All the Birds in the Sky

After all the hype this book received I was surprised by how bad it was. Yes, the story was predictable and the characters were one-dimensional and not believable, but beyond that the writing itself was just rough. At times it was so bad that it was distracting - I wanted to get out a red pen and fix the sentences so they made sense. If you are interested in this book I would recommend downloading a sample chapter so you can determine for yourself if you can overlook the problems.

I can''t tell you that much about the ending because I just can't get there. The book is very well written. The people are totally believable in the way science fiction/fantasy should be and therefore the pain they are going through at this point in the book (Laurence is going to the military academy) is more than I can bear. I just don't have the emotional stamina for this book. Be warned.

I read this for my book club and my first impression was 3 stars. I reread it 3 more times to be a conscientious club reader. The more I read it the more I hated it. Some very wide and deep plot holes. The science fiction and fantasy crossover did not work for me. A bit too much deus ex machina for me or rather, AI est deus. Read it once and give it away.

An exciting and intriguing book that I couldn't put down, All the Birds in the Sky gave us a view into a world full of fantastic things like magic and super science but at the same time grounded enough that it felt like it could be happening outside my window. Patricia and Laurence are characters with flaws that make them real but those flaws don't become too overwhelming that I disliked the characters or stop caring about their struggles.

The book is weird in the most glorious of ways and I hope that it gets a good adaptation to the screen that can bring that weirdness to life.

180 pages in, I threw in the towel. At this point, I have zero connection with the characters and there's no desire to see where this plot is going. I simply do not care.

Book One introduces Patricia and Laurence in their youth. The writing itself comes off as simplistic and the dialogue childlike, which in lines with their age. I skipped and skimmed through this portion. Patricia can talk to birds and Laurence is enamored with a rocket.

Book Two is their teenage years. They meet and are both outcasts. Larry is a geek with his inventions and Patricia a goth girl desperately seeking her witch powers. The writing here has graduated from childlike to juvenile with a lot of "Uh's" and "I guess". Which fits teenage dialogue. An assassin is introduced who is obsessed with ice cream, a vision and the demise of the two teens.

Book Three fast forwards to their adult lives. Here I'm hoping the dialogue has matured with their age and the writing more enriched (hoping the first two books were sort of a progression mechanism). Unfortunately, I'm underwhelmed. The conversations come off flat and simplistic. The height of the author's writing are tidbits like "he had the nervous energy of nine ferrets" or "Boredom is the mind's scar tissue." Pop culture is littered throughout with references to Britney Spears on the oldies station (that's how you figure out how far in the future you are), MC Frontalot. Eating barbecue tofu tacos and drinking absinthe. Patricia and Laurence telling each other how cool they are.

I'm not sure why this book wasn't directed toward Young Adult. 180 pages and there was one, very lackluster, sex scene. I probably would have given it a higher rating if it were YA. Maybe if you enjoyed Twilight, you'd like this. If you prefer Cashore, Pierce Brown, Naomi Novik definitely look elsewhere.

This was a really enjoyable, charming, slightly odd, makes you think kind of book. I don't write reviews very often, but I think this is the authors first novel and I was more impressed than I have been in some time by this story. I think she deserves a congratulations on a wonderful novel. I stayed up till 3am to finish it when I had work the next day just because I was enjoying it so much. I am off to find her short stories now!

Were you ever up coding late at night, green-on-black, and you felt like any minute the machine might talk back of its own volition? How about the woods-- did you ever follow an animal or a sound for hours and give up just before it led you to another world? This book is magical, and wild, and deep, and big-souled, and spirit, and flesh, and science, and it breaks my heart, and I do not want to ever leave.

I bought this book several months ago and finally got around to picking it off my bookshelf. Now I have regrets.

I did not get very far, but find myself severely disappointed. I read the first 22-24 pages, and decided that I could go no farther. The biggest surprise for me is that this book is not designated Young Adult (as far as I can tell. And since one of the blurbs on the back mentions the word sexy, I really didn't think it would be YA).

This book reads like a 5th to 8th grader wrote it via streaming consciousness. There are so many disjointed thoughts and extremely unrealistic interactions...in the first 24 pages.

The main character gets lost in the woods, and once she is found by her parents, they immediately begin a crazy stream of ranting at her. The first thing her mother tells her is: "You nearly scared us to death. We've been searching, along with all of the neighbors. I swear you must think my time is worthless. You've made me blow a deadline for a management productivity analysis."

What the hell? What parent would speak to their child this way after organizing a neighborhood search party to look for her? The dialogue goes, just as inexplicably, in similar fashion. I read a few passages to people at work. I had things thrown at me.

I cannot in good conscience recommend this book to anyone.

I really, really wanted to like this book. I love fantasy and science fiction, and a book that promised to cover both genres seemed like it would be a treat. I was curious to see how the author would handle both genres, as well as a promised apocalypse and a possible romance. I hoped for a quirky but fun read... and was disappointed in what I got. Disappointed enough that even though I didn't finish this book, I feel compelled to leave a review. (I think the reviews of people who didn't finish a book should count for something, as the reasons why they couldn't complete the book should be taken into account as well. If you think a review shouldn't "count" if the reviewer couldn't/wouldn't finish a book, feel free to skip this.)

"All the Birds in the Sky" follows two young people, Patricia and Laurence (NOT Larry), as they chafe against the restrictions of their respective home lives -- Patricia with strict overachieving parents and a sadistic older sister, Laurence with parents who seem to stifle his intelligence and creativity at every turn. Patricia, in helping a bird with a broken wing, discovers her destiny as a witch, while Laurence builds a two-second time machine and a supercomputer to prove himself as a technological genius. As the two grow up and their paths entwine, they find themselves stalked by an assassin who's convinced that the two of them will be the cause of the apocalypse... and soon magic and science will collide in a conflict that will decide the fate of the world.

That sounds like a promising summary, doesn't it? It's what the dust jacket and a lot of the reviews seem to promise. But I only got so far as the duo's teenage years before I found myself unable to continue. The book tries to be quirky and hip, but only succeeds in feeling random and insufferable in the process. And while there are some creative twists of phrase in the book that I enjoyed, for the most part the writing feels bland and rather pedestrian, and the author tries TOO hard at times to be quirky and weird. Weird for weirdness' sake rarely works in a book -- even strangeness needs a reason, I feel, and even weirdness needs to fit into its world.

Also, the main characters feel curiously bland. There's nothing to Patricia's character besides "I love nature and my family is horrible," and there's nothing to Laurence but "I'm smart and my parents are holding me back." It gets hard to care about characters when they're not given any personality beyond a few notes. And their families really are horrible to the point of being cartoonishly evil, so much so that any relations between the main characters and their families made me cringe. When the most likable and developed character in the book is the assassin on a personal mission to kill the two main characters, you know there's a problem.

Perhaps the book picks up in the second half -- if it improves any, someone please let me know. But for the most part I found it smug and insufferable in its efforts to be fresh and hip, the fantasy and sci-fi elements never gelled together, and the quirkiness for quirkiness' sake detracted from the story more than it helped. I can't bring myself to finish this one.

If you're looking for something offbeat but entertaining that blends fantasy and sci-fi into a satisfying whole, I recommend "Radiance" by Catherynne M. Valente instead. I can't really recommend this one.

Nuff said already. This was my first (and last) Sci-Fi Fantasy novel. I read the entire book. Oh God, it was painful. I hate to say this because the author probably worked very hard on this project. Fantasy folks may love it but hard Sci-Fi folks like me will probably not. There are lines and phrases that were added in for absolutely no reason pertinent to the story line. Meaningless thoughts about nothing. The two main characters were well written but it was difficult to care about them. The bulling history perpetrated on them, while extreme, was still a reality in terms of what some youngsters have to live through today. There the author made a valid point.

Sorry Ms. Anders. (For those out there who jump to big conclusions, I didn't know the author was female until I started this review)

Weird can work. Usually I like weird. But sometimes it doesn't work. For instance, I find the combination of putting a fried egg on a burger weird. Until I tried it and found it to be rather delicious. Other weird things, like, say, putting a burger, fries, and milkshake into a blender, hitting purée, and then drinking it, are not nearly as delicious.

This weird was not delicious.

This tried far too hard to be cool. Like the people who try SUPER hard to be hipsters but fail? That's this book.

The writing was a mess. There was no consistency in the style. It struggled with both stilted and choppy sentences; some of the dialogue was painful to read. There was barely any character development in anyone.

The thing I cared about the most throughout the entire novel? A minor character in the moments where he was having a bizarre relationship with ice cream and whether or not he should eat it.

And honestly, every plot component turned out to be solved a little too easily. Everything that seemed to be important was wiped over like it was simple and no big deal.

I don't know. It just didn't work for me. Oh well. It's not the first time a hyped up book didn't work for me. That's alright. I'm cool with it. What would be fun in liking every book you read?

If I had known that this was an Apocalyptic story, I would have passed it by since I have always found those too depressing, but nothing in the cover blurb warned me (or I missed something) “From an early age, Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead had different – and sometimes opposite – ways of seeing the world. Patricia could talk to animals and even turn herself into a bird, while Laurence build a supercomputer and a time machine (that only went forward two seconds). As they navigated the never-ending nightmare that is junior high school, they become wary allies until an enigmatic guidance counselor with a hidden agenda intervened.” From this, I was expecting a coming of age story.

I guess I should have read the rest of the blub. As I read it now I see what should have been warnings to me: “planet falling apart around them” and “war between science and magic”

Okay, so it is not my usually taste in books.

The first chapter opens reasonable well, but from there on, I had to struggle to finish this book. The book is set in the recent past, current time and near future, yet it is riddled with contemporary “trendy” phrases that knocked me out of the story multiple times. Charlie’s use of {M-MC} was like “You should sneak up on her..” in the narrative almost had me throwing the book across the room. If it had not been a library book, I might have thrown it. I can ignore that usage in dialog, but not in the narrative.

On a personal note: I felt like I was being lectured too about how evil humans are. That did not help me enjoy the book.

The plot is ponderous and meandering. There are several scenes that did not truly advance the story, or should have been somewhere else in the book. One flashback scene was especially annoying since we’d gotten hints about these events several times. That scene would have worked just as well, if not better, if it had been placed earlier.

The sub-plot about the guidance counselor never really materializes. You never got a real idea of who he was, who he worked for, or what he was doing. That needed to be better developed or dropped.

There were very few surprises in the story; in fact, most of it was painfully predictable. The one plot point that I didn’t figure out before it was revealed fell flat – my reaction was “give me a break”. The foreshadowing for one event was so heavy handed that you know it is going to happen, it is just a matter of when

The characters were poorly developed. The MC’s were two dimensional, at best, with only a few hints about their motivations. The rest of the cast are little more than line drawing – stereotypes. All authority figures were jerks – period. Everyone bullied the MC’s at school with no explanation of why – just the typical “they were different”. I find it hard to believe that no one, teachers or classmates, would reach out to either MC. The parents were stereotypically clueless about their children while being psychologically abusive. I never felt any connection with the characters; in fact, I did not like any of them.

Honestly, I was ready to stop by halfway through but kept reading in mixture of hope that it would improve and morbid fascination. It was like looking at a train wreck – how bad is it really? 1 out of 5

An assassin from an ancient order has a drug-induced vision that a boy and a girl will one day spearhead the forces of science and magic in a clash that will eventually bring about the end of humanity. The girl has already found a way to talk to animals, while the boy has secretly built an AI in his closet. But enemies they are not. Misunderstood by their parents and ostracised by their classmates, they are, if anything, the closest thing they have to friends. Their paths will eventually diverge, and they will meet again in adulthood. Will they fulfil the destinies, as foreseen by the assassin, or will they be able to find a middle ground between science and magic, between mind and nature?

A highly unusual premise to an even more unusual, genre-defying tale. While normally dubbed a crossbreed between science fiction and fantasy, Charlie Jane Andrews' award-winning novel is actually more akin to Latin American magical realism, but with an idiosyncratic, 21-century high-tech tinge: Hipsters instead of guerrillas, DIY spaceships and 2-second time machines instead of religious miracles and the mild San Francisco weather instead of the sultry tropical nights of Macondo.

