Too Like the Lightning (2016)

An investigation in a future without conventional nation states exposes the arrangements keeping its apparent stability intact. Across Terra Ignota's four completed novels, Palmer expands the consequences from personal secrets and political influence into a struggle over the world's organising beliefs. Start with Too Like the Lightning and continue through Perhaps the Stars. The dense, unreliable narration is part of the challenge; this is an argument-rich sequence whose changes of scale demand attention to who is telling its history.