Lucas Blogs About All the Birds in the Sky

Huh, how considerate of that reader to hold the book so that his webcam could see the title and author.

Charlie Jane Anders'(s?) All the Birds in the Sky is one of those books that makes you feel sorry for whatever you read next (Seriously, how is anything in the to-read pile supposed to top that?). It makes you want to sing along to your iPod while you ride your bike home from work. Or you know, some other thing that makes you feel weirdly alive. I'll cut to the chase, this is the best novel I've read in a while. Not one of the best. Not the best in a particularly genre. The best. Certainly the best novel I've reviewed since starting this blog. Which reminds me,  this'll be a normal review. Hypothetical Reader's not in this one (sorry to Hypothetical Reader's hypothetical fans). My enthusiasm for this book is so unabashed, there's no need to temper this review with a rhetorical device.

This is the story of Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead, how they became and ceased to be friends in middle school, then met again in adulthood. Patricia is a witch with a mystical destiny, or so a birds' parliament told her as a child, and Laurence is a precocious tech nerd who once played hooky to go see a rocket launch. As you may have guessed, they both find themselves outcasts in middle school, where they forge a bond as Patricia attempts to harness her power and Laurence tries to build an AI in his closet. As adults they reconnect when Laurence is a showboating startup wunderkind and Patricia is a talented witch trying to thread the needle of doing good without getting too full of herself (an apparent concern of magic users). There are a couple of other major characters but it might be a spoiler to reveal who they are (you'll figure it out before Laurence and Patricia). All of this unfolds against the backdrop of a not-too-distant future facing the pressures of ecological catastrophes and geo-political tensions. Both Patricia and Laurence find themselves unwittingly at cross purposes after each aligns with a group working to save the world.

At its core, this is the story of how two people can keep hurting each other and letting each other down and yet still be there for each other when it really counts. You may be thinking, "OMG, LUCAS SHIPS IT!" You would be correct to think that. Whether you read their relationship as romantic or platonic (the text has a definite bias), Patricia and Laurence are relatable leads with realistic flaws that drive the conflict of the story. Speaking of conflict, this is also a story that explores the obsession that might drive someone to risk destroying part of the world in order to save the rest of it. The same obsession that might keep you from trusting the person that you should be able to trust most in the seemingly inevitable showdown between magic and technology. Don't be naïve, guys, it's coming any day now.

I don't want to spoil it, but I will say that the novel does have a happy ending (for certain values of happy), and that it earns the hell out of it. Laurence and Patricia both undergo satisfying, complementary character arcs as they endure the trials they (often) inflict on each other and their own self-inflicted isolation.

Anyway, that doesn't even touch on the thing that makes this book so fan-fucking-tastic. Charlie Jane Anders can write. There's writing and then there's writing, and this is the latter. It's the kind of book that makes aspiring writers like myself jealous. Her writing is intelligent, humorous, moving, and compelling with a felicitous sense of just how much detail is necessary to convey a scene or a mood or a character. She injects the story with apt allusions that never threaten to overpower it, and perhaps more impressively, she manages to create names for tech and pop culture that will exist in this not-too-distant future without being too cutesy or on-the-nose. Further, she's managed the neat trick of writing a novel that is as good a work of science fiction as it is a work of fantasy.

Let's be honest, usually when a novel combines sci-fi and fantasy elements, it's more one than the other. I suppose your mileage may vary on this one, but this is both science fiction and fantasy in equal measure (with a healthy dose of tech-bro satire thrown in). And even with all of this, she manages to avoid one of my least favorite tropes in contemporary-ish fantasy settings: her magical world is small enough for me to believe that it can be a secret. (I'll cut this off before it becomes a mini-rant but I hate it when I'm reading an urban fantasy novel and you reach the point where it seems like every fifth person is a fucking wizard or vampire or kappa or something and they're somehow keeping it all a secret from the mundanes.)

Anyway, you may know Anders as a former editor and contributor at io9. She's received Best of the Bay, Edmund White, Hugo, and Lambda Literary Awards for her previous writing. All the Birds in the Sky was nominated for a Hugo for Best Novel last year, which makes me wonder, "How good did NK Jemison's The Obelisk Gate have to be to beat this?"

Bottom line is, if you want to read a sci-fi/fantasy novel with a brain, a heart, and da noive, read this book. Check it out of the library, download the ebook, purchase it online or from your local bookstore, borrow it from a friend, whatever. 

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders, Tor Trade Paperback edition, April 2017, 313 pages, pairs well with something artisanal and locally sourced, like a burger and craft beer at that new gastropub everyone's been talking about, the one you've been meaning to check out but, you know, it looks a little pricey and you keep saying you'll go next payday but then you realize you need a haircut or you went over your data allowance and you keep putting it off and before you know it the gastropub went out of business only to be replaced by a new gastropub that everyone agrees is okay but isn't as good as the one that was there before and you feel like you missed out something special

Links:

Here's some stuff Anders has written on tor.com.

List of Hugo nominees and winners for best novel, it's now perfect, but there are a lot of good sci-fi and fantasy books on it.