Compton Crook 35th Award winner and shortlisted candidate for the 2017 Hugo Award Best Novel category, Ada Palmer's political science fiction, Too Like the Lightning, ventures into a human future of extraordinary originality

Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer--a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished...

"A cornucopia of dazzling, sharp ideas set in rich, wry prose that rewards rumination with layers of delight. Provocative, erudite, inventive, resplendent." --Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings

In a future of near-instantaneous global travel, of abundant provision for the needs of all, a future in which no one living can remember an actual war...a long era of stability threatens to come to an abrupt end.

For known only to a few, the leaders of the great Hives, nations without fixed locations, have long conspired to keep the world stable, at the...