroys the careers of many of the Hive leaders who knew about and used O.S. Most of the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash' are also in prison, on trial, or on the run, because most of them are the O.S. People are scrambling to save face and keep the system from completely imploding. Understudies are forced into the spotlight to take over. There's talk of entire Hives being disbanded, or their governments being rewritten from the ground up.

And then there's the brewing panic that JEDD will achieve control of all the Hives because he is the child, adopted child, heir, or named successor to most of the seven Hive leaders. JEDD, in his almost impenetrable thinking patterns, refuses to announce that he will not pursue leadership of the Hives, and instead declares war on everyone and demands their unconditional surrender. WTF, JEDD!

And no one knows which of the many events will trigger the war that they all feel is coming. Leaders are trying to delay the start of the war, during the Summer Olympics, to buy time so that Hives like the Cousins can prepare by building hospitals and stockpiling food.

And in their preparations, let's not forget Achilles: the man from history and myth and a small boy's bedtime stories. The human race has forgotten how to wage war, and Achilles is here to teach them how to do it. Except, as he says, he doesn't necessarily win wars: but he does die in them.

I think this book was a lot different from the previous ones because it really shows the government working. Long portions of the book take place in the Senate as representatives of the Hives hash out laws and vote on issues. The fact that lots of this book is lawmaking, policymaking, and other legal wrangling felt very different from the first two books, which featured more investigations into questions and the revelations about Bridger and JEDD.

The other thing I noticed in The Will to Battle is that Mycroft is ... unstable. Some of his breakdowns are actually included in the story. Mycroft has always been an unreliable narrator, but in this book I felt like it really hit home that he IS certified insane. Even if Mycroft is the one person who can write this chronicle, that doesn't mean he's the one person who can write it without bias. His perception is actually very skewed, and other people edit the text as well, without disclosing all their changes.

If I had any one struggle with this book - it would be the characters. I don't need to like all the characters, but here I started to struggle with the increasing unlikability of many of the main characters. Mycroft will always be a problem - but in an interesting way. He's a convicted serial killer who's been declared insane. I feel horror at what he did and at what he still continues to do or think sometimes. At the same time, I feel pity for him. I wonder if he can redeem himself. I wonder if he genuinely wants to be redeemed or only cares about what JEDD wants. He's working himself to the bone and he's increasingly broken, with no rest. If he breaks and goes on another killing spree, I'm not sure how much he will be to blame, or the people who are pushing him so hard!

And what about JEDD? I thought JEDD was pretty cool in the first two books. He was inhuman, but was mostly seen from afar, with that aura of mystery. But here we see him much more frequently and close up. Frankly, he was an alien this time. What is the point of his Great Conversation with our world's God? It means much to him, but essentially has no bearing on most of the people in the world who will be affected by his decisions and actions. He thinks he's conversing with God; people think he's just dicking around with the world like a chessboard.

Oh yeah - and Dominic! They have to be just as insane and unstable as Mycroft. I actually do not enjoy reading about Dominic, because some of the most twisted stuff shows up in the passages about them. Like, the scene where they're intentionally torturing a bound and gagged Carlyle by reading Blaise Pascal aloud? ..... OK.

At the end of it all though, I remain fascinated by this series. These books are... deeply, deeply weird. The writing style, how Mycroft chooses to narrate, the way the world works, the characters - it's all super weird, and I'm eating it up as fast as I can. Now the war has begun and I'm so ready for the last book. And I'm sad that it will be the last.

The Will to Battle (Tor, December 2017), the third volume in Ada Palmer’s complex and strange Terra Ignota series, is a murderously difficult book to review. Third books in a series generally are (a review can only speak to readers of the previous two volumes, and spoil those books for everyone else), but that goes double for this one, because, as I said, of how complex and strange the Terra Ignota series has been from the jump.

That series, which began in 2016 with Too Like the Lightning (which I review here) and continued last year with Seven Surrenders, introduced us to a 25th-century world organized into seven hives rather than nation-states, a world that professed itself a utopia but had long-repressed tensions running hot under the surface. A world where public discussion of religion is forbidden but bore witness to the miraculous child Bridger as well as the singular being J. E. D. D. Mason, a child of many parents who believes himself to be a god from another universe, the cynosure of a secret cult—and, at the end of Seven Surrenders, the beneficiary of a resurrection at the hands of the aforementioned Bridger after an assassination attempt aimed at preventing him from taking power.


