Reviews

Beautiful and fun throughout, and the epilogue left me sobbing (I probably need to reread to absorb it even more deeply). Some things that I thought were going to be endings happened much earlier than expected, and what seemed like digressions turn out to get at the heart of the matter.

And, for my Oklahomies, enough is set here and in the region to be even more interesting.

Does it matter that there's some mysterious and deeply nonscientific things that are crucial to the plot? Not even a little.

Some quotes:
"I like to think we met in a daydream once, a long time ago, and decided to meet right here, right now."

"On this imagined plane, [they] were sixteen youears old, discovering new music and spiraling into the sort of cloudless ove that fears no consequences."

"Lewis and those trees grew up together. And now the same treees were his best men."

"Another teacher complimented her on her Quiet Confidence, and for the trest of her life she would wear the phrase as an inner badge."

"[Dallas was] covered with concrete, falt, and land locked, the city felt big enough to disappear in but not big enough to get lost in."

"She knew how easily they could fail each other."

"Some days they balanced each other nicely. Other days [they] existedon opposite ends of the house, not speaking.

"Wren loved Lewis' ideas but had little patience for their accompanying clutter."

"Wren and the TPW shared practical, applied interests like oncoming personal devastation, terrifying sadness, and the experience of free-falling into grief and the unknown."

"The main ingredient in transformation was not magic. It was pain."

"They would thank the tilted universe it wasn't their change to bear."

"Ambushed by infatuation..."

"Are we all just actors, performing some unbound art form for god, the audience of space? I wish I could have seen then what I know now. All along, I had the starring role."

"This is what happens to lots of people. Marriages sometimes... end."

"He was an aimless kite in search of a string to ground him to the world, but sintead, he'd found Wren, a great, strong wind who supported his exploration of the sky."

"She did not contemplate the presence or mystery or infinity. Instead, Angela appreciated the cosmos' relative constancy ... the Big and Little Dippers were two kites flying next to each other."

"Plants were probably the most sentient of all living things; rational, bloodless bystanders, witnessing the great horror of it all."

"He even missed the quiet brutal noise of the internet."

"Truth and love were complicated concepts on their own, and patching the two words together created a significant tangle."

"Afterward, he could remember only the memory of the memory."

"Lewis discovered a layer of sadness even deeper than his previous depression: a bleak, gorgeous fog so quiet and still it resembled peace."

"One night ... she binged the whole play ... His work could no longer be discovered. She had lost him all over again."

"I am an animal too, you know."

"Lewis... he would have loved ... all of this."

"Wren no longer sees life as a long, linear ladder ... Instead, she considers how life is like a spiraling trail up a mountain ... She begins to enjoy the view."

tjwallace04's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

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

4.25

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