All the Birds in the Sky

This is a very weird book, where hard science and nature magic coexist in our world. I really enjoyed the first half of the book, which follows Laurence (bullied computer nerd science boy) and Patricia (bullied nature-loving witch girl) through high school and their abusive families. Seriously, why were both their families so awful? Roberta, Patricia's abusive and sadistic sister, reminded me of the seriously broken Peter Wiggin from "Ender's Game", yet this was never really dealt with in the slightest.

The second half of the book kind of fell apart, however. Both the science people and the magic people appear to be working on apocalyptic solutions to the approaching apocalypse caused by overpopulation, global warming, etc etc (because that totally makes sense?) while completely ignoring the possibility of trying to fix any part of what's going wrong. Patricia's fellow witches keep talking to her about avoiding "aggrandizement", which never really made sense and also never came to anything. There's a random assassin who shows up to make high school life difficult but then basically disappears and comes to nothing in the end. Inexplicable behaviour from various characters including Laurence and Patricia themselves (why, after encouraging her and wanting to see magic, would Laurence act the way he does?) And of course a requisite romance thread when Patricia and Laurence meet again in adult life, along with way too much irrelevant detail about what Laurence rather inexplicably does to his pubic hair (why??) The plot problems are of course solved in one easy scene when a main character is suddenly able to wield abilities they've never shown before, deus ex machina, and happily ever after, etc.

I did like the first half and found the writing easy to read and approachable, if a little inconsistent in style sometimes. Definitely felt as if the ending was more than a bit of a mess though and the whole thing lacked internal consistency.

This book was recommended to me, soon after I'd finished Robin Sloan's Sourdough, and then declared that modern-day magical realism was exactly the genre that meant the most to me, particularly the stories in which California-based millennials struggled to find humanity and meaning in a tech-centric world. It's a kind of science fiction where all the technobabble is familiar and real, but a dose of mysticism is needed to keep Silicon Valley palatable. Venture capitalists already believe in too many fairy tales.

All The Birds In the Sky is decidedly more magical than realism, and because it's more about the duality of magic and science, both worlds are represented more or less equally. The refreshing take here isn't that it's magic versus science, at odds with each other, forever warring for dominance and yet must be maintained in some kind of cosmic balance. Or even the Harry Potter version, where magicians exist in a fundamentally separatist society. Here the wizards just exist in the world in their own way, and the factions aren't sparring so much as they don't give a shit about each other, in much the way subcultures do when they have nothing in common.

Another fantastic element of the storytelling is the way Anders refuses to take her own writing seriously. Or, to put it another way, she is serious about not putting on the airs of someone writing genre fiction by pretending to do it in the voice of Tolkien or some other, more established writer from many decades ago. Anders writes the way you or I would be telling someone a story, today, which makes this book more a product of now, and not someone pretending to know what now sounds like, or someone cramming now into the mold of some other era. It's entirely possible that this is normal and I don't read enough stuff, but I felt like I don't see this often.

Some writers may tend to fall into a trap where the mystical elements are all about some kind of profound ancient wisdom guarded by witches and revealed for the benefit of the main characters' growth, but not Anders. Again, she keeps it simple, and therefore more real. People are just people trying to make it in life, whether they have magical powers or superhuman technical chops. Birds are just birds. In the first chapter, birds propose The Endless Question to Patricia, who has just learned she can understand and speak to animals and was led to the Parliament of Birds to be examined. She never finds an answer until the very end. This is going to be a spoiler, but it turns out there's nothing profound about the question, the answer, or even the entire process; it turns out the Parliament of Birds is just a government of birds who adhered to bylaws for no good reason other than that is the point of bylaws.

(Also there is more to the story than birds. Despite the title.)

The serious point that Anders does point to, gently at first, and then clearly toward the end of the book, is that the universe has a diversity of viewpoints and perspectives and as a result, even concepts that seem universal, like ethics, cannot be derived from first principles. If animals can speak and think, then even lofty, well-meaning goals about "saving humanity" seems treacherously narrow-minded. (Of course, the moral of the story is not that animals are people too, but whether individuals are willing to consider perspectives that they could not possibly have a personal frame of reference for.) In the end, Laurence, the white, male Silicon Valley wunderkind who represents a very particular Valley-inspired viewpoint on ethics, loses his ability to speak forever. It's a reminder that it's time for those who claim to speak for all of us, shut up and start to listen.

If Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (one of my all-time favorite books) was a tale of dueling 19th century English magicians, then All the Birds in the Sky is the tale of a present day/near future duel between witchcraft and technology in the US. Only, instead of meeting the magicians as adults, we meet a powerful witch and brilliant technological geek when they’re still just kids. But this isn’t another Harry Potter or The Magicians , where so much of the story unfolds at a secret special school for secret special people. The bulk of All the Birds in the Sky takes place in the mundane world and I loved the juxtaposition of magic and science with everyday life and how they each propose to address pressing global problems such as climate change, environmental catastrophe, and overpopulation. It’s a wonderfully creative, diversely cast book that’s full of humor and wit. At times its humor and humanity reminded me fondly of the work of Tom Robbins, but this book is still very much its own thing and I look forward to seeing what Charlie Jane Anders writes in future.

I did not particularly like this book. I can see why it would appeal to some people, and even why it would be award winning, but it was definitely not my cup of tea.

It wasn't bereft of enjoyment, and I did notice an improvement in the second half of the book, but really what bogged me down was the writing. It's too millennial twee by half - it came as absolutely no surprise to me that the author is a Gawker editor. Rather than reworking or retreading fantasy tropes (abusive parents, terrible sibling, magic school), Anders takes them individually and blows them up to their extremes. I can see why she would take this as a tactic in an exploration of genre, but it just did not work for me in the narrative.

Similarly, Anders lampoons the San Francisco hipster culture with an emphasis on the characters going to silly restaurants or drinking kale beverages, but it quickly became stale and lacked any sort of incisiveness. It was, I think, a sort of purposeless self-consciousness or self-effacement.

The overall plot, which is described as this union/strife between magic and science, slips its narrative veil a bit too easily as cover for our modern approaches to climate change. I think there was a lot of interesting material here, and my favorite parts of the book were the late-mid section where Patricia and Laurence's views on the philosophy of "saving the world" from the coming climactic peril are thrown most into juxtaposition. However, this wasn't explored as well as I would have liked considering it was the most interesting part of the book. Perhaps in an effort to make both of the main characters more likeable or empathetic, Anders sacrificed some of the deeper critiques of both approaches. The synthesis we're supposed to find between them is a bit of a literal deus-ex-machina and does little to satisfy the inquisitive and alert reader.

I am filing this both under fantasy and science fiction and a bunch of other shelves. There are perfectly good reasons for this as this novel manages to touch on so much. It does so successfully, I must say, bridging the gap between magic and technology with more ease than its two protagonists Patricia and Laurence.

Both of them are outcasts in school and don't get along with their parents. They become friends. And then they aren't. They are too different.

One of them has an affinity for the strange, weird and magic and the other is a scientist at heart. It divides them and not only them but their allies as well. The whole story is set before a background in which accelerated climate change has caused and is causing serious natural catastrophes. Towards the end the book turns apocalyptic ...

As a bonus there is one of the coolest and most beautiful concepts for AI in the story that reminds me of last year's Cat Pics Please.