Andrews does a remarkable feat here. Not only does she successfully fuse stock science fiction and stock fantasy elements into the same tale, but walking a very thin line, she manages to always stay on the right side of quirky, avoiding the pitfalls of the slapstick or the absurd. Also, by presenting the fantastic and supernatural as mundane, and the mundane as supernatural, she weaves a world that is indisputably our own, yet also, in its own way, ‘magical’. This is what sets the novel apart from all mainstream sci fi and fantasy in recent years and what is perhaps behind the host of accolades it has gathered.

A highly refreshing and different book that is the very definition of ‘out-of-the-box’.

In a battle to save the world from destruction, magic and science reach a dangerous and fantastical stalemate. But that tension and violence are not the focus of Charlie Jane Anders' novel, ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY. Instead, it is the friendship and affection between two characters each typifying one of those powerful forces. Patricia Delfine represents the uncontrolled, organic and unpredictable powers of nature, while Laurence Armstead signifies the ordered yet hazardous promises of science. The book follows their relationship over the years as they struggle to understand their gifts as well as their responsibilities.

Patricia and Laurence are born oddballs and outcasts. Patricia’s parents see her as lazy and unambitious, preferring her secretly sadistic older sister. Patricia turns toward nature instead of people, and, after an encounter with a grand and sentient tree and a parliament of birds, she comes to know herself as a witch capable of strange magic that connects her to living things in amazing ways. When she meets Laurence in middle school, he is a tech geek who has already created a working time machine, albeit one that only goes two seconds into the future. Laurence imagines life at a school for math and science where he can be himself. They are both targets of bullies and misunderstood by their own families, but at least they have each other.

They have each other, that is, until the arrival at their school of Theodolphus Rose, a trained assassin posing as the guidance counselor. Rose had seen visions of a future full of “[d]eath and chaos, engines of destruction, whole cities crumbling, and a plague of madness. And, at the last, a war between magic and science that would leave the world in ashes.” To stop this devastation, he believes, means separating, perhaps even destroying, those who would usher in this apocalypse: Patricia and Laurence. The two are forced apart, and each follows a destiny that ultimately brings them together again as young adults. But by then, the wheels are in motion for the catastrophe Rose envisioned, and it may prove too difficult for Patricia (with her Tricker and Healer magic) and Laurence (with his Pathway to Infinity) to stop.

What will triumph in the battle between magic and science? What is more powerful in the struggle between love and doubt? ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY tackles these questions as its protagonists find romance in a world unraveling. With a little help from a magic-science Artificial Intelligence love-child, the world may be able to create itself anew. Before that, however, readers are treated to a smart and wacky novel with great gadgets, secret societies, enchanted schools, philosophic musings, ecological conundrums and dramatic possibilities.

ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY is romantic, audacious and, perhaps most importantly, a thoroughly entertaining book that challenges the parameters and conventions of science fiction and fantasy in wonderful ways.

Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

I had a rough time with this book. It's definitely not for everyone. I feel like the author got distracted by different YA books while writing this and then tried to use those influences in her writing. When a writer uses "and then she was like" instead of "she said" I think of how a preteen might write a story. This is what a lot of the book felt like to me. As if a preteen had an idea and tried to write a book. The ending felt somewhat unfinished as well. I have seen that this is a highly recommended book but after reading lots of sci-fi and fantasy, I am puzzled as to why people are so enamored with this one.

Rating: 2.5/5

Genre: Adult Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Recommended Age: 15+ (mature language, mature scenes)

An ancient society of witches and a hipster technological startup go to war in order to prevent the world from tearing itself. To further complicate things, each of the groups’ most promising followers (Patricia, a brilliant witch and Laurence, an engineering “wunderkind”) may just be in love with each other.

As the battle between magic and science wages in San Francisco against the backdrop of international chaos, Laurence and Patricia are forced to choose sides. But their choices will determine the fate of the planet and all mankind.

In a fashion unique to Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky offers a humorous and, at times, heart-breaking exploration of growing up extraordinary in world filled with cruelty, scientific ingenuity, and magic. – the store.com

Here is a book that I thought held a lot of promise, but didn’t really grab my interest a lot. I thought the concept, while lofty, was really intriguing and that the character development was really well done in this book… but beyond that I didn’t like this book.

I thought that the book’s plot was not very well developed. It had a lot of good build-up but in the end the book failed completely to explain and resolve the major conflicts in my opinion. The pacing was very weird as well. The timing skips around a lot and the way the author writes the book is a bit weird as well. You really do have to pay attention to the book and to the writing in order to completely comprehend the book, which is probably why I failed to understand this book. I was trying to get through this book quickly so my husband could read it for our book club and I felt that I either missed some things in the book or the book didn’t do a good job at explaining to me what was going on.

Verdict: I felt completely let down by this book that I believe could have been a really great sci-fi vs. magic book. I feel that the writing was wonky, the book too hard to comprehend to some readers, and that the book had some major flaws in it. I wouldn’t totally count this book out as it is marketed as a national bestseller, so I would give at least the first part of the book a quick read through to see if you like it, but for me it just wasn’t something that I enjoyed.

Up until ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY, the only other Charlie Jane Anders fiction I've read was the novelette "Six Months, Three Days" which won the Best Novelette Hugo in 2012 in Chicago and which was nominated for several other awards. It was a brilliant story, but since I generally don't read a lot of short fiction, I haven't read anything else of hers. 2017 Hugo finalist ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY popped up on my radar early last year when there was a lot of buzz about the book, especially on the Coode Street Podcast. I'd been wanting to read the book, but for some reason had made no effort to do so until it came up as an Audible Deal of the Day. I snarfed it up immediately, and was happy to see it was announced as a finalist for the Best Novel Hugo.

ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY is the story of two people, Patricia and Laurence. We follow their story from the time they are children, around 6 or 7 years of age or so, through their middle school adolescent years, through high school, and beyond. Patricia learns at an early age that she may be able to practice magic - having birds and a tree talk to you will kind of steer you in that direction. Laurence discovers that he has a knack for gadgets; he invents a device that looks like a wrist watch but is actually a time machine that moves the wearer two seconds into the future at the push of a button. He travels to MIT on his own to witness the launch of a rocket and meets a bunch of college age students who have all invented that same time machine. His life is never the same after that.

Patricia and Laurence become friends. They have a few things in common, including overbearing parents, being outcasts at school - and being treated miserably; I think a lot of us can sympathize with that - and being different. Laurence, of course, is the nerd who doesn't like the outdoors. Patricia is a loner. They have their talents, and they share the knowledge of those talents with each other. All of this makes them targets for the "in crowd" at school. But they are targets in another fashion. An assassin is after them, an assassin who believes that they are special, and will play a big role in the coming apocalypse if they are not disposed of.

Eventually, Patricia and Laurence drift apart. They run into each other now and again, but they travel in different circles. Laurence is a member of an organization that is working on a secret project that the group hopes will save humanity from the coming end times. Patricia has become a magician and is a member of a local group of magicians which is working toward the prevention of the same apocalypse. Each one of them is special within their own group, and both play a big part in each organizations plan to save the world. As the reader might guess, there's enough going on in the world without the inevitable confrontation between technology and magic mucking about with things. And yet, that confrontation does happen and does play an important part of the story.

ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY is a brilliant novel, but it's not about the apocalypse, not by a long shot. It's a story about relationships (as was, come to think of it "Six Months, Three Days"); the relationship between Laurence and Patricia, the relationship between magic and technology, the relationship between insiders and outsiders, the relationship between nature and science, the relationship between those in power and those not in power. All these relationships are woven into a tapestry that tells a terrific story about what may be the end of the world and how we as a human race, along with a bit of help from technology and magic, deal with adversity. Anders makes us care about these characters, and I think we as readers get a head start in this department as there are many people who can relate to being treated as outsiders and outcasts. We can also relate to finding that group within which we fit like a glove, and we see that happen for both Patricia and Laurence.

It's hard to categorize this book as either science fiction or fantasy, but I don't think there's really a need to do so (unless the reader really wants to, then the reader can make up their own minds as to what this book really is). While magic and technology are important to the story, they are not the point of the story; the magic and technology are there as a framework to move the story along, to help the relationships I've already talked about take center stage as humanity fights for survival.

The end of the novel is one of the most poignant and lovely scenes I've read in a very long time. Both Patricia and Laurence have suffered great losses along with the rest of humanity, and their realization that they need each other to move forward and help each other deal with what's out there makes for one of the best endings to a novel I've read in a very long time.

Alyssa Bresnahan is, for me, the perfect narrator for the book. Her ability to switch between the various characters, whether they be human, animal, or otherwise (hey, I can't give it all away) is outstanding, as is her ability to provide emotional nuance to each of the characters as they go through both good and bad times to get to the end of the world.

ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY really surprised me. I didn't know what to expect as I ventured into it, but what I got was nothing short of outstanding. Your version of the end of the world may be different from this one, but if I had to pick one for myself I think I'd choose this one.

In a decade, fans of science fiction will scratch their heads and wonder how an insubstantial book like ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY won a Nebula Award. The answer is (of course) that Charlie Jane Anders is a well-known fixture in San Francisco writing circles and has been a very productive and active writer and editor for over a decade. Anders has a lot of energy, works hard, and has substantial writing skills. She has a lot of visibility and when it comes to the Nebula, that helps win votes. So what’s the problem with ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY?

The major flaw of ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY is that it does not take science fiction and fantasy seriously as an art form. The holy grail of science fiction it to create a fictional world so believable that it seems as real as the one we inhabit, if not better. All of the landmark works of science fiction and fantasy from War Of The Worlds to Tolkien, Heinlein, Le Guin, Clarke and even contemporary works like Neuromancer take the material extremely seriously. These are writers that want you to feel the story they are telling you is true. And you never feel it’s a true story for one second with ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY. If you wanted to make excuses, you could argue that all SFF does not have to be serious, and there’s room for slighter “fun” works like David Wong’s book John Dies At The End. But nobody (not even Wong) is mistaking that book for a literary achievement worth a prize. Anders stated in an interview that she had trouble at times with her own book being “too broad and over-the-top” so she’s aware that she did not set out to write a serious work of literature but something more fun.

Readers are pleased by the “fresh” blend of magic and high technology in ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY, but this mashup has already been done far more seriously by C.S. Lewis, Jack Vance, Van Vogt (The Wizard Of Linn) and quite a few others most notably Lucas in STAR WARS. Admittedly, there feels like a stronger trend in the last decade to do a mashup of pop-culture, sci-fi, and magic. Neil Gaiman and N.K. Jemisin are doing this style of mashup, among many others. This is now very fertile ground for writers, but it's also tricky to make the blend work. Again, the key is whether we believe the presentation of technology or magic is believable. (For an example of magic taken seriously as literature, try Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.)

To her credit, Anders has a deft writing style. Sentence-by-sentence she’s easy to read and feels clever, but the snarky non-committal humor warns us of her insincerity as a writer. Her characters are so heavily influenced by other well-known works of popular culture that one could make a parlor game out of tracing the borrowed elements from other writers. To be fair, Anders is embedded in contemporary pop-culture, and like author Ernest Cline (Ready Player One) the key tactic in Anders strategy as a writer is to embed so many pop-culture references that we can’t help but catch a few and each one encourages us to keep reading. This is like following a trail of bread crumbs, but one that unfortunately goes nowhere magical, and does not feed ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY with a substantial meal.

"'The secret to a successful webcomic is to trick people into believing they will only get all the jokes if they read regularly. By the time they realize there are no jokes for them to get, they've invested too much time to quit, and they can't admit they've been duped,' said Kevin. 'There is a whole art to creating nonexistent jokes that appear to go over everyone's head. It's much harder than creating actual jokes'" (Anders 136).

This quote, taken straight from the book itself, is the perfect summation of how I feel after reading this book. I feel duped. I actually almost DNF this book at pg 91, but I feel that I can't really give the book a truthful review after only reading about 28% of it, so I persevered and sadly I can't say that my opinion changed much from that point on.

