A rare Reading Wednesday: Terra Ignota edition

[dolorosa_12]

I don't usually do Reading Wednesday, but while flailing at naye on Twitter about The Will to Battle, the third in Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series, I realised I had thoughts about the book, and wanted to discuss them with others in a more permanent, longform location.

So, anyway, scattered, spoilery thoughts ahead! Don't expect a coherent review or plot summary - these are just a few bullet points of things that really stood out to me.

I came to the conclusion when discussing things with naye yesterday that what the story most resembled to me was an account of the years/months/days leading up to World War I, with the same kind of horrifying inevitability of chances to avoid war pushed aside by people who had no way of comprehending the scale of the destruction that was about to unfold, because they had no frame of reference for the kind of war that was going to happen.

Of course, naye summed this up perfectly: If WW1 started as a pub brawl with blokes pitching in to punch whoever shoved their mate TWtB is like a duel: everyone lining up oh so politely at the agreed time and place to do murder or be murdered. This was such a perfect summation, and so true.

One of the things I find endlessly fascinating about the Terra Ignota books is the tension between whether the future it imagines is a utopia or a dystopia, or neither. In some ways a world with no geographical nations (but rather a set of governing philosophies which people choose to align with once they reach a self-determined point of maturity; it's also possible to never make this choice, or choose to affiliate with no philosophy at all), no public, group expressions of religion, and no gender, sounds like a paradise (certainly the abolition of nation states would be welcome to this migrant!). On the other hand, the more you read the books, the more you realise that far from abolishing gender, religion or nationality, the people of this world simply put them in a 'too hard' basket, blamed them for all wars and inequality, and, instead of addressing the reasons why this had occurred (e.g. misogyny causing inequality, and doing something to address the way stereotypically 'feminine' things had been traditionally devalued), people simply made these things taboo and refused to discuss them. The end result is, of course, that far from being abolished, gender, religion and nation-states become these very naughty things that can be played with in secret by the privileged, and also become ways to manipulate and control people.

The Will to Battle in particular forces you to confront disconcerting things about yourself: what injustices you'd tolerate in order to be able to live in an otherwise utopian society, what kind of world, what kind of humanity is worth saving, and so on. In some ways, your answers will depend on which of Ada Palmer's 'Hives' (the political/philosophical affiliations that the characters choose to adhere to, and which have replaced nation states) you feel aligns most closely with your own ethical code; likewise, your choice of 'Hive' may have some correlation with how utopian you find her world to be.

It's really strange to me, because the series is by necessity focused on the privileged, powerful people of the world, and they're all kind of terrible people (I have my own preferences for some of the Hives, but even these Hives' leading politicians are pretty awful), but the painful inevitability, the inflexibility of different Hives' governing philosophy, and the corners into which this has painted them made me feel sympathetic to almost everyone, even characters I'd previously despised. I find stories about the collapse of societies, about people fighting hopelessly against the tide to salvage something beautiful in the midst of chaos and destruction, about worlds brought down by people who were never able to see their value really poignant and affecting (see also: The Lions of Al-Rassan), and I guess that's why this book speaks to me.

Anyway, feel free to jump into the comments and discuss anything you want about this book. naye and merit, I know you've both read it, and I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Comments

[naye]

I'm actually really curious about what you said about coming to like Mycroft. How did that feeling develop over the course of this book, since I think you said you didn't like him previously? And how do you like him? Skuld and I discussed it, and came out on really interesting sides of it!

My stance was:
I don't like (or trust) him, but I want to protect him - I don't want more awful things happening to him

And hers was:
I love him and want to see him suffer (because it's so interesting to watch him crack and also he deserves it)

Also, how do you feel about the 9A reveal - that Mycroft was actually a lot more cracked in the previous two volumes and someone just edited out the worst of his delusions? Because one of the things that did my head in was when I started noticing him just casually mentioning dead people. Just. Getting calls from Kohaku Mardi. Listing Apollo and Bridger among people at a meeting. And he knows the prison wraiths aren't real (I think he knows?) but there's no self awareness about the... uhh, no, Apollo really isn't chatting with you right now on account of how you murdered him?

