The Will to Battle is the third book of John W. Campbell Award winner Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series, a political science fiction epic of extraordinary audacity.
The long years of near-utopia have come to an abrupt end. Peace and order are now figments of the past. Corruption, deception, and insurgency hum within the once steadfast leadership of the Hives, nations without fixed location. The heartbreaking truth is that for decades, even centuries, the leaders of the great Hives bought the world's stability with a trickle of secret murders, mathematically planned. So that no faction could ever dominate. So that the balance held. The Hives' faade of solidity is the only hope they have for maintaining a semblance of order, for preventing the public from succumbing to the savagery and bloodlust of wars past. But as the great secret becomes more and more widely known, that faade is slipping away. Just days earlier, the world was a pinnacle of human civilization. Now everyone--Hives and hiveless, Utopians and sensayers, emperors and the downtrodden, warriors and saints--scrambles to prepare for the seemingly inevitable war. Praise for Seven Surrenders "A cornucopia of dazzling, sharp ideas set in rich, wry prose that rewards rumination with layers of delight. Provocative, erudite, inventive, resplendent."--Ken Liu, author of The Wall of Storms "Seven Surrenders veers expertly between love, murder, mayhem, parenthood, theology, and high politics. I haven't had this much fun with a book in a long time." --Max Gladstone, author of Ruin of Angels Terra Ignota Series1. Too Like the Lightning
2. Seven Surrenders
3. The Will to Battle
4. Perhaps the Stars