Before I go any further I will say yes I get that this a book directed at higher thought. Anders is trying to make a point about perspective. The entire book straight from the opening question "Is a tree red?", through the chronicled lives of Patricia and Laurence (no, not Larry or Lawrence with a 'w") is written as contrasting perspectives. Patricia, a girl, Laurence a boy. One has magic, the other loves technology, her parents are overwhelmingly overreaching, his parents are alarmingly underwhelming and ineffectual. It goes like this back and forth on and on and on. They're unlikely friends except that they're not, because they're both outsiders, and yet one really has to ask oneself, are they actually friends? Truthfully, at least for the majority of the book I would have to say no. They're both kind of mean to each other, one more than the other, and when it comes time for one to come through and help the other, they fail spectacularly. Over and over again. Now this in and of itself, could be another thematic point about people and their interactions that Anders is trying to address, but all her characters do is make me mad. I disliked both of them. I felt their reasoning was flawed. Why couldn't they just talk to each other? Time and time again they are dragged along by the people around them and more and more problems arise. Maybe this is commentary on the state of society, so embroiled in ourselves and our own purpose, we don't take time to look at the other side. Again perspectives.

Now lets tackle the flow of the story itself, which I happen to find intentionally vague and boring. I truthfully have never been so bored by a book in all my life. It would take me minutes to get off a page because I was constantly zoning out. Just this morning as I was reading it I took a pause in finishing because I remembered that I need to buy deodorant when I go to Target later today. I also am sadly bereft of nail polish on my fingers now because of the constant picking. I did basically anything that I could do to distract myself from the book. It's one of those books written in a seemingly unassuming way until something random pops out of nowhere. Take for example, Theodolphus, the random assassin turned guidance counselor. One moment he just appears, eating cake at the airport only to be poisoned mere seconds later. Who is he? Why does he exist? Does he have an actual purpose or is he simply intentionally mysterious to suggest to readers that more is actually happening then we understand? I don't know, but more importantly, I don't care, and I never did. Because he's boring. He has no life. He, like other characters, are written by actions, as opposed to feeling. They do things. They cause problems. But they don't feel, or emote or have reason. And because of that they don't evoke feeling.

This book, when I care to actually puzzle out what truly happened, boils down simply to me as a series of "whys?"

SPOILERS

Why are Patricia's parents so mean? Why won't Laurence's parents just send him to the science school? Why does Theodolphus want Laurence dead, and Patricia to kill him? Why is 'this' world falling apart? etc. (And I say 'this world' because like above I'm sure Anders is making an allusion to the current state of society but she doesn't truly establish that state within the confines of her book, so while I can draw conclusions based on the society we live in she doesn't really explain it.) And you know what? I can probably answer all of these questions and more with one word. Perspective. Are Patricia's parents truly as mean as they seem? (they're pretty nasty let me tell you), or is it just her perspective? Her sister seems to think otherwise. I could go on and on and answer all my questions with that one word. But then I'd have to ask why did she write this book this way? Why does it take Anders so long to make her point? why is the book a series of unlikely encounters and vignettes until the final 80 pages when the book decided to develop a plot? Is it like Peregrine, waiting for an access code to wake it up? Or was Anders making yet another point? Again perspectives.

So even with the messages tacked throughout it's just boring to me. It follows 2 people, through their both uneventful and violently fanciful lives. It's a hodgepodge of everyday situations mixed with extremes. It's jarring in its writing style and mashed together poorly. So who's right? Me, or others who have claimed that this book is ahead of it's time, that it's tackling big ideas and making people think? Or is it simply like that webcomic Kevin mentioned? I read it regularly (I even finished it) and got all the points, I think. But do the points make sense, or do they not even exist? Or did Anders actually succeed and write a book with nonexistent points that went over my head?

Having read some very positive things about this novel, I decided to check it out of the library. It was actually listed in a catalog entry of time travel books, which is a favorite subject of mine.
Aside from a minor subplot involving time traveling 2 seconds into the future, what this book seems to be about is the horribly depressing lives of two young people. They are relentlessly bullied at school, punished for no good reason by two sets of the most awful parents one can imagine, and just generally made to feel like their talents and intelligence will never earn them anything but a severe beat-down from the entire world.
After struggling through the first 100 soul-killing pages, I had to stop reading.
As someone who was bullied throughout grammar school and middle school, I kept wondering when the protagonists were going to kill themselves. Not that I think that suicide is a solution. Far from it. I'm quite happy that I didn't succeed at my attempt. But the author puts her two main characters through such wrenching ugliness and abuse that I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if the thought crossed their minds.
So I confess, I couldn't get past those first 100 pages. Maybe things start picking up for Patricia and Laurence later in the story. I hope so.
But the first third of this book should only be read if you enjoy reading about young people having their spark and potential squeezed out of them, thrown onto the floor and stomped on.

To be candid, this kind of writing worries me on a basic level. While I suppose, it's supposed to be "weird and cool", it's more like what someone without children, or without any experience with them, thinks it's like to be a child in school. The characters, outside of the two main protagonists, are basically psychopaths. If school was anywhere in the realm of this plot, they could not function. And, instead of being an "element " in the story, it just goes on and on.

I just lost interest about 6 chapters in. The plot went glacially slow, and there's only so much cartoonish child violence you can take.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect from this book when I received it in the mail a few weeks ago, I really enjoyed the short story collection Charlie Jane Anders released lat year but the stories were all over the place style wise so I didn’t know what I was getting into with this one. I think I can honestly say that All The Birds In The Sky was one of the weirdest, yet most interesting books I’ve read in the last year or so. I made the mistake of starting this book a couple hours before work on the assumption that I would just read a few chapters before I had to leave only to get lost in the story and end up over an hour late for work.

Even knowing I was already late for work it was surprisingly difficult to stop reading so that I could leave. I don’t know if I can properly convey exactly why I enjoyed this book so much, it was such an odd mix of science fiction and fantasy that I’ve been struggling with this review. I know combining the two genres is becoming more common these days but I feel like usually when it happens the two genres mesh really well together. In All The Birds In The Sky it seemed like the science and magic were always in constant conflict. It made for a really interesting story and some odd moments when the viewpoint switched from one main character with their foot firmly on the side of science to one who’s influenced the most by the magic.

I wish I could do a better job describing just what made me love this book so much but I’m definitely struggling with that. So I will say that Charlie Jane Anders is a fantastic author and All The Birds In The Sky is well written and definitely worth reading, I would even say it was worth missing time at work to read. I think it really says something about the book that I was so absorbed in the story that I ended up being late for work when I’m never late for work. I’m thankful to Tor for introducing me to Charlie Jane Anders with her collection of short stories and I can’t wait to see what she writes about next!

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was an interesting read. At times the writing was dreamy, sort of like Neil Gaiman. At times it was genre-bending, like a Kurt Vonnegut take on science fiction. Here's the difference though. The themes in Vonnegut's writings were MORE than deep enough to carry his usually shallow stories. In Gaiman's writings, the story is MORE than enough to carry the lack of a specific message; they're just good stories. Overall, I just finished this novel without knowing what the theme was.

In All The Birds in the Sky, There's a rather shallow story of the battle between technology and magic, which would be cool if there were any explanation of either side's actions. On the other hand, the themes are kind of all over the place. A love story that isn't really complete. Environmental destruction. Politics. America's the bad guy. Which leads me to my biggest complaint...

Now, I swear on my goodreads account that this is a true story: My initial opinion of the writing was that it was the sarcastic, politically correct, opinionated, "holier than thou" tone of, say, Gawker.com. It wasn't until I finished the book that I discovered the author was, in fact, an editor for a Gawker site. There's a lot of alternative, new age-y ideas as well, and I enjoy that point of view, but this novel included a beginner's course on why traditional education is a sham, and how the U.S. Military agenda is ridiculous, and dozens of other stereotypes.

I ramble, like I usually do on opinionated reviews. But this book was on the borderline of being excellent. Instead, it is just good, with some humor that was great, and some humor that made me cringe. Then there was the opinionated themes, and lack of a real solid story. I think most people will enjoy this book a lot, but I'd give it 3.5 stars.

In the end, I wanted more out of All The Birds In The Sky.

All The Birds In The Sky as a book feels a lot like its protagonists: always reaching for something more, and not sure if they've made it there yet. The book is good. Too good to feel as light as it does, which is why I wanted more. It's a good book that feels like it should have been a great book.

The plot is this: Patricia, as a young girl, learns that she may be a witch when a bird talks to her and takes her to the Tree, where all the birds meet and pose a question to her. Her potential witch status makes her something of an outcast, and causes her to bond with Laurence, whose own unhappiness and focus on science makes him an outsider, too. Never really friends but not quite enemies, Laurence and Patricia form a unique bond that carries them through most of high school before their paths diverge.

From there, it's a small [SPOILER ALERT] to tell you that their paths meet up again as the possible end of the world is looming: the two are on opposite sides, each of which faction has its own, possibly terrible, idea about how to solve all the problems in the world.

There's a lot to love about this book: Anders creates a system of magic that is deceptively awesome in its simplicity, and throws in the kind of true-seeming science that books like this rely on, both without getting caught up in all the arcana that, say, Lev Grossman's Magicians series does with magic or Larry Niven might for science. There are touches of humor, too, throughout the book, which give it the kind of light quality that allows the book to deal with serious (and sometimes dark) themes and scenes. All of this is good, and what makes it a good book.

The downfall, though, is the book feels underdeveloped, or perhaps rushed, or both. At times, I wondered if maybe it was intended as a YA book; it felt simple in a not-bad way, simple the way the Narnia books sometimes felt simple, but at other times it felt rushed, or as though something had been cut out. I wondered after I finished it if maybe the publisher hadn't made the book be cut back to fit a page length that it thought we be more economical or something. It has that feel to it. There's a lot of stuff in the book that feels exposition-y or voiced-over, like Laurence's romance with another girlfriend throughout the book; the entire relationship feels like an example of tell rather than show, the way you might if you really wanted the readers to know something, but had a time limit.

Then there is the story of Theodolphus Rose, a master assassin who enters the story with plans to kill Patricia and Laurence while they're still young, because he's foreseen them destroying the world; after a major buildup with Rose, his storyline just peters out in a way that feels almost entirely unconnected to the first part of the story. Had Rose been cut out of the story entirely I think the book would be no worse for it, which says a lot about a master assassin who takes a job as a guidance counselor.

There are also minor things that don't fit in, like two of the more powerful witches, one who does spells by telling stories, a magic that nobody else has, and one whose mere presence causes anything biological to grow crazily. These two characters are brought in and out as needed, and the fact that their magic is so different from everyone else's goes unexplained.

Near the end, I started to think that this was maybe book 1 of a series, and that the feeling I was getting from the book was the way I feel when confronted with an origin story: it needs to be gotten over with, if told at all. (I think origin stories are often unnecessary but that's for another day.) I'd have liked that a lot better than having the finale to the story compressed into the final 10% or so of the book.

Then there is the ending: although it plays into the setup and beginnings of the characters, the way it comes off is a bit deus ex machina ish. I won't spoil it for anyone who wants to read the book, but I found the ending a bit unsatisfying given everything that had come before. The book set up some pretty high stakes, only to have them not matter at all in the end; to get the effect of what I'm talking about, imagine that after everything that happened in Star Wars, instead of the rebels assaulting the Death Star, it simply blows up as it exits hyperspace and Princess Leia gives Han the money to pay off Jabba because the rebels just saved so much in not having to fight. While not the same thing as what happens in All The Birds, the feeling is the same.

I don't mean to run it down too much; the book is still a good one. I enjoyed reading it, but it never felt like it rose above standard fantasy/scifi fare. But for all that, Anders is a very good writer, and has some obviously great ideas, ideas that would have been better served with a book that more fully explored them instead of a book that just felt like it had to hit its marks on time.