Whew. And that doesn’t even begin to describe what has gone on in the first two books—the conspiracies, the intertwined and conflicting behind-the-scenes relationships, all of which witnessed by the protagonist and narrator, the reviled and notorious murderer Mycroft Canner, sentenced to be a Servicer for his crimes, who nonetheless interacted closely with the leaders and authority figures of the respective Hives: the emperor of the Masons, the president of Europe, the CEO of Mitsubishi—all of whom, it was revealed, have a personal connection to J. E. D. D. Mason.

Too Like the Lightning, written like it came from the pen of an 18th-century philosophe, set up the mysteries; Seven Surrenders revealed them, which was something of a disappointment, in the way that sequels that give answers and explain secrets inevitably do, and took the Terra Ignota series in a somewhat different direction than might be expected from a read of the first volume. Expecting Voltaire, we got something closer to Barbara Tuchman. The utopia found itself, for the first time in centuries, on the brink of war.

What, then, remains for The Will to Battle? It deals with the fallout of the previous volume, of which there is a great deal. It takes us from the brink of war to … the brink of war: which is to say that in The Will to Battle the leaders of the seven hives try to deal with the immediate aftermath of Seven Surrenders—including, again, the resurrection of a person who believes himself to be a god in front of multiple witnesses, in a world that represses religion—do their best to reorganize themselves in the face of mass protest, avoid war if possible, and prepare for war if necessary. Another of Bridger’s resurrections, Achilles—yes, that Achilles—appears to teach a world that has forgotten war how to fight. Or why: the world must learn causes, and sides: on one, J. E. D. D. Mason, and his promise to remake the world; on the other, his erstwhile assassin, Sniper, and their promise to defend it, flaws intact. (I’m oversimplifying; the book is complicated.)

Like Voltaire in an earlier volume, Hobbes is frequently cited, and appears as one of Mycroft’s interlocutors (in this book Mycroft’s narrative is increasingly feverish and contradictory; the text is foregrounded as it becomes clear he’s writing the previous two books during the events of the third). We are on the verge of the war of all against all.

But the writer that came to mind when I was reading this book was not Hobbes (whom I’ve read, and written a paper on), but, if you can believe it, Asimov. Because this a talky book. Much of it is predicated on the trial of the head of an assassination plot that was revealed in Seven Surrenders: we learn that “terra ignota” is a legal term. Add to which the political, philosophical and theological jockeying between the various players, and you get rather a lot of the “permutations and reversals of ideas” Asimov employed in his Foundation stories. Only Ada Palmer is working on a different level: the ideas more sophisticated, the characters more round, the worldbuilding more intricate. The prose is a good deal less pellucid and a good deal more arch, and that’s both a bug and a feature.

Also, Marissa’s critique that the book focuses on “the nosebleed levels of elite,” where everyone knows everyone else or is at most one degree of separation from each other, certainly applies. It’s one limitation of using the philosophes of the ancien régime as a template for future history: this is a drama that could have taken place in the gardens of Versailles; there’d be more than enough room.

I simply can’t say enough good things about the Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer. My past reviews are gushingly full of a love that I struggle to articulate, I moderate a subreddit about the books, and I lend the first book out like a religious person lends a Bible: with the passionate fervor fueled by both a burning need to talk about the book and the belief that other people will truly be bettered by reading it. So I was surprised, but not too surprised, when I received an email through NetGalley offering me the chance to read the third book, The Will to Battle. They reached out to me – something I’ve never experienced before! The past few weeks have fulfilled all of my big ol’ nerd heart’s desires. I jumped straight from Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun series (which Palmer cites as a huge influence on her work) to The Will to Battle, and in the midst of reading it I attended Chessiecon in Baltimore, where Ada Palmer was guest of honor. I sat in on readings and discussions led by Palmer and got a set of books signed – including a hard copy of The Will to Battle, a full month early! So, full disclosure, I loved this series going into book three.

And it didn't disappoint! Where book two, Seven Surrenders, felt very much like a sequel necessary to complete the story of book one, TWTB is a new chapter; while it follows the same story and characters, it strides confidently into new settings and conflicts. The series continues to succeed where it has done well before, with Mycroft’s tricky narration supplying more intriguing - and alarming - deception as we finally see his growing instability unedited. Palmer methodically lays out the new starting grounds for who are all facing the fallout from public reveals of two separate nests of collusion while they struggle to ready their unprepared world for war and theological unrest.

Some of my favorite moments are first steps into new settings. The world is bigger and more wondrous as it provides glimpses of technology and history unseen in previous installments - and more legal minutiae than any book has a right to make so compelling! A simple walk through a Utopian neighborhood was so delightful that I re-read it half a dozen times before moving on. Several chapter-long courtroom dramas are as engrossing and dramatic as attempted murder, and I’m sure many die-hard fans (myself included) will be poring over those chapters for much longer looking for clues about the world.

