by Ada Palmer
About the Author
ADA PALMER is a professor in the history department at the University of Chicago, specializing in the Renaissance and the history of ideas. Her first nonfiction book, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, was published in 2014 by Harvard University Press. She is also a composer of folk- and Renaissance-tinged a cappella music, most of which she performs with the group Sassafrass. Her personal site is at adapalmer.com, and she writes about history for a popular audience at exurbe.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Permissions
Epigraph
1. A Prayer to the Reader
2. A Boy and His God
3. The Most Important People in the World
4. A Thing Long Thought Extinct
5. Aristotle’s House
6. Rome Was Not Built in a Day …
7. Canis Domini
8. A Place of Honor
9. Every Soul That Ever Died
10. The Sun Awaits His Rival
11. Enter Sniper
12. Neither Earth nor Atom, But …
13. … Perhaps the Stars
14. The Interlude of the Interview with Retired Black Sakura Reporter Tsuneo Sugiyama, as Related by Martin Guildbreaker
15. If They Catch Me
16. Thou Canst Not Put It Off Forever, Mycroft
17. Tocqueville’s Valet
18. The Tenth Director
19. Flies to Honey
20. A Monster in the House
21. That Which Is Caesar’s
22. Mycroft Is Mycroft
23. Pontifex Maxima
24. Sometimes Even I Am Very Lonely
25. Madame’s
26. Madame D’Arouet
27. The Interlude in Which Martin Guildbreaker Pursues the Question of Dr. Cato Weeksbooth
28. The Enemy
29. Julia, I’ve Found God!
30. DEO EREXIT SADE
31. Dominant Predator
32. That There Are Two
33. Martin Guildbreaker’s Last Interlude: “The Utopians Aren’t Dirty like the Rest of Us”
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING
Copyright © 2016 by Ada Palmer
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Victor Mosquera
Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-7800-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4688-5874-9 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781468858749
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First Edition: May 2016
1 Mycroft’s translation: Nisi aliquid grave suspicaretur Dominicus non abesset.
2 Mycroft’s translation: Pro certo non. Non nullius momentis est hic fur, sed fidus est Dominic. Certe, nocte laborare non debes. Etiamnunc situm praeterire potes.