Reviews tagging 'Terminal illness'

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

7 reviews

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

clairew97's review against another edition

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Mental illness, Murder, Pandemic/Epidemic, Terminal illness, Death of parent, Bullying, Medical content, Pregnancy, Animal death, Body horror, Death, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, War, Violence, Blood, Homophobia, and Panic attacks/disorders

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

shlymiller's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.75

If you like weaving storylines and libraries, this book is for you.

It took me awhile to get invested in each storyline, but once pieces started connecting I couldn’t put it down. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, War, and Violence

Moderate: Mental illness, Death, Confinement, and Terminal illness

Minor: Body shaming, Injury/Injury detail, Fire/Fire injury, and Death of parent

mitzee's review against another edition

emotional hopeful mysterious 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

One of those books with many different timelines and characters that somehow all work together. Loved the themes of human and animal relationships, environmentalism (in this context it’s both good and bad), and the character growth from different storylines. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: War, Death, Animal death, and Mental illness

Minor: Death of parent and Terminal illness

greymalkin's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

This feels like a combination of _Map of Salt and Stars_ and _Cloud Atlas_ and I liked it. 

 

I really enjoyed the way the separate stories were connected by a single in-world story, and yet none of them actually read the same story. Bits were made up, lost, reorganized, transformed into a different format, etc.  I didn't like all the stories equally, and I was rather disappointed in the endings for all the characters.  The endings weren't unexpected, I was just hoping for something a bit brighter and more hopeful.  I loved the Konstance and Zeno stories.   I would have been happy if the book was just their two stories intertwining.

The bookclub questions at the end are disappointingly trite.  I was hoping for something more worthy of such a thoughtful book.  I wanted questions more like: "Why do you think the author chose these specific time periods and how do they reflect the way each character reacted to the events in the book?"  and "The author traps three of the main characters inside prisons/sieges, even as the character in Cloud Cuckoo Land is trapped inside the body of a donkey, a whale, and a bird.  Are there parallels that can be drawn there?"

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, War, and Animal cruelty

Moderate: Violence, Terminal illness, Injury/Injury detail, and Mental illness

blanketsandtea's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful reflective medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Minor: Abandonment, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, War, and Violence