All the Birds in the Sky

I picked this book up in my local book store while on a quest to find something to restart my love of reading. A year plus of near complete isolation during the onset of the pandemic led me to rely increasingly more on my phone for bursts of serotonin and I wound up wrecking my focus. Standing in the book store, I figured anything in the sci-fi section would do the trick - it’s worked in the past. I wound up purchasing AtBinS solely on the cover art not knowing anything about the story or the author. The book sat among my looming “to-read” pile for months until I was several days deep into a week long vacation. I figured it couldn’t to take an hour away from my phone, and by the time I looked up from the book over an hour had passed. I finished the book the next day in a 5-hour marathon that kept me up til midnight. Judging by the GoodReads reviews, this book is not everyone’s cup of tea, but it was the exact kind of magical-realism sci-fi witchy tech-y love story that I needed to rekindle my love of reading.

All the Birds in the Sky is, broadly, a novel about the conflict between science and magic. Less broadly, it's a novel about growing up, love, empathy, hubris, mistakes, and the desire to do good.

The story is told mostly from the perspectives of the novel's two main characters, Patricia and Laurence. The overarching plot of the novel may have some awkward twists, and its resolution may arrive a bit abruptly, but it generally works well anyway, considering the novel's focus on the character's individual experiences, and how their relationship plays into the larger events.

Genre-wise, the novel is a blend of science fiction and fantasy, and tone-wise it is a blend of serious and whimsical. While the plot does go to some dark places, the book's writing tends more towards wistful than grimly dark. The style may seem a bit weird, but it works with a story that is overall a bit weird.

Overall, an enjoyable book.

Every year, I hit a book that I really struggle to review and as a result, my reviews taper off. It's still early, but I'm pretty sure that All the Birds in the Sky is that book for 2017. To quote a friend, it's just really less than the sum of its parts, and that makes it really hard to discuss.

The first part was truly brilliant: a boy builds a two second time machine (only forwards, not backwards, of course) and a girl discovers that she can talk to birds and together they fight crime commiserate about being stuck in the wrong genre. In this part, the magical elements are so small, and brought into contrast with larger than life reality -- super strict parents, super out-of-touch teachers, a guidance counselor/assassin -- and together it's just really a special conversation about what it is that we're discussing when we write and read and reread coming of age teen magician books. I loved that they weren't like each other, but they clung to each other because neither of them was like anyone else. In a lot of key ways, it reminded me of my own relationship with my own best friend.

I liked the decision to skip over both of them coming into their own and go right to them as independent young adults. I thought it was brave to leave out any details of the Special Secret School for Witches. The tone of the next part lost some of the contrast of small magic/big life/quirky offshoots that are funny but not overpowering, but it was still riding on the strength of the beginning. Some of the ideas introduced were really clever (like the guy who turns into nature once he leaves his bookshop) and others fell a little flat for me (like the way witches were totally obsessed with not becoming too arrogant), but overall, I really liked the central tension between saving the world and saving humanity and found that compelling.

Then, holy non-sequitur, Batman! We enter a massive time jump, to stop one month in to have 1.5 pages of Patricia and Lawrence having sex, their social falling out and Lawrence's girlfriend both having been erased during the time jump. But no sooner do we turn the page, then there's another several months of time jump. If you have to stop your time jump in the middle to show your readers coitus, you're doing something wrong. But I probably should have just walked away, because after this, I felt that the characterization completely fell apart and a lot of the storytelling hinged on deus ex machinae and false dilemmas.

So, strong start, I'd like to see Anders' next work, but I probably won't reread this; at least not all of the way through.

I loved this tale of when magic and science collide, full of humour, love and commentary on our modern life. It’s the second book to have a non-humanoid AI that made me cry too.

The story starts with two teenagers, both on the outskirts of school society who become tentative friends. Laurence loves nothing more than spending his life in front of a screen. He built a time machine that can send him two seconds into the future and is now building a supercomputer in his wardrobe but his parents keep sending him to outdoorsy things. So he pays Patricia to lie to his parents that he’s been outdoors.

Patricia loves nature but her parents would rather lock her away in her room. Her sister is possibly evil. One night, after her sister douses her dinner with an excessive amount of spices, Patricia leaves her body and talks to a bird named Dirrp who takes her to the Parliament of Birds. There she discovers she’s a witch and is asked a question she doesn’t answer. Yet years pass, and magic seems to have left her.

Once thing I particularly liked was how these characters do grow up. It wouldn’t have been the same book if it stayed with their childhoods. Their families seem cruel, or at best negligent, but when all is said and done, there was love there. As the characters grow up they can see their childhood with hindsight, just as we all start to see our parents differently with a bit of distance in time and space. The book is told in different parts, each at a different point in their lives, giving more scope to the story.

When Laurence and Patricia meet again, they are both living in San Francisco. This gives Charlie the chance to incorporate hipsters and start-ups into the mix, giving a zeitgeist feel despite being set in the near future. It also deals with climate change, the awful tragedy of natural disasters and questions whether or not it is inevitable. Magic is a symbol of nature; can science and nature cohabit peacefully?

Of course Patricia is on the side of magic and Laurence science, but their friendship is stronger than that. They might fall out, but they are mysteriously drawn back to each other. They have to make tough decisions and sacrifices as the world falls apart around them. In the end, it would seem that magic and science aren’t all that different after all.

I loved the assassin slash guidance counsellor as well. Just a great cast of characters with charm and emotion and a bit of satire on what technology has done to us. I could waffle on forever but I really should leave some of it for you to discover by yourself. It gets a big thumbs up from me. Plus, the cover is gorgeous.

Review copy provided by publisher.