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brogan7 's review for:

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
5.0
adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
This is a book that scores high on adventure, tension, and historical and intellectual interest.  Set in a number of different times and places, the story weaves itself through time and various of the characters' stories intersect with each other's.  I loved the Greek translations, the story-within-the-story, and so many of the individual stories, Omeir, Anna, Zeno (Zeno, Zeno), Seymour, and the library scenes.  
There were a couple of hiccups at the end, I thought,
where we don't know why the Argos was actually built, for instance.  Also it wouldn't make sense for Konstance to come out into the world and expect to have any sort of easy communication with the people she found, assuming she found people.  Her language and theirs, if it ever was the same, wouldn't be, by the time she emerged from that non-spaceship.
  However, it was a fast read right to the end and wasn't unsatisfying, just perhaps incomplete.
I didn't like at first that he told us Zeno would die in the library on p.423, but I learned later that was also to tell us that the kids would make it, so I forgave him for that.

Anthony Doerr is a fantastic world-builder and he doesn't disappoint in this one.
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