For some novels, mixing tropes from different parts of the spectrum of science fiction and fantasy can seem indecisive or inconsistent. Not so with Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky, which blends numinous urban fantasy with physics-and-rocketry science fiction in a way that allows the strengths of both to complement each other. One of our two protagonists, Patricia, discovers early on her potential as a witch, foreseen and challenged by the Parliament of Birds to solve a riddle to realize her power; her path through adolescence as she tries to rediscover her power separates her from those around her. The other, Laurence, is a technical wunderkind, his skill with science and engineering both motivated by and contributing to his isolation from his schoolmates. Their orbits intersect in school, and like a pair of eccentric planets in an unsolvable three-body problem, their trajectories fling them far apart, only to fall back into each other’s gravity wells again and again, even as they are recruited into opposing factions in a conflict between science and magic that is prophesized as both inevitable and catastrophic.

Their interweaving coming-of-age stories combine with a broader plot involving climate change, which in the near-future (or perhaps alternate-present) of this story is already responsible for some major disasters that are alluded to in geographic shorthand, the way we might reference “Fukushima” or “Katrina”. The reader doesn’t need to know the details to know that the effects of those disasters are still reverberating. With the world on the precipice of an apocalyptic-level disaster, Laurence’s technical institute (led by a vaguely Elon-Musk-esque figure convinced that we must get a significant fraction of humanity off-world) and Patricia’s community of practioners (which through a series of cautionary tales about the dangers of arrogance has eschewed any strong structure of leadership) each have their own ideas of how to address the global threat. These ideas are themselves incompatible, of course, which ultimately pits Laurence and Patricia directly against each other in a conflict neither of them ever wanted.

While the cycle of successes and failures of Patricia and Laurence’s ability to relate to each other form the emotional core of the story, their individual stories are each important as well. Patricia goes off to a school of magic while Laurence follows the stereotypical Silicon-Valley-genius path to knowledge and success, but despite their differences, their stories still feel like two parts of a unified whole. The numinous sense of powers beyond our ken, typical to the fantasy tropes of Patricia’s story, are echoed in Laurence’s story as bits of technology that seem only mildly remarkable within the story but appear magical to readers – the two-second time machine, the supercomputer rewriting its own code, the network of smartphone-like gadgets that subtly guide their owners to serendipitous occurrences. Meanwhile, the science-fictional tropes of Laurence’s story – the sense of a framework of physical laws that must be contended with, and the characters’ search for knowledge and power within that framework – weave through Patricia’s gradually deepening understanding of her magic, and the strict rules imposed on it by both her peers and by the rules by which she can conduct her witchcraft. The result – and, perhaps, the moral of the story – is the idea that trying to save the world using only one side of that dichotomy between the concrete and the spiritual is an effort doomed to failure, but by seeking the synthesis of, and balance between, two opposing but not necessarily contradictory forces, we can accomplish far more than we could with either one on its own.

My only complaint about the story is the abruptness of its ending. The novel’s conclusion promises far greater things than we actually see before the story ends, so I really hope there’s a sequel coming – but I went in thinking this was a standalone novel, so the amount of plot left open or unresolved was a little surprising.

The book begins with the two main characters as children. Both are misunderstood by their parents and bullied by their peers -- both to an absurd, essentially surreal degree. For a while I thought I might've picked a YA novel by mistake, but as the story progressed it grew darker and more complex until it encompassed more adult themes. I felt the transitions from childhood to adult problems and actions were handled well.

Ms. Anders paced her story well, and it held my attention all the way through. I really wanted the characters to succeed, and I felt bad for them when they encountered obstacles or were hurt. The themes centered on hubris, and we've encountered many such themes that speak to the hubris of science and technology. In this book, that was contrasted with (and weighed against) the hubris of magic and power. The author's message comes clear at the end in a satisfying and lighthearted way.

Though I suspect I'm not a member of Ms. Anders' target audience (by several decades) I enjoyed the heck out of this one. This review is for the Kindle edition, which I checked out from my local library.

If you can overlook richly drawn characters who think, feel and grow; a romance with sex scenes more unostentatiously arousing than all the Shades of Grey with Maestra for spice; a post-Rowling magical world living among us that lets us all encounter not-quite-Hogwarts in striking new insights; a prefiguring that multiplies suspense even as it comes true in surprising ways; and the somehow surprising question, "When you are both naked together for that magical first time, just what new magic would a beloved and deeply arousing witch add to the fireworks?" Write yourself into such a scene with Harry, Hermione, Ginnie or your favorite Pottermore person, and I think you will find this novel outdoes your imagination (you can see if she outdoes your fantasies, as that word was the old Penthouse letters column, before Guccione's lady loved passed away and he lost any redeeming touch of love amongst the bodily fluids).

Yeppers, setting all that aside and not flipping back to re-read the sexy bits, Charlie Jane Anders somehow imagines an utterly new AI (artificial intelligence). This character is born in a teener boy's closet, and never quite dominates the world (let alone exterminating us).

Nor do the heavens open, nor does Singularity descend in glory. No one is uploaded into the vastly deeps of humongous orbiting hardware.

This AI just quietly revutionizes life - like Steve Jobs reborn with a Boddisatva's smiling calm joy. It is called a caddy and somehow resembles a guitar pick, and is plotted so deftly, so quietly unobtrusively awesome (as in feeling a jaw dropping amazement, perhaps even C. S. Lewis awe after he was Surprised by Joy) that Perigran almost matches the central romantic lovers. Imagine "get a room" used quite naturally in the last scenes of a Jane Austen love story.

If I were not happily married, and still in my depths in love with Andre Alice Norton and Connie Willis, I would find myself is a triangle, where both Charlie Jane and her wonderful witch might magically keep me at army's length but still as dedicated as a troubadour worshipping his lady love from afar.

I was hoping to like this book. I really tried to like this book, but I just couldn't. The concepts and world are solid, but I couldn't make it beyond the halfway point. The start of the book is just so relentlessly depressing that it pushed me away from the rest of it. It was so much that I didn't feel sympathy for the characters after a point. I just wanted to stop reading and go do something else.

I found the two leads unlikable to begin with, so trying to tug on my heart strings for them wasn't happening. I'm okay with gritty, depressing moments leading to the further development of characters. I write stories, and I do that as well, but that only affords so much leeway. The start of the book was just so genuinely unpleasant, I was removed from the entire experience. I wasn't rooting them for to succeed anymore, because I just wanted the story to end.

I did find the story ideas and the world around the leads very interesting, perhaps enough to carry the book, but I just couldn't do it with the leads I found so unlikable and the sour taste the start of the book left in my mouth.

Charlie Jane Anders covers familiar territory – high school geek/outcasts dealing with societal collapse thanks to climate change -- but with such a feel for character and a willingness to grapple with major issues (both personal and cultural) that “All the Birds in the Sky” (Tor, $25.99, 316 pages) is one of the best scifi novels of 2016.

But though “All the Birds in the Sky” begins with Laurence and Patricia as teen-agers, the book follows them into adulthood, and their struggle to find their way in a world desperate for solutions is far from the easy answers that usually abound in young adult fiction.

I could start to discuss the plot, but the twists and turns (all internally consistent) would confuse more than enlighten, so I’ll settle for saying that witches, big science and a slow slide into global collapse are all parts of a page-turning narrative.

And just one more thing: This is a really, really good book and you should go buy it now.

Patricia is a budding witch, Laurence is building a supercomputer in his closet, and in the midst of their lifelong friendship magic and science threaten to create an apocalypse. The first third takes place in middle school, where both characters are victims of bullying and abuse, and is simply awful to read; the middle third is a routine but emotional 20-something coming of age, and the final third is the apocalypse plot. So if that first third seems endless: hold on, it gets better. But the entire book has an exaggerated, self-deprecatory, hipster, comic vibe, with sentences. Written. Like this.--and that style is unremitting, and I detest it. (Readers with different taste will have better luck.) I'd read in other reviews that All the Birds in the Sky is an interesting crossover between fantasy and science fiction, but, while it's an engaging premise and the end is a satisfying combines of both influences, there isn't enough meta- and genre-commentary for me. This wasn't to my tastes, nor did it reward my persistence--so I can't recommend it.

Charlie Jane Anders has been the talk of the Sci-Fi world this year, with her debut novel, All the Birds in the Sky, winning a Nebula and nomination for a Hugo, among its many other accolades. I think it deserves the praise.

All the Birds in the Sky is a story about abuse, growth, fear, artificial intelligence, the transcendental power of the mind, and the unknowable power of nature. It's something of a treatise, from a Bay Area native, on the dangers of taking technology too far—something I've been thinking about quite a bit, incidentally.

The story follows the lives of two characters, Patricia and Laurence, who become friends as children, finding solace in each other's company, processing their traumas together. They discover they're a witch and gifted technologist, respectively, which drives a wedge between them, the resulting separation causing even more pain to each of them.

The three-act structure of the book is divided among periods in the protagonists’ lives, and leaps into their twenties—after Patricia has gone to Witch School after rescuing Laurence from a horrible military boarding school. Patricia has grown into a capable Healer, who cures people in San Francisco of all manner of ills, from actual sickness to fatal marital conflicts. Meanwhile, Laurence is a hot-shot engineer, whose connections and skill placed him in San Francisco as well, where he’s a rockstar in the tech industry. Our heroes meet again, at a party, and rekindle something of their old friendship. It blossoms into something more, and they work together to redefine themselves while recalling their traumas.

The final act consists of an epic conflict between the forces of witchcraft (nature) and technology, which, because it's awesome, I won't detail here. You'll have to read the book. Which you should absolutely do.

Anders’s writing flows easily between ecstatic and window-pane, reserving stylistic flair for the moments of surreality that punctuate the novel. It creates a powerful effect—the contrast between the moments of magic and pain is stronger for it.

My only issue with the novel was the uneven pacing between the first act and the others. The first act—the childhood and abuses portion—was longer and slower-paced than its adolescent and adult counterparts and, for me, the latter two acts dealt with much more interesting philosophical questions about the nature of consciousness, morality, technology, humanity, and the limits of each of those subjects. Because the bulk of the action in the story takes places in the second and third acts, it feels like it races through those discussions, and I'd have liked to explore the topics a little deeper with her characters.

I loved the idea of putting technology and magic against each other in our world, especially one that I've become intimately familiar with throughout my (admittedly short) career. San Francisco and Silicon Valley are complicated places, and more than a few of the ideas that come out of these places could use the careful consideration that a book like All the Birds in the Sky gives to the merits of limitless technological progress.

I really wanted to like this book more than I ended up liking it in actuality. I was intrigued by the blurb and have had some awareness of the interesting online presence of the author, Charlie Jane Anders.

"All the Birds in the Sky" had a somewhat rough start: each section featured one of the at first unrelated, MG/YA-type protagonists, Laurence (NOT "Larry") and Patricia. Patricia's story had a more appealing beginning, for me, which is the reason I kept going with the book.

While I appreciated the language and flow most of the time, the author took too many "short-cuts," skipping huge portions of each of the characters' lives in order to advance the story.

Another gripe: this book is most decidedly NOT a MG or even YA-audience book, since there are explicit sexual scenes and graphic violence, almost-impossible-to-comprehend, mythic-type conflicts, elements of advanced science (mostly pseud0-science). intricate politics, and confusing (as well as very dark) representations of parents, teachers, siblings, friendship, magic and artificial intelligence that I do not believe readers under 17 coujld readily comprehend nor should they probably read about them in these depictions.

A good editor should have told this author: 1) do not start this book with those first sections; use the most relevant sections for flashback purposes only, or pare those down to the most salient scenes; 2) delete the entire sub-plot of Mr. Rose/ 86 his character; 3) create another "villain," since Rose was woefully inadequate as one in this book, or skip the villain trope all together; 4) Unless Patricia's sister plays a more significant role (perhaps as the villain?) in P's adult life, 86 her, too; 5) develop the witchy and scientific characters who matter much better (more depth, more backstory, more interactions with P & L); 6) put in more explanatory materials (without info dumps...) so the conflicts and denouments are comprehensible (currently, not so much).

Sorry, Charlie. Not a winner, here. BUT, many interesting and fun portions, so I had to give it three stars.

Overall, worth reading. The thematic tonal shift in the writing after the first book is well done, and the overall plot moves forward to a satisfying conclusion. Some of the "reveals" were telegraphed a bit, and the inability of certain characters in the book to recognize where things were going was waved away with a bit of lampshading. Overall, though, and enjoyable read.

