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Perhaps the Stars (Hardcover, 2021, Tor Books) 4 stars

From the 2017 John W. Campbell Award Winner for Best Writer, Ada Palmer's Perhaps the …

She gazes on Caesar as the head of a hospital gazes on a colleague wooed by giddy innovators to test out a new procedure which might work, might revolutionize treatment, first signs are good, but it takes many years to understand the lifelong effects, and whether the new method works or no, the old-fashioned one still saves lives daily as we wait to learn whether this particular experiment is part of that slim percentage that succeeds.

— Perhaps the Stars by  (Page 296)

I am cautiously SO excited to finally start peeking behind the curtain of these "reservations". I've had faith in you, Ada, here's hoping it pays off

replied to Ell's status

For context: one of the (valid!) criticisms of the first three books was the seeming dismissal of vast swaths of the world (notably most of Africa) as backwards "reservations" used only as an outlet for spiritual pilgrimages.

I've been patient, because as I tell folks when introducing these books to people, the narrators are unreliable, morally as well as plotwise: the tale reflects the society whose lessons we are learning.

It's deeply important to me to for authors to be able to tell stories about morally complicated or downright bankrupt characters and societies without having to explicitly spell out the ways in which they are Bad and Wrong, to let us as readers make our own judgments and moral decisions, without assigning those judgments to the author themselves.

It's a risky line to walk, but I think if executed well, it's so valuable.