Sam Reader is a writer and conventions editor for
The Geek Initiative. He also writes literary criticism and reviews at
strangelibrary.com. At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog he tagged
five of the best SFF confessional novels, including:
Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer
The Campbell Award-winning Palmer’s debut novel is framed as the confession of one Mycroft Canner, a criminal sentenced to serve anyone who needs the help, moving from one job to the next until a mysterious theft and the discovery of a reality-warping child in his house threaten to destabilize the precise order of the society around him. He inhabits an odd future world of flying car networks and massive computers, where frank discussion of sexuality and gender identity is a massive taboo, and works found to be upsetting to the populace are plastered with a variety of warnings. As a convict and someone who frequently and willfully broke the rules of his society, Mycroft is something of an outsider, and closer to the reader than others in his world. His frequent flouting of conventions helps introduce the odd language and world-building conventions of the book while reinforcing how strange the setting of 2454 really is.
Read about
another entry on the list.
Too Like the Lightning is among
Kameron Hurley's top five books to inspire you to build a better future.
The Page 69 Test: Too Like the Lightning.
--Marshal Zeringue
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