ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY

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All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders, TOR Books, 2016, 313 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn't expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one's peers and families.

But now they're both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who's working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention into the changing global climate. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world's magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world's ever-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together--to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.

 

 

My Review:

Incredible! Last week I read Dexter Palmer's Version Control, among other topics, a book about time travel. This week I read this sparkling and crazy novel that imagines a war between magic and science taking place as the world enters its final slide into oblivion for the human race. A time travel/anti-gravity device is a possible solution for saving at least a small portion of humanity by sending them off to another planet.

 

There are richly complex characters to love and hate, a magic system and a scientific one, with a world just around the corner from where we are now.

 

If you want an idea of the plot, read the summary above. Honestly, as thrilling as the reading experience was, it was also exhausting and anyway, I hate writing plot summaries. This is a book for geeks of all kinds. 

 

Patricia, the magical witch/healer who can talk to animals and Laurence, the scientific child prodigy, make most of the fantasy or sci fi characters who are outcasts in their own lives look kind of mainstream and well adjusted by comparison. Their childhood friendship and adult romance are more what we are used to but hold up better than other couples in the genres.

 

If this sounds like something you might like to read, be prepared to jettison all preconceived ideas and just go with it. If you like your facts and emotions pinned down and your beliefs kept intact, skip it. This book is crazy good but it is also plain crazy! I loved it.

 

Also it is a TOB 2017 contender and just got nominated for a Nebula award. 

 

 

(All the Birds in the Sky is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)