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When Patricia Delfine was six years old, a wounded bird led her deep into the forest to the Parliament of Birds, where she met the Great Tree and was asked a question that would determine the course of her life. When Laurence Armstead was in grade school, he cobbled together a wristwatch-sized device that could send its wearer two seconds into the future. When Patricia and Laurence first met in high school, they didn't understand one another at all. But as time went on, they kept bumping show more into one another's lives. Now they're both grown up, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who's working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention into the changing global climate. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world's magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world's every-growing ailments. Neither Laurence nor Patricia can keep pace with the speed at which things fall apart. But something bigger than either of them, something begun deep in their childhoods, is determined to bring them together. And will. show lessTags
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hairball All the Birds in the Sky made me think about Postsingular and Hylozoic for some reason--maybe it's the Bay Area thing, but it's also something about the attitude.
Member Reviews
Four years late getting around to finally reading this first novel from Charlie Jane Anders, but better late than never. A lot of reviews discuss the confusion of genres trying to sort out whether it is fantasy or science fiction; there are certainly dystopian elements and messaging about our future, but those things were not what I was focused on reading this.
What struck me immediately were the wonderful Spielbergian themes and atmosphere in the crafting of Laurence (not Larry!) and Patricia's otherness and alienation as children. When you start out following them through their lives building a two-second time machine and encountering a strange tree offering up a riddle to a six-year-old girl lost in the woods, you know you should show more probably put aside your preconceptions.
The axis of this story is the relationship between Laurence and Patricia as they go through their difficult young lives. They try to navigate our messy world and their relationship to each other, often stumbling through confusion and miscommunication like we all do from time to time.
Everything else is window dressing to that relationship. Becoming a witch and world-class scientist are not at all easy to manage as we build our all-important connections to each other in a chaotic world. We have to find our own paths -- even if that means our misty recollections of childhood may just be figments of our imagination or the very things that help us and the world around us change forever.
And let's not forget the dear assassin Theodolphus Rose who only wants some ice cream. Someone please get him some. Ice cream makes everything better, at least for a little while. show less
What struck me immediately were the wonderful Spielbergian themes and atmosphere in the crafting of Laurence (not Larry!) and Patricia's otherness and alienation as children. When you start out following them through their lives building a two-second time machine and encountering a strange tree offering up a riddle to a six-year-old girl lost in the woods, you know you should show more probably put aside your preconceptions.
The axis of this story is the relationship between Laurence and Patricia as they go through their difficult young lives. They try to navigate our messy world and their relationship to each other, often stumbling through confusion and miscommunication like we all do from time to time.
Everything else is window dressing to that relationship. Becoming a witch and world-class scientist are not at all easy to manage as we build our all-important connections to each other in a chaotic world. We have to find our own paths -- even if that means our misty recollections of childhood may just be figments of our imagination or the very things that help us and the world around us change forever.
And let's not forget the dear assassin Theodolphus Rose who only wants some ice cream. Someone please get him some. Ice cream makes everything better, at least for a little while. show less
This is a strange blend of urban fantasy and near-future science-fiction that is very matter-of-fact about its strangeness, as if much of its strangeness is not actually strange at all.
It is a story about two misfits: Patricia is a witch, Laurence is a mad scientist/technological genius. They become friends in middle school, and then bump into each other years later. They’ve escaped from their schoolyard tormentors and dysfunctional families, but both of them have to deal with unusual work pressures - and the people they each work for are on opposites sides when it comes to dealing with catastrophic world events.
I found this a difficult book to enjoy; it is bleak and alienating at times and I didn’t always connect with the show more characters. In this respect, I was reminded of The Magicians well before the story actually took a brief detour into something very similar to The Magicians.
On the other hand, All the Birds in the Sky is well written, original and genre-savvy, and there were things about it that I liked. Like Laurence’s computer, and the scene where Patricia quotes Doctor Who instead of explaining what she’s done, and the way the seemingly disparate plot threads converge.
