Reviews tagging 'Chronic illness'

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

14 reviews

20sidedbi's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Holy shit. This is the best book I've... ever? read. I ugly cried at the end. So beautiful, so heartwrenching, so powerful.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic, Homophobia, Chronic illness, Death of parent, Torture, Mental illness, War, Ableism, Animal death, Gaslighting, Grief, Violence, Gun violence, Abandonment, Death, and Racial slurs

miller8d's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Changed my relationship to books and reading. One of the best books I have ever read. I highlighted so many passages that the Kindle highlight collection was literally 26 pages long.

Cried several times both out of happiness and sadness. Beautifully captures the actual sensations of love and loss and grief, and the gorgeous nature of children and animals and family, queer love and neurodivergent pain, and so much more. Refreshing poetry and ridiculously beautiful world-building in such intricate historical contexts. Addressed so many different issues and experiences with such flair and emotion. Delivers anarchist / anti-establishment / leftist values from the optimistic perspective that to be human is to be a part of the problem, and yet, we must love one another and love the Earth in order to power through the pain of life in order to radically experience the love, because that’s why we are here.

 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry, Suicidal thoughts, Classism, Trafficking, Xenophobia, Racism, Physical abuse, Genocide, Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Homophobia, Sexism, Abandonment, War, Slavery, Gun violence, Colonisation, Mass/school shootings, Violence, Torture, Panic attacks/disorders, Murder, Mental illness, Child death, Child abuse, Suicide, Chronic illness, Terminal illness, Grief, Medical trauma, Animal death, Forced institutionalization, Death of parent, Death, Confinement, Racial slurs, Bullying, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, Injury/Injury detail, Excrement, and Animal cruelty

I am very sensitive and I LOVED this book and found it deeply emotionally uplifting despite these very severe content warnings

bg_oseman_fan's review

adventurous emotional hopeful reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

i liked “All The Light Wr Cannot See,” but i loved this book. i don’t think i’ll ever be able to stop talking about it. i just finished it and i already want to read it again. the themes are so complex and so present in the story. the characters lives and journeys connect and diverge thematically in such interesting ways. truly a timeless tale that should be among the modern classics of literature if it isn’t already. it reads so cohesively even as your journey through time and space and POVs. if you can’t love this book, i truly am sorry for you. such a joy to read. i would recommend to literally anyone, anywhere, anytime. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Chronic illness, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Rape, Animal death, Pregnancy, Trafficking, Xenophobia, Confinement, Death, Islamophobia, Slavery, War, Violence, Ableism, Suicide, and Terminal illness

ohlala_kaylala's review against another edition

hopeful reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

First 1/3 of the book or so was tough to follow and hard to get into. Last half of the book was most satisfying as you figure out how the stories connect and what link(s) they share. The theme was not so heavy that it was drilled in, but it has left me pondering. I was ultimately left unsatisfied with the epilogue of one character’s story- I do think we needed more understanding on that tale. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Abandonment, Chronic illness, and War

naomi_k's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional inspiring tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Racism, Blood, Bullying, Death, Forced institutionalization, Abandonment, Xenophobia, Chronic illness, Confinement, Dysphoria, War, Grief, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Panic attacks/disorders, Religious bigotry, and Violence

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Hate crime, Animal death, and Homophobia

Minor: Medical content, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Child death, Excrement, Alcohol, Sexual content, Misogyny, Child abuse, and Domestic abuse

bookpilerjo's review against another edition

adventurous challenging hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I have mixed feelings. I had expected to love this book and there were lots of things I liked,  but at times it felt like a slog. I am usually a fan of multiple points of view but I think the changes were too quick and frequent and some of the narratives progressed too slowly for too long. In spite of this, when I got into it I found I really did care about the characters and I was interested in their worlds. I also enjoyed seeing how the threads came together in the end. It was disappointing that the portrayal of the one neurodivergent character played into damaging misconceptions and stereotypes. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, War, Animal death, Death, and Ableism

Moderate: Ableism, Xenophobia, Racism, Chronic illness, Homophobia, Gun violence, and Death of parent

carylalombro's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful inspiring reflective

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Body shaming, and Ableism

Moderate: Chronic illness

Minor: Gun violence and Homophobia

juksu's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Confinement, Death, Injury/Injury detail, and Animal death

Moderate: Pregnancy, War, and Chronic illness

matchakauphy's review

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land is a grandiose epic of a novel. It’s hard to express my feelings after reading the book but it is definitely an ambitious novel that gives you a feeling of having read some sort of masterpiece. 

Cloud Cuckoo Land sees three stories play out, that of Anna and Omeir, Seymour and Zeno’s, and Konstance’s. These three stories are seemingly unrelated and from entirely different time periods, but Doerr’s masterful storytelling ties them together for the audience through the tale of Aethon.

Anna and Omeir are present in the 13th century and meet during the time of war to end up in love. Seymour and Zeno are in present day, meeting in a library which Seymour attacks and ends up killing Zeno. Konstance on the other hand is much further into the future living a lie that she was aboard a ship in outerspace, Argos, turning out to only have been on Earth the whole time. The only thread in common for the three stories is that of the myth of Aethon.

The story starts off slow and the complicated storyline is part of the reason, the first third I read in some dim confusion trying to make sense of what’s occurring. Thankfully the writing was so beautiful to keep you hooked in this part. In the second third of the novel things start to fall in place and you begin to understand the complexities of Doerr’s writing, but it’s the final third that takes the cake, I literally read the final third in a single sitting. 

Anthony Doerr touches on some important topics and deals with them well like

the sorrow and feelings that Omeir has due to him having cleft palate, but he ends up saving Anna and finding love in her who is able to overlook his deformity for the kind of person he was. Similarly Zeno’s character is used to shed some light on PTSD and being LGBTQ+ along with heartbreak to a degree. In my opinion, Seymour had one of the most significant characters and arcs as he was a character getting vexed with occurrences in society and falls into the trap of terrorism due to some strong speeches and finding himself on the bad side of social media. It was beautiful to see how Zeno’s actions when Seymour attacks the library and kills Shafir lead to a change in him and the realization is just

written beautifully by Doerr. 

Another interesting aspect of the story is that of Konstance on the Argos.

When I started reading her story I had strong flavors of the Pixar film Wall-E, but just seeing how they concluded that story by having Konstance discover the Argos never got launched and was just in Greenland came out of no where and shocked me. The connection she had with the Zeno and Seymour story was well written with her being a descendant of one of the children Zeno saved from Seymour and her using tools Seymour created while in jail to uncover the mystery of the Argos. A surface level observation would cause one to believe Anna and Omeir didn’t have the same level of connect but that would be false as it’s their binded book of the myth that Zeno translates and Seymour corrects later. I can’t even say I have a favorite storyline out of the three because of how beautiful each one was, Anna and Omeir’s was heartwarming and emotional, Zeno and Seymour’s was dramatic and intense, while Konstance’s was thrilling and mysterious.

Overall, Anthony Doerr has written a masterpiece which I will definitely be recommending to the end of time and I love that it was written with a dedication to libraries. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Animal death, Death, and Chronic illness

apersonfromflorida's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Gun violence, Bullying, Violence, War, and Animal death

Moderate: Child death, Chronic illness, Religious bigotry, Genocide, Fire/Fire injury, and Emotional abuse

Minor: Murder and Schizophrenia/Psychosis