The Will to Battle

(Paperback)

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The year is 2454. Three centuries of peace and a hard-won golden age have come to an abrupt end. The once steadfast leadership of the seven Hives is crumbling, soured by corruption and deception. Savagery and bloodlust, three-centuries suppressed, have been unleashed. The terrible truth is that centuries of peace were bought with a trickle of secret murders. The killings were mathematically planned, meticulously organised to preserve the balance to ensure no faction could dominate. But now the secret is out, the balance has tipped, the Hives' utopian faade has slipped. Just days ago, humanity stood at the pinnacle of civilization. Now everyone Hives and Hiveless, Utopians and sensayers, emperors and convicts, warriors and saints is preparing for war.

Reviews

Bold, furiously inventive, and mesmerizing... The best science fiction I've read in a long while' -- Robert Charles Wilson
The kind of science fiction that makes me excited all over again about what science fiction can do -- Jo Walton
Provocative, erudite, inventive, resplendent -- Ken Liu
Part novel, part series of nested essays, part project, The Will to Battle is much greater than the whole; an exercise in both narrative flexibility and philosophy... It's a powerful expression of what the genre can do' * Starburst magazine *

Author Bio

Ada Palmer is an author, historian and composer. She did her PhD at Harvard, teaches History at the University of Chicago, blogs at ExUrbe.com, composes close harmony folk music and performs with the a capella group Sassafrass.