Seven Surrenders

Seven Surrenders, the second Terra Ignota novel, picks up the threads of Too Like the Lightning's revelations with accelerating urgency. The near-utopian future of the 25th century — in which wars have been eliminated, religion is private, and seven global Hives organize human loyalty — is on the verge of collapse, and the conspiracy at its center involves the gods themselves. Ada Palmer writes intellectual science fiction with the baroque ambition of an 18th-century philosophe and the structural complexity of a legal brief.

T. Ryder Smith narrates a demanding text with the tonal intelligence it requires — Palmer's prose operates simultaneously as narrative and philosophical argument, and Smith distinguishes between the two registers without making the transitions abrupt. At seventeen and a half hours the audiobook rewards listeners willing to invest in one of the most ambitious science fiction series of its era. The Locus Award and Goodreads Choice recognition reflect its standing.