Beyond Selidor

I'm still waiting on The Will to Battle (supposed to arrive today!!!) but this pots is not really spoilers + meshes with what I've read so far.

When I read the first two books there was a lot of online discussion about the utopia/dystopia matter, and it led to me really questioning what a utopia even is. I think Terra Ignota is pretty close! It has flaws, but it's made by humans so of course it's fucking flawed. None of them are perfect. But I can see how it's tempting to view religion, gender and nationalism as the causes of war - they're easy to solve, and kind of easier to get angry about that the simple fact of people wanting more power. Those people will always exist, and there's nothing you can abolish that will stop that.

A lot of the stuff about gender has me rolling my eyes a bit. The "gender roles are soooo sexy and intoxicating that you can control people's minds!" bit reminds me of nothing so much as those fluff pieces from a few years ago about 'normaling' or people kinking on traditional gender roles and claiming it was transgressive somehow. But I also really appreciate what Palmer's trying to do in upsetting people's notions of gender and things. I do feel like sometimes it desexualises androgyny, but then Sniper is a sex symbol, so that's not entirely right either.

I really like the WWI comparison. The final chapters of Too Like The Lightning and Seven Surrenders both reminded me a lot of Les Miserables, in that section where the revolt is starting to stir but hasn't yet broken out into fighting, but the WWI thing is right on, too.

The whole series also reminds me of Les Mis in the sense that it has rambling asides and sometimes makes me go "Well why don't you just go MARRY VOLTAIRE, THEN" in much the same way I did about Victor Hugo and Napoleon.