The character work is strong, too. I’m impressed by how thoroughly and efficiently Palmer handles the large cast, although there are a few characters who are noticeably absent from all or most of this chapter (I suspect that’s a deliberate choice intended to make us think about what those characters are doing until we do meet them). There are beautiful moments of utter catharsis - a passage where a character chooses to finally live their dream had me weeping with the joyful possibility that there is always a way forward into the life you want. Even J.E.D.D. Mason, who is arguably the central character in this drama but is not high on my list of favorite characters in the series, now has goals (and some fascinating scenes with religious figures - a rare instance in a world with a religion taboo) that make him more exciting.

My only complaint would be that, after three books, it feels like we may be just at the beginning of the physical action, but at no point did I feel the story was slow, and I may just be trying to get more books out of the series. The book is called The Will to Battle, after all, and an interjection by Thomas Hobbes (yes, THE Thomas Hobbes) points out that the Will to Battle is not yet Battle itself, but it just as important. And for all the build-up surrounding Achilles’s importance to prepare for this battle, he felt underused. Hopefully we’ll see more of him in book four.

And, as always, we are left with so many questions - the kind I can't ask here, as they'd be full of spoilers - but check out the subreddit (which I run)!!!

The Will to Battle by Ada Palmer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I took my time and savored this one. It deserves it. And more.

Ada Palmer has made a world worth luxuriating in, and far from resting on the Greek laurels she and her work deserve, she's delved deep into new philosophical questions while all the time fascinating us with complicated and rich characters. Never even mind the glorious world-building. The amount of thought and forethought in all of this is astounding.

The title gives the main action away. It is not Battle. But the Will to Battle. This is a philosophical conundrum. A wrenching up. A decision to kill or be killed. What's most fascinating about this is the fact we began these books in a de-facto utopia.

The first book throws all our perceptions and assumptions for a loop, especially when the great murderer is, in fact, a hero, but a hero for what? The second book dives deeper into the mysterious mass-assassinations and the purpose behind them, right down to the rights of kings and the greater ideological good of society. It also explores godhood as an observer and as a limited player and does it in such a way as to frame the rest of the book in a brilliant argument for and against the destruction of a whole society.

This book is both a surprising and sophisticated exploration of nobility, goodness and idealistic (broad sense) response to the calling of war and perhaps a complete destruction of humanity. I'm talking eyes-wide-open exhaustive discussion of turning their utopias (and there are essentially eleven different kinds of utopias in this world) into mass death, destruction, and eventual barbarism. Everyone's aware of the pitfalls and only the truly war-like among us (including the original, actual Achilles) has the most wisdom to impart. Prepare well. Keep lines of communication open. Stock up. Draw battlefield lines. Prepare for the absolute worst. Go about all your days, preparing to die.

What's most shocking about this book is the fact that it never feels contrived or absurd. At all. It's like being in reality, keeping a clear head, and carefully choosing to murder for the sake of your most deeply held beliefs... even while you live in heaven.

Disturbing? Hell, yeah. Understandable? Yeah. In this case, all the events, all the subjects, all the people in it are treated with respect and honor even when it's about assassination, betrayal, grief, or the realization that everything is not only going to change, but nobody will win. And yet the Will to Battle persists. Remains. It is inevitable, but heroism now consists in postponing the tragedy or mitigating the worst effects.

This is, after all, a highly advanced scientific and cultural utopia we have on Earth. Means to destroy are vast, and people's ire and mob mentalities are still very real. It's sick and fascinating.

And I'm absolutely hooked.

I should be perfectly candid about where I would place these books in my mind. These aren't simple tales full of action and pathos and they don't have clear-cut plotlines for easy public consumption. They are Considered. They are very thoughtful, very mindful, and rife with classics of both literature and philosophical thought. The latest one is a modern delving and interpretation of some of the best pre-game-theory classics. And it's also heart-wrenching, but mainly for the actual effects of these Big Ideas on all the characters I've grown to love and admire. And I mean all of them.

I would place these books in my mind in the Classics category. Classic as in "This needs to be a cult favorite that gets pulled out fifty years from now with just much love and respect as I'm giving it now" kind of book.

If there's any justice in this world, Big Ideas books that are written this well should ALWAYS have staying power. And that's what I wish for it. It needs to be known and savored. We need this discussion for all our thinking selves. Seriously and honestly.

That's how this book affects me. How all of the books have affected me. Am I putting them on a very precise pedestal? Perhaps. But any winner of the Olympics ought to be respected for all the reasons behind the competition.