3 stars instead of more because the world and secondary characters were very two-dimensional. Everything that was revealed and every character's actions were there to further the story of the main characters - there was no sense of lives outside of what was going on with the plot. The entire world felt claustrophobic, as nothing seemed real outside of those two and their relationship.

Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead are both misfits at school, and out of that they build a fragile friendship. Their interests are very different, though. Laurence is into all things science and technology; he even skips school and runs away to watch a rocket launch. Patricia is into nature. Really into nature. She discovers she can, quite literally, talk to animals, and once, when she was six, she attended the Parliament of Birds. When they part company on leaving high school, they never expect to see each other again.

They're living their lives on the same warming planet, though, and they each are trying to make things better in their very different ways. Patricia has become a powerful witch and healer. Laurence is a high-profile member of the 10% Project, aimed at getting at least 10% of Earth's population off the planet before a global catastrophe.

When they meet again, they're on a collision course.

This isn't a post-apocalyptic novel; this is a story of a world spiraling toward apocalypse, and people trying to make things right while maybe making terrible mistakes. Yet it isn't dark or hopeless, either. There are bits of humor all through it, and a humane vision of what humanity can be. Patricia and Laurence are both worth getting to know. Even more, the very difficult and demanding people around them, in their competing projects, are also worth getting to know.

And then, of course, there are the birds. You also need to get to know the birds!

Both science and magic play a big role, here, and Anders keeps us guessing right down to the end both what will happen, and what forces will be the deciding factor. I was completely absorbed by the story and the characters.

Highly recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

Though published over a year ago, this novel comes uncomfortably close to current events; so much so, as its darker elements unfolded my body began manifesting stress reactions; tight chest, flipping stomach, nervous need to move a lot: which either means I'm crazy or the book was really well written. I suspect it was a little of the former and a lot of the latter.

The story is built of the foundation of the relationship between Patricia Delfine, who is adept at magic --- in particular, controlling the elements of nature, and Laurence Armstead, who is a brilliant scientist/inventor. They first meet as children, lose touch through what seems like betrayal and plotting against them, and reunite accidentally (or not) in young adulthood by which time Magic versus Science has become a conflict which threatens the continuation of the world as we know it.

I don't want to give too much away, but I found particularly fulgent the construction of the Magic and Science divisions. As with the world today --- say, Democrats and Republicans --- there were schisms within each side, good and bad, with plenty of gray area folks, including the two main characters. Both Patricia and Laurence behave in ways that are less than ideal, and, too, both perform acts of dangerous selflessness. It is not a spoiler to say that when the two at last find union, there comes at the world a devastating event of unknown origin; almost as if the fates of our main characters were tied to the survival of humanity. Hmmm.

But, it's not all heavy and dystopian-lecture-y like so many novels of this genre can be. Charlie Jane Anders is often hilarious. Here, one example:

Trust hipsters to make even the collapse of civilization unbearably twee.

Damn, I wish I had written that line. Look, I'm not doing justice to this novel. What is great about this book is the way in which Charlie Jane Anders builds worlds and describes events that would qualify this as science fiction/fantasy in such a natural, organic way it defies categorization, its elements eliding also into romance, satire, and literary fiction. Here's a thought: How about we do with novels what we ought to be doing with people? Stop categorizing.

All The Birds In The Sky is a fast, compelling, provocative, steamy, witty, thought-provoking read by a literate and gifted author who tackles big ideas in a way that is sneakily entertaining. And, while just a few months ago, a novel built around a possible world war might have seemed inconceivable, sadly, now, it feels nearly documentary.

And terrifying.

Wow... This is a great story! I immediately fell in love with Patricia and Lawrence, the two protagonists, both kids, with familial and societal issues... Lawrence is a total computer geek, and Patricia's into nature and magic. Both kids are off the chart in their own special way, and fundamentally, the opposite of each other! Charlie Jane Anders weaves their distinct, yet similar storylines together in a wonderful, manner. While this starts out feeling a bit like a YA genre story, that isn't necessarily the case, as it covers some relativly adult themes...
Alyssa Bresnahan did an amazing job narrating both Patricia and Lawrence and the other characters that surrounded them... I was so glad to have found this amazing audio-book! It's perfect for both Science Fiction and Fantasy fans...

Fair or not, some books are inextricably linked with the things happening in our lives as we read them. I was midway through Charlie Jane Anders’ debut novel when I received word my grandfather had passed away, and I finished reading it on the plane traveling for his funeral. I’m not sure if my heightened emotional state helped or hurt my opinion of All the Birds in the Sky, but it certainly makes my memories of the book vivid. It’s the story of childhood friends Patricia Defline and Laurence Armstead, as they grow up, grow apart, and reunite as adults on opposing sides of a world-changing science fictional/fantastical showdown. It’s by turns funny and heartbreaking. It’s a peculiar yet winsome mixture of science and magic grounded in a world just a few steps sideways from our own. It’s part bildungsroman, part apocalyptic subversion. You’ll either love it or hate it, but either way it’s an engrossing read.

I’m not even sure where to start with this book, but I’m going to try. So this was a surprise read for me, courtesy of my boyfriend – one of the few people capable of accurately picking out a book I’ll like. What’s funny is that, with a title like All the Birds in the Sky and that particular cover, I wouldn’t have bothered with the book’s blurb. It’s just not something that would have caught my attention, so I’m beyond glad that my boyfriend saw it and picked it out for me. Hands down it currently occupies the spot of “Favorite Book” in my heart. And that’s saying a lot. This book is the perfect blend of all things I love – science fiction/technology and fantasy/magic. Somehow, the author manages to blend these two things together so seamlessly, though they are at odds with each other in the story, that it felt like this world really could exist.

The writing itself is also incredible – from the way the characters are written to the actual writing style and voice of the book in general. It’s witty, funny, and refreshing – I’ve never read anything like it before. The protagonists, Patricia the witch and Laurence the tech wiz are so beautifully flawed and relatable. I found myself truly, deeply feeling for these characters – everything from anger at their actions to sadness for their pain. I didn’t want to put the book down, and would have devoured it in one sitting if I didn’t have to sleep and work. Though I was glad to realize that it’s a standalone book (I don’t like getting into super long series), I wouldn’t mind spending more time with both Patricia and Laurence.

For most of the story, magic and technology exist apart from each other, just as Patricia and Laurence lead separate lives, so it almost feels like you’re reading two separate stories that exist in the same universe. Still, it isn’t difficult to imagine both magic and sci-fi technology existing side by side in a world plagued by natural disasters and a dying planet. The backdrop for the story – the planet in chaos over environment issues – makes it even more realistic, despite the fantasy elements. All of this comes to a head at the end in a very satisfying way, and I won’t spoil it by going to much into it. Really, this is a book that can’t be explained (my boyfriend gave me looks as I gave him periodic updates). You have to experience it for yourself!

"All the Birds in the Sky" explores the tension between technology and nature as seen from the vantage points of two young people, both misunderstood by their families and rejected by their peers. One is a brilliant scientist; the other, a powerful witch. They become friends as children, lose track of each other in high school and reconnect as young adults. Charlie Jane Anders skillfully blends tropes of young adult fiction (school bullies, young love, social media obsession) with sci-fi and fantasy themes (apocalyptic weather, artificial intelligence, magic). The story unfolds at a good clip, and it will give you something to think about no matter how old you are.

I heard about this book online and got it from the library. Well... well. It certainly has an interesting style of writing and I enjoyed the beginning/part one of it... sort of. I felt like it was over kill with the social outcast aspect of the two protagonists. Almost like...it was bashing you over the head with LOOK HOW ANGSTY I AM, LOOOOOOK. and the second part when they are 'adults' ??

I stopped reading after that wretched 'love' scene. I just... couldn't get into it, felt like it was hipster centric writing and got really annoyed with how the girl was being treated in the entire book. Just like.. if she is this wonderful caring human being why is everybody crapping all over her ALL THE TIME and calling her ego-centric? It didn't make any sense.

I couldn't do it, I got really irritated with the choppy wtf is going on story line and gave up. It has some interesting florid prose sentences and parts of it really shine but all in all? Really hard to read.

For the first time in recent memory, I had trouble setting a book aside to do real-life things. The central characters are layered & flawed, alternately ordinary and exceptional people, torn between the desire to fit in and the desire to honor the inner self. Miscommunication and fear of intimacy cause serious problems. Romantic hopes seem grounded in reality but perhaps doomed under the weight of outside forces. Family relationships are pretty screwed up and seem somewhat one-dimensional, but that's a minor point. Basically, the protagonists are very human and pretty likable, definitely lovable.

Setting the stage for a battle between magic and technology, the witches' individual supernatural talents are really interesting - one witch speaks with animals and uses 'healing' to accomplish both renewal and destruction. Another tells stories, with spells obliquely woven into them. The science is intriguing - whether Anders is writing about 2-second time machine, being sucked into another dimension, or the devastation of global climate change. Some of the peripheral characters could have been fleshed out a bit more, but the story seems both grounded in reality and transcendent of it. And I've lived in San Francisco - Anders gets the details right, although the thought of a 'hot, itchy night' in the city is terrifying. I've blessed the San Francisco night chill more than once.

Anders' voice as a writer is compassionate but wry. Occasional twists of phrase or moments of humor elicited chuckles and the occasional loud laugh (unusual for me when I read).

All in all, a very good read, highly recommended.

Several reviews I'd read about this book made comparisons to Lev Grossman's The Magicians -- presumably because a school for magic figures into the narrative. I think All the Birds in the Sky is much harder to pin down than that. If I had to sum it up in one of those horrible, "it's like _____ meets _____" comparisons, I'd say it's more like David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks merged with a bit of Karen Thompson Walker's The Age of Miracles (with a dash of Steven Boyett's Elegy Beach thrown in at the end).

And yet, even that doesn't come near giving a sense of what the book's about. True, there's some fantasy and a bit of sci-fi, but at heart, it's a story of Laurence and Patricia. In some books and movies (e.g. Princess Mononoke), the characters seem like talking heads, thinly drawn stand-ins for ideas. In this case, however, they're so fleshed-out that the themes of magic and science can often feel secondary.

What really sets this book apart from so many others is Anders thoughtful writing. It's not just that she's got a gift with words -- though she does, without question. It's that she's able to knit those words into phrases that explain characters in vivid detail and sketch out concepts that make readers stop in their tracks to savor them.

I picked this book because it is short-listed for all kinds of awards and the premise sounded fresh and fun, all of which is true. This is a clever story told from the viewpoint of childhood best friends and the prose is smart and has the ring of truth and vision. The story has a lot of things to say and the telling feels cathartic for author. You can feel the wind up to the apocalyptic ending spin up in your mind. Why did I give it only 3 stars? I did not connect emotionally with the characters at all. I just never cared what happened to them. I didn't care if their world came to an end. I have no answer why they missed me. Perhaps they are just too self indulgent to allow my empathy to rise. It's a very unusual reaction in me. It's as if the details of the story overwhelmed any possible emotional reaction.

Although I read until the end to find out what happened, if I had not been stuck in the airport, I’m pretty sure I would have abandoned this one. The story started strong, with child-witch Patricia talking to birds, and computer-prodigy Laurence designing a two-second time machine - despite the barriers placed in their ways by ridiculously unsupportive (downright abusive) parents and authority figures. And the school guidance counselor is a master assassin who had a vision of the future and is trying to kill them. Sounds great, right?

Well, it all fell apart less than halfway through, as the writing became more slap-dash and full of buzzwords and clichés. It was very hard to identify with the vague characters and their inscrutable motives, I couldn’t tell what was happening most of the time, the plot was a hot mess.

If you liked The Magicians by Lev Grossman, you will probably think this one is great, too.

"We could not 'break' nature if we spent a million years trying. This planet is a speck, and we are specks on a speck. But our little habitat is fragile, and we cannot live without it."

