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A review by kellylizbeth
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
5.0
This is a stunning, imaginative, moving, beautifully written book, and I don’t want to give too much away in the name of summary, because if you’re at all interested to read it, I don’t want to spoil one bit. It’s 600+ pages, and jumps between multiple characters/narratives, but it’s so compelling once you’re into it that I read it really fast. CW for some violence and an act of terrorism, but nothing really graphic.
The description had me skeptical, because I’m not normally one for sci-fi or space travel, and the novel spans the past (Middle Ages Constantinople), present (2020 Idaho), and future (a space mission to an exoplanet light years away from Earth) - yet the storytelling feels timeless. There isn’t actually time travel; each narrative is distinct within its own era, but they’re all woven together artfully by common themes and a central story: an ancient Greek fable that endures across all these centuries, about a man who wants to transform into a bird so he can fly to a paradise in the clouds. In the Middle Ages, a young orphan girl steals ancient texts from an abandoned monastery to sell in order to buy blessings for her ailing sister, and a boy with a cleft palate is drafted into an army descending upon the walled city of Constantinople where she lives. Present day, a teenage activist is planning an attack to prove his devotion to his cause, at a library where an octogenarian Korean War vet is helping a group of 5th graders stage a play. In the future, a young girl is gradually learning more about the mission she was born into and the world her parents left behind.
The characters utterly captivated me, and I was invested in their fates from the beginning pages until the final chapters--the book is so long that it spans most of their entire lives. Also worth noting that among the protagonists, there are queer, neurodiverse, and POC characters. Major themes touch on compassion, utopia/dystopia, climate change and the loss of the natural world, and the power of story/literature/books. It moved me to tears more than once, there was at least one major plot twist I didn’t see coming, and I’m already looking forward to reading it again.
Absolutely loved, and would wholeheartedly recommend to...basically everyone? But especially fans of big, sweeping, epic stories about the resilience of the human spirit and the myriad ways we are all connected, even across vast expanses of time and distance and space.
The description had me skeptical, because I’m not normally one for sci-fi or space travel, and the novel spans the past (Middle Ages Constantinople), present (2020 Idaho), and future (a space mission to an exoplanet light years away from Earth) - yet the storytelling feels timeless. There isn’t actually time travel; each narrative is distinct within its own era, but they’re all woven together artfully by common themes and a central story: an ancient Greek fable that endures across all these centuries, about a man who wants to transform into a bird so he can fly to a paradise in the clouds. In the Middle Ages, a young orphan girl steals ancient texts from an abandoned monastery to sell in order to buy blessings for her ailing sister, and a boy with a cleft palate is drafted into an army descending upon the walled city of Constantinople where she lives. Present day, a teenage activist is planning an attack to prove his devotion to his cause, at a library where an octogenarian Korean War vet is helping a group of 5th graders stage a play. In the future, a young girl is gradually learning more about the mission she was born into and the world her parents left behind.
The characters utterly captivated me, and I was invested in their fates from the beginning pages until the final chapters--the book is so long that it spans most of their entire lives. Also worth noting that among the protagonists, there are queer, neurodiverse, and POC characters. Major themes touch on compassion, utopia/dystopia, climate change and the loss of the natural world, and the power of story/literature/books. It moved me to tears more than once, there was at least one major plot twist I didn’t see coming, and I’m already looking forward to reading it again.
Absolutely loved, and would wholeheartedly recommend to...basically everyone? But especially fans of big, sweeping, epic stories about the resilience of the human spirit and the myriad ways we are all connected, even across vast expanses of time and distance and space.