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.