This is an amazing book. The beginning part, when Patricia and Laurence are little - I don't know how she did it, but she completely nailed the six-year-old experience...when her dad says "I just want to understand what this is about...What did we do that made you want to act out in this way?" it completely encapsulated that self-centered parental thing where kids aren't their own people, but extensions of their parents. Even though obviously most parents don't lock kids in their rooms for days and slide their sandwiches under the door so the top slice gets scraped off. "You don't really want to eat a sandwich after your door has had the first bite, but if you get hungry enough you will."

The middle and the end...A LOT of stuff happens in this book. Patricia is a witch and at one point she goes to a witch school, but most of that happens off stage. Laurence is a genius geek who builds a two-second time machine he wears on his wrist. Both of them spend some time at a horrible school run on the Saarinen system (which I keep meaning to look up and see if it's a real thing. Poor children, if it is.), and Laurence has a few days at a terrible military academy; both are tormented dreadfully by their parents and other kids, and the adults who should help them don't. To be fair, one of those adults is an assassin, so you shouldn't expect him to help. Is that a spoiler? I don't think so. There's SO MUCH going on in this book, that's just a little speck of plot.

I don't want to mislead - most of the action actually happens after Patricia and Laurence grow up. The roots are in their childhoods, though.

Some of the things that go on with the world here are terrifyingly plausible, without the magical and future-technology elements. When I finished, I had to take my dogs for a walk in the desert where the creosote and brittlebush are in bloom right now. The birds and trees didn't speak English to me, but I felt better anyway.

I took my time reading this because I wanted to still be reading it; I didn't want to hurry and finish it just to find out what happened.

Oh - and there's a secret bookstore in San Francisco called Danger in it, and a green man, and a tablet that makes sure you catch the bus and happen to bump into the future love of your life, and, and, and. I loved this book.

Joining magic and technology together, this novel tries to outline what that would be like, together with the battles that would be fought to get there. In a dystopian world grounded on our own planet two young children with different gifts grow up, fall in love, and cause worldwide chaos. Imaginative scenarios flow from this author's pen, but the quirky leaps bothered me and interfered with my connection to the characters. One quote that I liked very much: "You know...no matter what you do, people are going to expect you to be someone you're not. But if you're clever and lucky and work your butt off, then you get to be surrounded by people who expect you to be the person you wish you were."
2.5 Stars

20% interesting ideas, 10% worthwhile character development, 70% insufferable self-involvement by characters that are ultimately unlikable.

If you want to read 30 pages describing a group of twnetysomethings going to a trendy taco place, followed by 4 pages of interesting ideas, followed by 35 pages of romance-novel-level relationship scribbling, this is the book for you.

I hate this novel with a passion, not because it is terrible (some of it is not), but because the author had a great central conceit here, and then buried it with the most horrible, unlikeable characters, unbelievable, extreme MacGuffins, and a general ethos of self-involvement and selfishness.

This book is like a wonderful talent that's been corrupted. After the first fifty pages I loved the two child protagonists, both wounded and special, although there were red flags along the way (for instance, the poor wounded bird in the first pages and the seemingly sociopathic sister who each make turning each page painful). But then the undercurrent of cruelty in the story became stronger, with both children being bullied and mistreated by their parents, a cat being tortured, and a totally unnecessary masturbation scene, a child being urged to kill another child... I stopped reading in protest. The book without these dark features could be a luminous young adult novel, but it's twisted and grotesque with them. I don't require only happy tales, but I felt like the cat in the story: groaning as the author used her power to manipulate.

SO. One the one hand, this was a really engaging story that I didn't want to put down! One the other hand, it was a super stressful read for me, and I kept having to take breaks to decompress. The bits that stressed me out the most were how the children were treated by their parents (abusive!), the bullying at school, THE CATS, and some aspects of unfairness once the characters were adults (Aggrandizement especially). None of this was enough to make me not want to finish the book, but it did taint the experience with unpleasantness.

And I still want to know what happened to Berkeley, Patricia! You promised you would protect him.

This story is very present. I dislike stories that have so much back-story and detail that it detracts from what is going on. In fact, this is written in such a way that I couldn’t put it down and read it in three days! Its fast narrative is funny and random. Oh boy is it random at times !I found myself laughing out loud a few times. The characters are very likable, even the crazy assassin. I was rooting for all of them during all or most of the story even though they were conflicted with each other. The futuristic idea and the story itself are interesting. The conflicts are realistic as well as how the characters deal with the challenges. I might take off a 1/8 of a star because after all that fast-paced action, the ending was “nice”. I would highly recommend this book.

I listened to the audible version of this book; I do 50/50 audible/actual or kindle book reading. The only reason i picked up this book is that is won the 'Powells Book Tournament of Books' against 'The Vegetarian' . I had read 'The Vegetarian' and although not an optimistic read, fantastic writing. I had high expectations for this book.
1. I do not review books (often or ever).
2. I enjoy and rely on book reviews by other the store reviewers.
3. I had high expectations since this book 'beat' a book i enjoyed.
4. I often read/enjoy science fiction/fantasy; although not a fan of romance novels.
I did not enjoy this book at all. I hated the dialogue. I thought it was because the book started out with young characters, but the dialogue never improved even as the characters aged. Earlier decided that 2017 was the 'do not finish' (if you hate the book) year; instead I persevered and it proved to be a waste of time.
The concept, in general, was in interesting but not fully developed.
If you love apocalypse romance with terrible dialogue and formulaic plot, this is for you.

This was an incredible reading experience! I loved the writing, I was fully invested in the characters, and I felt like I was part of its world. The blend of the scientific and the magical, sci-fi and fantasy, was super cool. The plot was exciting, but Anders also took the time to flesh out deeper themes such as loneliness. I know others have complained about the ending, but I felt like everything came full circle in a lovely, very satisfying way.

All The Birds in The Sky is a quirky, comedic urban fantasy that isn't afraid to go to some dark places. It's like a mix of Lev Grossman's The Magicians and a generous helping of Pratchett-esque zany ridiculousness. One minute you're chuckling at the oddball narrative, the next minute it stabs you in the guts.

The story involves talking birds and AI, which are difficult to pull off in the same book. But Anders wisely makes humor a big element of the tale, and pulls it off with panache. It's a wonderfully quirky read, and quite a page-turner too.

One caveat - the first few chapters are messy and a bit self-conscious. Anders finds her voice once the assassin appears (chapter 5 or thereabouts), and then the book just flows. Oh and I forgot to mention, I *love* the assassin. It feels like he stepped right out of the pages of a Discworld novel.

The food: It's well written and a fair combination of YA angst/coming of age and adventure. It doesn't linger on character development. The dialogue feels authentic.

The less than: The characters weren't as compelling as I would have liked. I think the book description made the reading worse - it says more than the book shows. The protagonists' emotions and subsequent actions don't feel genuine. She is too forgiving; he too unforgiving. The sacrifices aren't earned.

Overall it was an okay read. As magic vs. technology goes, I much preferred Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore.

This book is wonderful due to its thoughtful contrast between magic, which serves nature, and technology, which controls nature. Patricia, a witch who can talk to birds, and Laurence, who is building an artificial intelligence in his closet, bond to survive intense high school hazing. They meet again, as adults, on the brink of apocalypse by nuclear war and/or environmental disaster. Laurence works to save humanity by technology that might destroy the planet while Patricia is among witches who think saving Nature is more important than saving humanity. Earth first, or humans first? Can a last-minute middle ground be reached, when all the birds in the sky tell Patricia it is too late?

Outstanding writing, characters I fell in love with right away, marvelous fusion of magic and technology. The writing is clear and stays out of the way. Anders isn't trying to wow us with her "voice", she's communicating a story about two very special people and wants to pull us in - and she succeeded with me.

Between magic and fictional tech, the story couldn't be much more imaginary. The people, however, their inner lives and interpersonal interactions, their brokenness and need and caring, are deeply true. I'm grateful to the author, and to others who raved about this book, for this lovely story.

So go read it. Now. Really.

If I ever get to meet Charlie Jane Anders, I am going to ask her how much did she know about the end of her story when she first started writing it. What begins, seemingly, as a pretty straightforward YA premise of two young misfits - one a witch discovering her powers, one a science nerd adept at near-future tech - who form an unlikely bond spirals out into an epic drama spanning almost twenty years and turns into a battle for the very soul of humanity, bringing the world to the edge of dystopia and apocalypse. It's charming, and heartbreaking, and a bit terrifying. I can't wait to read her next book.

It's an okay book, better than some recent Nebula winners. The initial story about a girl who does magic and becomes a witch, and a boy who is a computer genius, is interesting. But it eventually devolves into a rather sappy love story, set against an unusual background of global disaster. It's too "real" for fantasy, and the science (aside from the computer-nerd stuff) is too weak for science fiction. The book could have been shorter, given a less accommodating editor. But worth reading.

The best books are like magic spells or time machines, they transform you, take you wonderful places, and show you amazing things. You forget that you are seeing words and pages, you hear and see and feel and know instead. You make friends that you worry and wonder about, you flee enemies who make your heart race, you live in a world momentarily more real than our own. And if you are lucky and the author is wise and skilled, when the book is done it is not finished because something stays with you. Something more precious than words, a sense that you know something more of this world and your place in it because of where this book has taken you.

ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY is such a book. It's a tale of magic and science, of a girl who talks to birds and a boy who dreams of rocket ships and time machines. The girl becomes a witch and the boy becomes a scientist who makes fearsome and fascinating machines. The two of them are destined to collide or fall in love, destroy the world or save it or perhaps some of each.

ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY contains multitudes -- an assassin who loves ice cream, birds that talk, trees that know, gadgets that crack wise. It is funny and frightening and fantastic and true, true in the way that great fiction can be -- beautiful and horrible, filled with loneliness and friendship, mistakes and forgiveness, humor and heartbreak.

This is a book I love too much to tell you too much about, the joy of discovery is diminished if the map is too clear. So open the pages and open a door. You are going on a wonderful journey with people and a few creatures you will never forget.

I wanted to give this one 5 stars, but it just wasn't quite there.

That said, it was awesome. Really funny for the first half or so before it got serious. It was written in a sort of juvenile style, as young people would talk, which I suppose is accurate cause they were young for a good portion of it and I don't think they got past their mid-20s or so by the end. It wasn't obnoxious though. It was endearing.

I loved both of the main characters and watching their relationship was great. It got a bit trope-y with the magic school, which Anders acknowledged and it only bothered me a teensy bit.

Basically the whole thing was awesome except for the end, which was fine, but not great and felt anticlimactic. I can't put my finger on exactly why. Maybe it wasn't epic or resolved well enough for the scale of the conflict that was set up. Regardless, it was still well worth the read. I would love to read more stories in this world.

A pair of gifted outcasts, a natural born witch and a tech wunderkind, become friends as teens and are drawn together as young adults in a wry hip San Francisco. Patricia has become a strong, compassionate woman and a gifted practitioner of magic now, while Laurence is a trusted tech expert in an elite lab. As environmental collapse accelerates, characters who adhere to magic or technology are propelled towards dramatic conflict. Nonetheless, this is a very funny book, the satire of hipster culture is first-rate. So are its scenes of hot attraction, despair, developing passion, terror, and disaster.

--Simone Corday

This book should not be labelled science fiction. It is OK as a fantasy. As a science fiction I have never seen anything as terrible. Old unimaginative ideas coupled with a set-up full of loop holes. Story is stale and tasteless. I bought it just to see what the fuss is about. But regret spending every second time reading/listening to this book.

I really enjoyed this book, I enjoyed the easy-reading start that matched up with the age and experience of the children involved and how gradually as they became older and more complex, so did the writing and the story. I’m also a fan of near future stuff that is hopeful as well as cautionary and I thought Anders balanced this well. Plus, it was great to read a story that looked at the intersection of magic and science as necessary for fixing global catastrophe and also at the ideas of balance, giving too much, taking too much, and giving up too soon.

I felt like all the key elements of the story were also reflected in the relationship between Patricia and Laurence, up to and including their imperfect friendship, and that imperfection and their ability to fail one another made them seem particularly real as protagonists to me. Also, I really appreciated the resolution of the book where AI Peregrine (one of my favourite parts of the book) was joined with the tree – how two all encompassing entities were still after connection in the end. I love that kind of message.

