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Jul 22, 2017SCL_Justin rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Charlie Jane Anders' debut novel, All the Birds in the Sky is great. The main characters start off as a couple of weird kids, one who talks to birds and another who builds a two-second time machine, and the story is about how they, well, interact is a clinical word, but it's an appropriate one. Each of them embodies a different way of looking at the world off-kilterly, one through nature-magic and the other through mad-science. It's really good, but don't expect it to feel realistic. For the first third of the book I was unsure why this wasn't marketed as a more science-fictional Eleanor & Park. As kids there's an assassin sent to deal with them but he's not allowed to directly kill minors so he becomes their guidance counsellor and becomes really well-liked in that role. Then there's a time jump to adulthood and the fate of the world starts to become an issue (and it loses some of that YA romance feeling). Later in the book it feels much more like The Magicians, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, Makers or Seveneves. One issue might be its optimism in the face of the end of the world, like there's going to be an escape valve that we'll actually all be okay. I think it walked the line well, but your mileage may vary.