A review by dgirardot
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

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

3.75

This book is the literary equivalent of that person from high school who was skilled at everything—sports, academics, everything—and you desperately wanted them to just fail at something. In this case, Cloud Cuckoo Land has a lot of great attributes, but the whole ends up being less than the sum of its parts. It it’s original, and yet it feels predictable in the grain its storylines follow.

Some thoughts:
  • Doerr is skilled at crafting beautiful sentences.
  • The environmentalist message of the book, while laudable, ends up coming across preachy, and the lack of resolution about that part of the book doesn’t work well with the rest.
  • Doerr is absolutely abominable at writing dialogue for children, and he should never attempt to do so again for as long as he lives. I’m surprised he didn’t have a fifth grader say “Rad!,” though he certainly came close.
  • The conceit of using the fictionalized “Cloud Cuckoo Land” ancient text quickly gets old. It really doesn’t read like an ancient text at all, and it often doesn’t have any bearing on the main plot for each given chapter — and if it does, it’s by hitting the reader over the head.
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