I adored the quirky descriptions of San Francisco, I was reminded why it’s a place I’d love to visit someday! Plus, across the book there were so many characters and it was nice to just enjoy that not all of them were white, or middle class, and straight. It was pretty subtle, as it should be – especially where queerness or poverty or whiteness aren’t critical to the story. Most reviews for this book struggle to put it into words, and I have to agree with that – it’s enjoyable and whimsical, playful and serious with genuine depth. But there were still some loose story ends that I wasn’t really satisfied with, plus there seemed to be too little information about Patricia and Laurances respective specialised schooling once they parted ways – given the way the story went I’d have thought there would be some time spent on that. Overall, this was a satisfying stand alone read, it’s wonderfully speculative without being overladen or heavy handed and would suit those who enjoy stand alone novels, modern fantasy with no medieval anything in sight, and those who aren’t necessarily particular fans of speculative fiction.

It's a lovely book. The cover is striking. And there's a beautiful, bold black and white two page tree photo at the beginning of the book that is repeated in a single page version before each chapter that sets a tone and has a big impact.

I'll say what a lot of people are saying, this was a weird book. Weird as in it doesn't slot easily into any categories. It has urban fantasy elements, and science fiction elements. It could be weird fiction in some ways maybe? Or magical realism perhaps. It felt very much like a fable in its tone and delivery at times, and in its resolution. Overall I'd peg it as a modern myth or fable more than anything perhaps. This is the story that would be told from the other side of these world-changing events. That would explain the evil or neglectful parents, the journeys the kids go on to discover themselves and their abilities, the way their abilities are opposite but complementary, and how their friendship seems to have been fated to be. It was fun to watch this sort of dreamy mystical story unfold at the same time that a thoroughly modern and even hard-edged tale of growing up, moving to the city and getting jobs, finding your group of friends and trying to establish yourselves as the adults you want to be was happening. The stories and the characters overlapped and wove in and out in a way that always kept my interest in the story that was unfolding before me. It wasn't a page-turner in the sense of a thriller, but it was such a smooth, easy read that time passed quickly while I was reading it. I just saw a review while I was skimming a few that said it was a relatively short book, but it isn't, it's over three-hundred pages trade paperback format. It must have just felt short to that reader because it's a fast read. Some books are a lot of work, you feel like you have to plow through them. This was a pleasure.

The author had a lot of nice little turns of phrase, the writing was very enjoyable. But it wasn't so much that it was distracting, it wasn't overwritten. For example, "He walked into Chinatown, where there were people selling stuff on the street and restaurants with enormous fish tanks in their windows, as though the fish wanted to inspect potential customers before they would be allowed in." Or, "At last he understood what all those old horror stories meant when they talked about an eldritch dread, creeping into your very soul. That was how Laurence felt, listening to his mother attempt to talk to him about girls."

The chapter when Patricia and Laurence were tweens/fourteen reminded me a lot of Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. They were so awkward and so tortured by the mean kids. But these kids had the added problem of parents who were almost (not even almost) fairy tale cruel. The parents went almost went a touch beyond believable, though who really knows what goes on beyond closed doors? People get away with a lot of horrors that no one finds out about. Plenty of abusive parents say and do awful things and no one at school or in the neighborhood is any the wiser. I just didn't quite feel a truthfulness from them, they felt exaggerated to make a point, like an evil step-mother in a fairy tale. But if you identified with the crap the kids went through, how awkward they were, and their yearning for a different life and determination to get it, and if you liked this book, you should consider reading Moreno-Garcia's book, it's terrific and has a similar vibe if not quite as fantastical, a bit more magical realism maybe.

Ah, another great quote:

"'So how did you stop dreaming about rockets,' Patricia asked.

'I think I just got bored with it,' Isobel said. 'Boredom is the mind's scar tissue.'"

The book wasn't perfect, there were things that had me wondering, or questioning. The thing with the tech bothered me, I though Laurence should have suspected the thing that I suspected since he was the only one in the world who knew what we as reader knew was a potential reason that device could possibly be so perceptive. Trying to be subtle here. Anyway, there was some willing suspense of disbelieve to just go along with the tale here and there.

My only real problem with the book was that Laurence wasn't all that likable and Patricia didn't have a ton of personality. She was more a series of actions and behaviors and he was kind of a whiny wimp. That sounds harsher than it felt reading it, that's more from looking back at it after the end. They didn't annoy me as I was reading it, or she didn't anyway. And I'm not one of those people who thinks that protagonists have to always be likable for a book to be enjoyable. The comment is more that I tend to be a character-orientated reader, I like character development and interactions more than tricky plotting. But this book is more about the journeys, how they intersected, the accidental and purposeful actions and reactions that can change everything for individuals and for the world. So it was a different style of book than I usually dig. But I still dug it. As my dad would say.

And I liked the end. It was kind of sentimental, but it was the end the whole book had been heading toward. Again, it had that bit of a fable-like feeling but it also had a lot of real(ish) aspects, more grittiness and genuine emotions. And it was just kind of cool. It felt satisfying, gratifying, appropriate for this story. It was an odd, different, clever book. I don't know who I'd recommend it to, though most big review sites seem to think everyone should read it and that it will be a major award winner. I'm not arguing with them. I think it'll be a love it or be a bit ambivalent about it book. I don't think may people will outright dislike it. Definitely people who like literary fiction and magical realism, maybe people who like weird fiction, modern fantasy, light sic-fi if that's a thing. If you're open to something new and kind of magical and really original, give it a try.

While this book had some interesting ideas, I never quite figured out what the point was. Very little of the story (whatever it was) was actually resolved. While the author may have had in her head what the world looked like and how it worked, none of that was ever explained clearly. It almost read like the author was a big fan of Harry Potter and tried to capture some of that in the way magic was handled. Written at a teenage level with many extremely confusing passages where I felt like I had maybe skipped a page but I hadn't. I also felt the book was marketed weirdly. I went into it expecting a sci-fi / fantasy type book and I guess that is what I got though I would be surprised if your average sci fi / fantasy reader enjoyed this. It just wasn't for me.

An original and delightful story about two friends that know each other since childhood - Laurence who would become a scientist, and Patricia who would become a witch - two colliding worlds and their struggles to save mankind and planet Earth. The beginning of the book is very intense, but the intensity fades throughout the book and the ending is somewhat disappointing.

I quit liked the fact that this book follows two persons who tend to be complete opposites of each other. I also liked the fact how their stories kept weaving together even though it looked like complete coincidence.

While I liked most of the book I had a bit more trouble with the ending. It began going very fast and It started looking a bit chaotic and random at the end. I also felt as if it wasn't properly concluded even though you could say it was.

Al in all not a bad book which is why I gave it 3 stars

"They knew almost all of each others secrets, and that gave them license to talk in crappy puns and quotes from old hip-hop songs and fake prohibition bootlegger slang, to the point where nobody else could even stand to be around them."

This is a tricky book to rate because there's a lot of different stories and things happening, it almost feels like a totally different book in the second half. It reminded me of reading Wicked - we get a lot of introduction to Patricia growing up and her childhood and then we sort of skip to adulthood where terrible things happen.

Taking a step back it's an interesting premise. It starts out like a YA book I thought I would fly through but as Laurence and Patricia grow older and things change the story its self becomes more complex. It's not about one simple question, rather the story starts exploring philosophical motivations and consequences of not taking care of planet Earth.

The ending was sort of predictable once you reached a certain point in the story because it couldn't have ended any other way, but it took a while to get there. It's definitely not a book for everyone but it's whimsical and strange and full of surprises.

Enjoyed the first part of the book, still interested thru the middle, but the last part fell apart for me. Story rushed forward to an incomprehensible, and ultimately forgettable, ending. Although I appreciate the author's offer in the afterward to explain it, seems like a good story should explain itself, or at least allow the reader to draw some conclusions. Too bad, it had potential.

This a fascinating novel that asks a bit of you in the beginning, but the payoff is well worth it! To be honest, I read the excerpt at io9.com and was not impressed. Fast forward a few months later, I picked up a copy at the library and blazed through it in a few work lunch breaks. Compelling characters and insightful plotting make this a must read! Anders is especially skilled at the description of the kids who don't fit into cliques! Highly recommended!

I'd been following Charlie Jane's teasers about the book and was excited when I was able to borrow my housemate's copy. Charlie Jane does a splendid job of painting vivid pictures with her words- you can develop a crystal clear image of Patricia talking with the cats and birds, and of Laurence's awkward conversations with his parents. I never was quite sure just where the unpredictability of the characters would wind up taking the story. I basically spent all of today immersed in finding out what would happen with these two oddballs, and the fate of the world. Many of my other book-loving friends don't know it yet, but they'll be receiving copies of this for their birthdays/the holidays this year. It's a book I'm eager to help others discover!

Who'd have thought a sci-fi/magic fantasy hybrid would be something I couldn't put down? This book pulled me in: the characters are amazingly vivid and believable. The author's vocabulary and the breadth of her knowledge (philosophy, tech, etc.) makes this a really rich read too. I loved every single paragraph from start to finish.

I'm so sorry to say that, in the end, this book was such a disappointment....The first part was really enjoyable and I read it at a fast pace, but the last two hundred pages almost killed me, because they were so boring and it seemed to me that the author didn't have the solution to end the book and she was writing casually. And after years of Shannara I can't stand speaking trees anymore I have to admit, so I take all the responsability.

Devo ammettere che questo libro, che sembrava cosí carino all'inizio, mi ha annoiato a morte e mi ha deluso dopo le prime duecento pagine; per finirlo sono quasi stramazzata dalla noia e avevo la netta impressione che l'autrice stesse procedendo a caso per prove ed errori, come se lei per prima non avesse pronto il finale. Inoltre dopo anni di Shannara gli alberi parlanti non li sopporto proprio, quindi é tutta colpa mia e non della scrittrice.

This book made me feel like I was dragging a bag of sand to a location I didn't care about while having an interesting conversation with a friend. The characters were interesting because they were all different but boring because they were barely developed, aside from the main characters. The story had many interesting parts but nothing that left me at the edge of my seat. I loved many aspects of the book, such as the magic and how it's used. Plus, I'm a sucker for the world ending kind of stories. But this book just didn't hit that spot. So in short, it was good, just not great.
(I am no literary expert and only write reviews of pure opinion)

Great sci-fi about magic vs technology. I could identify with both of them. A little creepy to read about a slowly happening in real time apocalypse, because it seems a little too real these days, but it was a super fun read.

I had a limited time to read this book and couldn't keep myself interested in the characters enough to finish it before my library loan expired. I think I made it about halfway through, but I just couldn't get into this book. I don't understand all the rave reviews.

I love this book. Magic + science = awesomeness. Those two are my favorite to read subjects and it gets better when you add up romance, humor and a touch of weirdness. It also covered some contemporary problems such as family issues and mother nature catastrophes that face humanity and it makes yourself conscious about them. Sometimes you are stuck in every day life that you sort of forget about them.

The story started in the childhood of main characters, Patricia and Laurence. Both of them suffer from misunderstanding and lack of parenting which brings them together in the comfort of friendship they find with each other. Later on they go their separate ways, Patricia to a secret magic school and Laurence pursues his dream as a high-tech prodigy. Both of them very gifted in each of their fields. They get to see each other in a random party after some years, were they start to pick up their friendship again.

I really liked the characters. They are not at all perfect. However, they have a certain spark to them. I found it very interesting that they are so different from each other and yet they still they managed to bond. Patricia being a more spiritual/magical person and Laurence a scientific/ technological one.

I love the way the author combined magic with science. I find it amazing that in a contemporary world where there is so much gadgets, there is still room for magic. I wish I could have read more about this magical world the author build, not at all what I would have imagined, but then again, Harry Potter fan talking here.

I also enjoy reading books that happen in cities or places that I've visited. It makes it easier to have a clearer image of the setting in my mind. San Francisco is one of my favorite cities and I love the Rockies of Colorado.