I don’t regret finishing it (I considered abandoning it at one point) but I am left feeling very ambivalent. show less
It is a story about two misfits: Patricia is a witch, Laurence is a mad scientist/technological genius. They become friends in middle school, and then bump into each other years later. They’ve escaped from their schoolyard tormentors and dysfunctional families, but both of them have to deal with unusual work pressures - and the people they each work for are on opposites sides when it comes to dealing with catastrophic world events.
I found this a difficult book to enjoy; it is bleak and alienating at times and I didn’t always connect with the show more characters. In this respect, I was reminded of The Magicians well before the story actually took a brief detour into something very similar to The Magicians.
On the other hand, All the Birds in the Sky is well written, original and genre-savvy, and there were things about it that I liked. Like Laurence’s computer, and the scene where Patricia quotes Doctor Who instead of explaining what she’s done, and the way the seemingly disparate plot threads converge.
I don’t regret finishing it (I considered abandoning it at one point) but I am left feeling very ambivalent. show less
"When the whole world turns chaotic, we must be the better part of chaos."
As middle school students, Laurence and Patricia are both outcasts. He develops a two-second time machine, and she is rumored to have magical powers. Friendless, they find each other and develop a tenuous friendship. But as unexpected events take them both away from their middle school, they lose touch. They meet again as adults in a futuristic San Francisco. As the world begins to fall apart around them, they each try to save it. But Patricia's use of magic and Laurence's reliance on science and technology often put them at odds. Through their friendship, we gain insight into the clash that may save the world or may end it.
The world that Anders creates in this show more book is an interesting one. Of course, magic has always had a prominent place in books, and so have potential technological advances. Putting the two side by side, however, allows for a unique look at each. Anders explores a number of other themes, including the challenges of building relationships with those from other groups. At times, the story was a bit discontinuous, jumping ahead in time to accomplish all it set out to do, but overall, I was fascinated by the characters and the world building in this one. show less
As middle school students, Laurence and Patricia are both outcasts. He develops a two-second time machine, and she is rumored to have magical powers. Friendless, they find each other and develop a tenuous friendship. But as unexpected events take them both away from their middle school, they lose touch. They meet again as adults in a futuristic San Francisco. As the world begins to fall apart around them, they each try to save it. But Patricia's use of magic and Laurence's reliance on science and technology often put them at odds. Through their friendship, we gain insight into the clash that may save the world or may end it.
The world that Anders creates in this show more book is an interesting one. Of course, magic has always had a prominent place in books, and so have potential technological advances. Putting the two side by side, however, allows for a unique look at each. Anders explores a number of other themes, including the challenges of building relationships with those from other groups. At times, the story was a bit discontinuous, jumping ahead in time to accomplish all it set out to do, but overall, I was fascinated by the characters and the world building in this one. show less
Immensely brilliant and entertaining, this is a love story, a tale of loss, a horror novel and a creative explosion of whimsy and darkness. I f'n loved it.
Stop me if you've heard this one before. There's an odd little girl with an oppressive homelife who can talk to animals, and she is whisked away to a secret school of magic to become a witch of great power. And there's a bullied boy who turns to science to make the friends he can't make in real life, and he'll either save the world or destroy it. And they're maybe destined for each other, or maybe not.
Anders plays the tropes of YA fiction, schoolhouse fantasy, and pre-apocalyptic scifi with verve and a kind of post-modern self-awareness. My favorite part was the first third, with how comprehensively terribly everything about Patricia and Laurence's families and schools was. But then they hit puberty, the narrative skips a decade, and show more we catch up with them in San Francisco. Patricia is now a witch, and Laurence is a techie working on an anti-gravity wormhole for an Elon Musk figure. They navigate their own fraught 20s and the possible end of the world. The standard four horseman are already reaping billions, and both magic and science have doomsday devices in the wings to put an exclamation mark on the human experiment.
