by Ada Palmer
First published 2021
Ninth Anonymous takes up the pen where the missing arch-criminal Mycroft left off. The Terra Ignota world has exploded into chaos. For centuries, the leaders of location-free Hive nations committed secret crimes to preserve their utopian facade. A special boy has become the spark that ignites five hundred years of suppressed human conflict. War now tears across the globe. Transportation networks lie in ruins. The tyranny of distance splits apart what was once a united Earth. Old alliances crumble while ancient hatreds resurface. Ninth Anonymous must document this spreading discord while somehow trying to restore order to a civilization racing toward complete collapse. The Hive system that once promised abundance and effortless global travel faces total destruction. Humanity stands at a crossroads between salvation and ruin, forced to choose between rebuilding their broken world or abandoning Earth entirely for the stars.
Genres: science-fiction, dystopia, literary-fiction, political-thriller
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Earth
Period: 21st-century
608 pages · Kindle Edition · Tor Books
Content warnings: violence, war