All in all, this was a stupendous read and I recommend it for all the science fiction/fantasy lover readers out there <3<3<3

This truly was an epic exploration of how the world would end. Witches and mad scientists abound, with insane technology like a two-second time travel watch dropped so matter-of-factly into the narrative that you're past its introduction before you even realize it should have been weird. The fantastic is treated as just another piece of the world we really live in and brings it down to earth.

It's hard to categorize this novel. Mostly coming-of-age, but with elements of a much larger story. Most authors these days try to stretch out their story to fill a trilogy or an unending Game of Thrones behemoth cash cow. Charlie Jane Anders doesn't waste our time, but she also doesn't scrimp on the details. We meet Patricia and Larr-- LAURENCE... as children and follow them through their development. We get what we need about their life story without hearing every endless detail of it just to fill pages. She never builds up a mystery just to cut us off and say "Okay, see you in the next book, you might get an answer or two (but probably not the ones you really want). This is the scope of a sprawling fantasy series condensed into a single volume without diminishing the final product.

This was a fantastic novel, and I look forward to whatever Charlie Jane writes next!

All the Birds in the Sky is a trove of near misses and reads like a low-budget, bad action flick. Among its flaws, the book contains: characters who lack depth, children who talk like adults, forced romance, and a hollow plot lacking substance.

How this book was shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula award is baffling.

The first third of this book was very good, an original, compelling story about magic and technology that I couldn't resist. But as I got further in, characters that I hoped would develop never fully formed and the plot meandered to the point where I didn't really care what happened to anyone; I really had to struggle to finish the book. Several reviewers have said the book reads like a young adult novel, and I would have to agree - it reminded me of "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore", a book that was highly rated but had two-dimensional characters and a story that was interesting at first but less so as you got further into it.

This book reads more like a young adult novel. It is purported to be a futuristic quasi-sci-fi novel but there is very little to indicate this by the use of current, modern day lingo. The story line and the characters are uninteresting and half-baked. Magic and artificial intelligence are the main themes but one might do better to pick up a book by Ben Okri, Zora Neal Hurston, Isaac Asimov, or William Gibson for a more intense read. The writing voice is one of a hipster tackling topics that might be "cool" to young people. Prominent themes of current society such as bullying, hacking, and ecological issues are de rigueur in this book and it all feels way too forced. The writing is immature and lacks coherence and skill. I kept hoping that it would come together for me but it never did and overall I would have done better to read a classic instead.

I wanted to like this book, the characters were interesting at first, but they soon got so unreal and their families were terrible exaggerations of people. I kept hoping it would get better but it just got boring.

Just wow. I've read many hundreds of novels, and this one is just a beautiful, original lovely story by someone who has taken many of the tropes from scifi and fantasy and woven it into something new. Characters, coming of age, adventure, cool stuff, it's all there. Thanks for writing this CharlieJane and I look fwd to your next work.

I liked the overall plot quite a lot, technology vs. magic in dystopian near future. Unfortunately the interesting aspects of these themes are underdeveloped, doesn't seem to really understand any physics/technology, author spends most of the time exploring the relationship of the 2 main characters rather than exploring and developing the plot.

The first third of this book (100 pages) was just child abuse and peer bullying. Ugh. I was really hoping for a payoff in the rest of the book. No such luck. It just meandered through dystopia situations.

It was somewhat interesting to think about a relationship between a witch and a geek. But mostly the book is about all the things going wrong, on both sides. A tough book to wade through, without enough redeeming clever ideas to make it worth the slog.

Just wow. I've read many hundreds of novels, and this one is just a beautiful, original lovely story by someone who has taken many of the tropes from scifi and fantasy and woven it into something new. Characters, coming of age, adventure, cool stuff, it's all there. Thanks for writing this CharlieJane and I look fwd to your next work.

I liked the overall plot quite a lot, technology vs. magic in dystopian near future. Unfortunately the interesting aspects of these themes are underdeveloped, doesn't seem to really understand any physics/technology, author spends most of the time exploring the relationship of the 2 main characters rather than exploring and developing the plot.

Entertaining and enjoyable book. The story switches perspectives between the two main characters (a witch and a mad scientist) as they try to navigate relationships and the pressures placed upon them by their respective communities. Charlie Jane Anders has quite a way with words and there are some real LOL moments in the book and lines that will stick with you.

I wouldn't actively discourage anyone who wanted to read this book. And I did make it all the way through without much pain. The book does keep you reading. The main characters are likable--though Patrica as an adult doesn't seem to have much depth or even coherence. And the plot is fine--such as it is.

Here's my problem. The reason you keep reading is that the book introduces big build ups--to events or inventions or magic spells or discoveries or mysteries. And then lets them fizzle out without much impact. There's not a whole lot of compensation either. No sparkle or high wit or deep thoughts. I didn't appreciate the sex either. Maybe this isn't fair but it seems like it's only stuck in there to stop the book from being classified as Young Adult fiction.

Okay, and this is the real reason I'm annoyed. The over all, much anticipated solution to the big mystery of the book is flat and it seems as though the author didn't give the whole thing much thought.

This melding of fantasy and science fiction never quite goes where you expect it to land. Felt fresh and unique. I loved its humor. The main characters were familiar in certain respects but never rote or stereotypical. Looking forward to reading more by Anders in the future.

I liked the characters. Premise of book interesting Ng enough to keep my attention, but not a big “.oh wow” premise like I’ve enjoyed in truly great SF/fantasy. Needing disappointing. It tried to merge magic and nature all into one big ending. But it happened too fast and too facilely.

The imaginative landscape in Anders' novel ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY is utterly breathtaking. Magic meets uber-science meets near apocalypse in a story that hums with life in all its messy variations. The characters are original and fascinating -- Patricia the witch, Laurence the scientist, their bizarre families, and a host of magicians and scientists who nearly (and sometimes actually) destroy each other. There are talking birds. A sentient tree. An artificial intelligence "computer" that morphs into its own being. The plot is rich and complex, infused with humor in the face of questions about human limits and perception, pride, love, and humanity's complex relationship with nature. Brilliant. Definitely on my list of top shelf favorites

I absolutely adored this book. I borrowed it from someone and had such a hard time handing it back over when I was done. I'm planning to read it a second time asap. So many layers. Great twists. Love the characters. Excellent read. I highly recommend it. I have a feeling it will be a movie or tv show.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read. Charlie Jane Anders managed to pull off snarky and smart while exposing the raw nerve of nerdom everywhere.This is a book that pits magic against science while exploring large the grey areas in between.

My first thought when I finished All the Birds in the Sky was ‘Well, that was weird’ an d after letting it marinate, I think it’s a good kind of weird…but any review or recommendation would have to lead with mentioning how weird it is.

I’m not sure if this is just my specific library but I was incredibly surprised it was shelved in science fiction. While I can’t think of what genre would be appropriate (Paranormal? Fantasy? Magical Realism?), I definitely wouldn’t consider it sci-fi. Honestly, All the Birds in the Sky transcends genre and would be out of place on any shelf it found its home on. It’s quirky and weird in the way it blends science and magic together in an entirely fresh and new way, a way that presently doesn’t have a specific genre home. I can say that I’ve honestly never read anything like it which makes it all that more difficult to review.

The story follows two character- Patricia, a witch, and Lawrence, the science genius, who first meet in middle school. A hit man from the future, poising as a middle school counselor, tries to manipulate the friends to kill each other but neither is able to even entertain the idea. They part ways when Patricia uses the artificial intelligence Lawrence built to save him from a military school and Patricia runs away to train in magic. For me, the biggest weakness in the book was that we spent too much time in this stage of the story. I could have done with about half the time with them as teenagers and the angst of middle school life. Despite the fact we spend so much time with them as young teenagers I still wouldn’t feel comfortable labeling this book as YA.

The two are thrown back together once they are adults with established lives in their respective fields. Patricia is out in the world being witchy- healing people, talking to animals, and hexing people into making good decisions- while working various day jobs. Lawrence has climbed the ladder of success in an organization built to save the world, and it’s people, from what they consider impending doom through advancing technology at an accelerated rate. Even though these two characters stand in complete contrast to one another, they realize that they are others home. In a moment of self-sacrifice, Lawrence tells a co-worker that “Patricia is my rocket ship.” They later promise each other that their friendship, and love, is indestructible.

For me, this is where it feels more like Magical Realism that anything else. The world around them is absolutely contemporary and they are defined as the outsiders- not understood by anyone but each other. Patricia’s experience as a witch is juxtaposed against Lawrence’s experience as a scientist. Fantasy and science are woven together into an everyday setting. I can’t figure out if its aim is preachy science vs. nature with climate change or the overlapping of the two.

Is it strange? Absolutely. It’s full of interesting ideas and symbolism mixed up in an unexpected romance at the end of the world. It’s perfect if you’re looking for something though provoking and different.

Disappointing. I chose to read because it is classified under sci fi/fantasy. I did not get very far. It started off well but the two main supposedly talented intelligent characters are doormats. It became a book about how bad school bullying can get, how blind and uncaring school officials and parents can be, and how spineless main characters can react. Seriously, what is the point of wasting money on a school system that caters to bullies and ignores potential? I stopped reading when I could not take any more. I never reached the sci fi/fantasy part. Simply lost interest.

This was an ambitious sounding book but it just didn't work for me. I should have liked it because the premise seemed intriguing, but I found that it just didn't grab me the way I like a book to. Unfortunately it was a DNF for me.

Gratifying validation for anyone who has felt misunderstood and stuck in a world torn between Unravelling and Total Destruction Systems (read the book). While reading it, could not help but dream of:a movie/miniseries animation with origami puppets (Anders' suggestion) co-directed by Alfonso Cuarón and Tina Fey.

What a delightful read! I found the characters and the pace just a touch uneven, but the story was a wild ride from beginning to end. Lots of fun stuff. Best of all, it presented a real San Francisco worldview, in nice contract to all the New York based books out there. I highly recommend this to anyone who's looking for a story that's really different.

The book was disappointingly written at the level of middle school students, but yet was inappropriate for that age group. Was a disturbing combination of fantasy and science fiction. The ending was confusing and unsatisfying.

Stayed up till all hours reading "All the Birds in the Sky". Magic, science, hackers/makers, birds, trees, apocalypse, strong AI, ethics, startups, love -- the perfect book for our current moment. So much is going so terribly wrong, and yet the only way past it is through it. That's 2016 in a nutshell. Beautiful, trenchant, funny, loving -- a fantastic novel.

I say surprisingly because it started out reading like a really young readers book, but I kept reading and I kept liking it more and more. The relationships in this book make you appreciate the ones that you have and how great it is to have that trust in someone.

I bought this book based on the quality of people recommending it but wasn't initially grabbed. I am, in general, not a fan of magical realism. I liked it enough to keep reading while reading, but put it down for days and lacked the enthusiasm to pick it up again, but from book 3 when the kids have grown up, it was gripping.

So, I enjoyed it but my recommendation that others read it comes with caveats.

I read this book based on many 5 star reviews I read on the store as well as goodreads. It sounded like an awesome story so why would I turn this book down?? More than half the book you have no idea where its going, but not in a good way. I couldn't see a story forming and the characters were pretty dull. Around 200 pages a story kicks in but is still hard to see what the author is trying to accomplish. I forced myself to finish the book, thinking the end would be totally worth it, and everything would tie together. And it did tie together to a certain extent but I don't think there was enough story from the get go for me to even care. Many of the books characters seemed irrelevant to me and overall I just was not impressed.

This book just wasn't for me, which surprised me. I love sci fi and fantasy books, but I just never felt very attached to these characters and wasn't fond of the writing style, which often just sounded very awkwardly worded to me.

As a child, and then later as a young man, books were my life (along with other discrete and diverse methods of storytelling). Most were palliatives, but a rare few touched me in a way that changed me, inspired me, and in turn made me long to reach out and touch others in a similar way.

This is one of those books.

As a child, and then later as a young man, books were my life (along with other discrete and diverse methods of storytelling). Most were palliatives, but a rare few touched me in a way that changed me, inspired me, and in turn made me long to reach out and touch others in a similar way.

This is one of those books.