Loving this series. I'll have to pick up the third book soon. It's a lot of concepts and plot to wade through but it's definitely worth it. ( )

I gulped this book down after finishing Too Like The Lightning. It honestly stood up to binge reading. I thought I had Palmer's number this time through -- and in some ways I did in that twists were less shocking than they'd been in the first book -- but this still managed to be a genuinely thrilling book with a lot to think about.

Here's my final warning: I was the first person in my group to finish Seven Surrenders. Friends don't let friends read Ada Palmer alone. This is the sort of book that you need a buddy to digest with. ( )

I continue to enjoy this series and will read the third book. But. With this second book the style really began to wear on me. The faux-seventeenth century style --the page-long paragraphs of description of motives and emotion, all constantly fraught and fragile, the world-falling-apart-while-everything-of-consequence-takes-place-in-breathless-exchanges-in-a-boudoir, taking the Enlightenment idea of ideas mattering more than anything...-- this all begins to wear.

Holes in the ideas presented begin to grow massive (the whole world really banished gender? religion? and only a building of people in Paris are subverting this? Even after the 'Church Wars' this seems impossible to believe. That and 20 murders a year, worldwide, brings the entire system to its knees? Even in this future utopia that seems a stretch. And where are e.g. South America and Africa in this? And, for that matter and despite the nod to them, Asia and South Asia?)

But, complaints aside, in this are a lot of interesting ideas and questions, propositions even, continuing the first book. Weaknesses and warts, I still like this. ( )

See my review in 1st book of series. ( )

How on earth can I give a book five stars and at the same time say I didn't enjoy reading it? Well, here goes. I am just not interested in philosophy or theology, and that's what this book is about and spends pages and pages and chapters and chapters talking about.

And yet I was completely hooked by the society which had achieved 300 years of peace by renouncing nationality, gendered language and expression, and religion (sort of). The story takes place at the moment when the whole system is coming unraveled as people discover that their happy life was based on a complex mix of deception, murder, and politics. The large cast of characters shifted continually in their identities and relationships, not to mention horrible crimes and apparent supernatural powers. It did keep me reading, but I'm fairly certain I can't do two more books. ( )