That and the whole bit where he writes a couple of pages with himself (Mycroft) arguing with Sniper and Tully to make a call that could stop the war and then he's all "Wait, no, that wasn't me! I was just ranting. It was Tully who said all those things that made the call happen, my bad." But by then I'd already read that bit and taken Mycroft's word for events happening the way he wrote them and it's so weird in the best way.

But yes also all the huge questions. Does humanity need this particular war? I'm mostly on the side of horrifed UM NO HOW ABOUT NO but then the dream (the prophecy) of how it's this or a worse war or this and losing the stars forever... Damn but Utopia know how to get me in a really uncomfortable spot. (Also I want a U-beast please.)

[dolorosa_12]

I guess I didn't like him because he seemed so arrogant in the earlier books (of course what he did was so horrific and unforgivable, but leaving all that aside as a reason to dislike him for now), so the reveal that how he wrote and what he wrote in the first two volumes was cleaned up and thus not necessarily all him forced me to look at him with new eyes. But seeing how messed up and broken he was by the terrible weight of his knowledge of what was to come (I mean, so many parts of the book just have his little asides going, oh, yeah, and I was just sitting in a corner howling and screaming while this whole conversation was taking place), as well as all the things you point out -- him chatting with dead people and so on (which led me to wonder whether Saladin was even alive, actually) just led me to find him a lot more sympathetic. The fact that he genuinely seemed to care about other people (Carlyle in particular) also did a lot to change my opinion of him.

It's so interesting that you and Skuld had such completely different reactions to him -- I guess that's the power of the series, that it can have this unstable, polarising, disorienting narrator, who has done one of the most abominable things possible, and yet who still sparks pity, concern, and an odd kind of affection.

As to your comments on Utopia, you can see from my comment below why they and their aspirations don't hit me in quite the same way as they seem to do for so many people, but I can really understand why they do spark this reaction. I think the books I read as a child really imprinted on me in a major way -- a lot of dystopian (especially climate-related) YA fiction which always talked about space exploration as a kind of cowardice, like giving up on a ruined Earth and the here-and-now in order to pursue the next shiny new thing, and that attitude rubbed off on me more than I realised! As I say below, I think you need both kinds of people, and both kinds of aspirations: those who help in a practical, concrete immediate way, and those who dream in terms of centuries into the future, not for themselves, but for their distant descendants. We can't survive without both kinds of thinking.

[naye]

I think one of the most stunning reveals in TWtB regarding Mycroft is when the Nurturist (Cookie?) lists him as an example of what happens when adults are allowed to raise set-set and set-like children. Because in his own recollections of his childhood his bash had been hand picked because they were all awesome and it was super cool to grow up smart and stuff, but from a Nurturist POV tiny Mycroft was brainwashed. Almost like a set-set; he was being formed into... we're not quite sure but there were definitely Powers That Be with Plans for him?

Which makes him feel like more of a victim though obviously "childhood issues" never condone "violent murder streak"! But it did make me see him from a new light.

Is Saladin alive. GOOD QUESTIONS. I think so? Because I think Madame really is using him as leverage but. He could also be dead? The only thing that makes Saladin different from the rest is that if he is dead, we don't know when and how he died. He must have been alive and well 13 years ago, that much we know. But all of Mycroft's other hallucinations (prison wraiths aside) are of people we know for a fact died (or altered out of existence).

Speaking of alive: how is MYCROFT still alive?? And how did he get everyone to persume him dead (and be all sad about it), annotate the manuscript with a "BTW still alive" and then disappear again what is going on with that?! I really want to know. Really really really.

The interesting thing with the Utopians is that when it comes down to it, they can't help but get involved in the practical and concrete immediacy of the war. Instead of hiding out, they get rid of the harbingers. Instead of hunkering down, they execute an audacious first strike - and Mycroft is very clear on what that will very possibly cost them. So the Utopians' ideals might be to strive to the stars, but more than half of them can't abandon present-Earth for a star-faring future. Which is also really interesting.