All the Birds in the Sky

All the Birds in the Sky is, broadly, a novel about the conflict between science and magic. Less broadly, it's a novel about growing up, love, empathy, hubris, mistakes, and the desire to do good.

The story is told mostly from the perspectives of the novel's two main characters, Patricia and Laurence. The overarching plot of the novel may have some awkward twists, and its resolution may arrive a bit abruptly, but it generally works well anyway, considering the novel's focus on the character's individual experiences, and how their relationship plays into the larger events.

Genre-wise, the novel is a blend of science fiction and fantasy, and tone-wise it is a blend of serious and whimsical. While the plot does go to some dark places, the book's writing tends more towards wistful than grimly dark. The style may seem a bit weird, but it works with a story that is overall a bit weird.

Overall, an enjoyable book.

All the Birds in the Sky combines urban fantasy with science fiction and adds some romance and erotic scenes into the mix. It starts off with something like young adult book, but dark themes, graphic scenes and social commentary don't quite fit that bill.

The book is divided into two parts. In first, Patricia and Laurence are children. Both are different from others, so they get bullied in school. When they end up in the same school, it's natural they become friends and trustees for each other.

Years later, they meet again. This time Patricia is a full blown witch, and Laurence is a flashy technological mastermind. In their own ways, both are trying to save the world, but since the other is working with magic and the other with technology, a clash is inevitable.

The first part of the book seems it's written the way child would see things: Patricia's sister is a sadist, both children's parents are unequivocally horrible and adults in generally have hard time understanding anything. In the latter part, this gets replaced with some kind of ironic take of hipsters which is occasionally amusing but mostly would've been better left out altogether.

All the Birds in the Sky deals with the end - and possible future - of humanity. It invokes images of climate change as well as societal collapse. Anders doesn't quite spell it out loud, but from what I can gather, her view seems an entirely plausible end of the world. Apart from magic and time travel, that is.

The story gets chaotic towards the end, so much that the plot almost disappears. In the end Anders manages to pull it all together. The structure of the plot is very movie-like, from episodic climaxes to epic final scenes. This, in addition to obvious opportunity for sequels, makes it seem a bit calculated in the end.

It is not a good sign that a few hours after I finished this book, I couldn't recall what the ending was. Aspects of this were good - the magic is creative, the characters grow, and the initial story had a nice fairy tale quality. Aspects of this were bad - the romance seems forced, characters seem to vanish until summoned, and I either didn't get or there was no purpose to the assassin. Some technology in this near-future novel is not well described, and other tech items appear to be a geekish name dropping. For me, this novel just didn't live up to the cover blurbs and hype. 2 1/3 stars - better than just okay, but a long distance from "I liked it."

minor When the "machine code" appears on the screen of the caddy, the author mentions parentheses. Is it possible that a lisp machine truly launched the first computer A.I.?