"Indestructible"Or to put it in milder terms, "I just got ran over by a mac truck."This novel is just too important to miss, whether or not you're into SF or Fantasy, because it is both. It's a long and delightful and REAL conversation between the two, a heartfelt exploration and a synthesis, a heartbreaking tale and a true wonderment of fiction.I guess I kinda liked it.It's a lot more than a magical realism novel, and it's no experiment. There's nothing unreadable about it and it doesn't have t...

One of the best books I have read in ages, easily in the top three I've read this year.

All the Birds in the Sky is a trove of near misses and reads like a low-budget, bad action flick. Among its flaws, the book contains: characters who lack depth, children who talk like adults, forced romance, and a hollow plot lacking substance.

What a wildly imaginative, delightful novel. I had no idea what to expect from this book but I was just thrilled with this book from the beginning to the end. Patricia and Laurence, who meet each other as kids and develop a friendship of convenience that becomes much more by the end of the novel, are wonderfully drawn characters. I love how fully fleshed out the felt. There is a beautifully written scene between them toward the end of the novel, that is worth the price of admission. The plot sor...

4.25ish stars.Bizarre, insightful, quirky, and unique in its examination of the relationships between and within science, nature and humanity.Laurence and Patricia as characters are weird, dumb, and oh so real. Every step of the way I was shaking my head at them, laughing at them, rolling my eyes, screaming at them in my head and rooting for them until the end.The novel was at once a small slice of life story about two very different social outcasts AND a giant commentary on the forces of nature...

Book club selection for this month.As I started this, I wasn't sure if Anders' sense of humor was going to gel with mine, but after a bit, I actually really got into it. Actually, it might've been my favorite part of the book: lighthearted portrayals of over-the-top awfulness that although on one level absurd, on another level ring heartbreakingly true. The first part of the book reminded me in feel of Jo Walton's 'Among Others,' (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) both in its portrayal o...

This is one weirdass book. A good kind of weird, but it definitely isn't for everyone.All the Birds in the Sky transcends genres, refusing to find its place anywhere - is it sci-fi? Paranormal/fantasy? Dystopian/alternate world? Magical realism? In truth, it's some of all of those. A quirky and strange blend of science and magic.I can't really liken it to anything else, which makes reviewing hard but is, ultimately, a huge compliment. I love to be able to say "I have never read anything like thi...

I hated this book.If you want the epic rant, read on... but beware: profanity and spoilers.(view spoiler)[The writing was shitty. It was wildly uneven and trying WAY TOO HARD to be relevant to an ironic hipster Internet crowd, which really doesn't exist except in liberal website comment sections and people's political rant blogs, and if I have to read about another eco-friendly locally sourced vegan hole in the wall restaurant that our characters go to pick up their overpriced coffees while the

I didn't want to finish this but I wanted it to be over. A short book, but every day the Kindle would taunt me with the slow progression of %86% . . . 90% . . . 94% . . .I would groan and sigh every time I went to pick it up. There was no way to remember what was happening because every chapter was so different and so weird. There was very little continuity, huge time jumps, and no cohesion of location - meaning I never knew exactly when or where the charaters were. They said get lost in a book....

Eh, I did not care much for this one. “Children are adults who haven't yet learned to make fear their hand puppet.” It started strong (see quote above) but quickly lost me. It’s just one of those books that you don’t feel bad putting aside for a while and pick up to finish mostly out of the feeling of obligation, constantly keeping an eye on how much longer was left in the book, hoping just to get to the end faster and be done with it - and not because I really cared to see what’s happening.

"San Francisco never stopped astonishing Lawrence - wild raccoons and possums wondered the streets, especially at night, and their shiny fur and long tails looked just like stray cats, unless you look twice. Skunks nested under people's houses." Is there any magic left in the world? Magic to heal and provide hope. Has it been completely upstaged by technology, fallen into a meaningless oblivion? How far can technology go? Where does its contribution to society stop and the potential dangers b

Unbelievably stupid and I loved every minute of it.Guaranteed: lessons on how to become a bird and a witch, ice-cream-loving assassins part-timing as school advisors, inside perspective on suet and AI, magic school, nerds, bullying. Plus a healthy dose of the Absurd - enough to induce a very strong feeling of déjà lu. I'm slowly getting a feeling that half the books I read were written by one writer. Even though their names say they aren't.I really love how Patricia's life is focused on how one

Well that was a surprise! A pleasant one though. Once I had adjusted to the talking birds and realised there was much more fantasy in the book than science fiction, I settled down to enjoy what I found to be an excellent story.Laurence and Patricia made a beautiful pair, especially once they had left home and school. What an awful school that was! The assassin/school counsellor reminded me of Terry Pratchett's books. He was very fond of his school for assassins and the amazing things they could

There are novels that come along and utterly change how you think about fiction. They challenge you, they charge you, they fire you deep into the shadowed spaces within yourself that you could only previously grasp. By the end, you simply feel entrenched, like you somehow exist deeper in this beautiful, insane world we inhabit, and can better understand the connections between everyone who lives on it. The last novel to do this to me was Among Others by Jo Walton, and I’m thrilled to say Anders’...