I’ve been thinking about Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota tetralogy a lot lately.

It’s perhaps the most ambitious sf series ever written and certainly the one most dense with philosophy and allusion. However with great ambition comes the high possibility of failure, of not achieving those lofty aspirations at which you’ve set your aim. Some parts of the series are achingly good. There’s a masterpiece hidden somewhere in there, amid all the “thees” and “thous” and all the exposition that probably should have been cut in the interest of concision and a bit more forward motion. In the end, though, the work fails — but it is a glorious failure, of the kind one should be proud of even attempting.

First, the negatives. It’s very long, and it meanders mightily. The work is indulgent beyond belief. I read fast and if I did not, I never would’ve finished it. It also attempts to blend two things that don’t really go together that well: messianism and techno-political speculation. The work would’ve been stronger if it had omitted the former, though parts of it would’ve been less interesting. Sometimes, it’s best to not try to cram everything into the box. It’s ok to use another container.

That said, it’s the first serious work that deals with how a realistic sociopolitical system might function a few hundred years hence. It has excellent world-building in that respect; it treats what might exist beyond the constraints of geographically-bounded nations with lots of nuance and some real deliberation. It acknowledges and examines within its plot the fact that every political system — bar none — decays and must be refreshed by the consent of the people within it from time to time. And Terra Ignota is of course an engagement with Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, Thomas More’s Utopia and scads of other works of that period.

The Terra Ignota tetralogy, then, is a wonderful failure. I’m glad I read it but I would not quite recommend it. It’s just too much. It’s too much for me to read again, and it’s more than most people would want to handle or plow through. I’m very glad it was written despite the fact that it does not quite work or hang together. It’s an amazing achievement that makes the world better. I do not regret reading it but I wish the author had possessed a bit more discipline, and that the focus had been clearer. Absent 500 pages and a savior or two, the work might’ve been more like a scalpel rather than a bludgeon; it would’ve worked better as such.