There's nothing that wholly novel here, but Anders uses old standbys with style, and she has a talent for wry humor and bruising psychological realism. Sure, things don't tie up entirely neatly, but that's life, that's how it is. I'm not sure if this is a four or five star book, but I've read a lot of dross lately, so Anders gets a boost, lucky her. show less
Anders plays the tropes of YA fiction, schoolhouse fantasy, and pre-apocalyptic scifi with verve and a kind of post-modern self-awareness. My favorite part was the first third, with how comprehensively terribly everything about Patricia and Laurence's families and schools was. But then they hit puberty, the narrative skips a decade, and show more we catch up with them in San Francisco. Patricia is now a witch, and Laurence is a techie working on an anti-gravity wormhole for an Elon Musk figure. They navigate their own fraught 20s and the possible end of the world. The standard four horseman are already reaping billions, and both magic and science have doomsday devices in the wings to put an exclamation mark on the human experiment.
There's nothing that wholly novel here, but Anders uses old standbys with style, and she has a talent for wry humor and bruising psychological realism. Sure, things don't tie up entirely neatly, but that's life, that's how it is. I'm not sure if this is a four or five star book, but I've read a lot of dross lately, so Anders gets a boost, lucky her. show less
I've been eagerly anticipating this book, and Charlie Jane Anders delivered! A heady, emotionally centered story of childhood friends (one on the mad scientist end of the spectrum, the other a bit witchy), their paths into their respective fields and the course of their relationship against the backdrop of the brewing war between technology and magic. Great characters (including a genderqueer character!) and lovely, grounded sense of time, detail, and place make this a winner
Patricia and Laurence don't fit in very well at their elementary school or get along with their parents, but that's about where their similarities end. Patricia talks to birds and grows up to attend magic school and become a witch. Laurence tinkers with computers and builds tiny gadgets and eventually world-altering machines. Throughout their lives they are frequently drawn toward each other, by either magic or technology, and then violently ripped apart. Together, they might destroy mankind, but only they together can save it.
This is a really fascinating story about the discord between magic and technology - between fantasy and science fiction. I really enjoyed reading it, and it gave me a lot to think about. Charlie Jane Anders' show more experience as a writer of short fiction really shows. The writing is fantastic but the plot feels more like a long series of events than a structured novel, and there's little character growth and almost no dialog. The book is a slim 315 pages, which is a good thing, but everything just seemed to move so fast - my biggest problem with this book was that I liked it and wish it had slowed down so I could savor it more. It felt like it could actually be about 12 books. show less
This is a really fascinating story about the discord between magic and technology - between fantasy and science fiction. I really enjoyed reading it, and it gave me a lot to think about. Charlie Jane Anders' show more experience as a writer of short fiction really shows. The writing is fantastic but the plot feels more like a long series of events than a structured novel, and there's little character growth and almost no dialog. The book is a slim 315 pages, which is a good thing, but everything just seemed to move so fast - my biggest problem with this book was that I liked it and wish it had slowed down so I could savor it more. It felt like it could actually be about 12 books. show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Tous les oiseaux du ciel
- Original title
- All the Birds in the Sky
- Original publication date
- 2016-01-26
- People/Characters
- Patricia Delfine; Laurence Armstead; Theodolphus Rose; Roberta Delfine; Isobel; Milton Dirth (show all 7); Ernesto
- Important places
- San Francisco, California, USA
- Epigraph
- In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of machines. -George Dyson, Darwin Among the... (show all) Machines
- Dedication
- To Annalee
- First words
- When Patricia was six years old, she found a wounded bird.
- Quotations
- "You never learned the secret,” said Roberta. “How to be a crazy motherfucker and get away with it. Everybody else does it. What, you didn’t think they were all sane, did you? Not a one of them. They’re all crazier th... (show all)an you and me put together. They just know how to fake it. You could too, but you’ve chosen to torture all of us instead. That’s the definition of evil right there: not faking it like everybody else. Because all of us crazy fuckers can’t stand it when someone else lets their crazy show. It’s like bugs under the skin. We have to destroy you. It’s nothing personal."
You know … no matter what you do, people are going to expect you to be someone you’re not. But if you’re clever and lucky and work your butt off, then you get to be surrounded by people who expect you to be the person y... (show all)ou wish you were.
nature doesn’t ‘find ways’ to do anything. Nature has no opinion, no agenda. Nature provides a playing field, a not particularly level one, on which we compete with all creatures great and small. It’s more that nature... (show all)’s playing field is full of traps.
Boredom is the mind’s scar tissue. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Then Laurence took Patricia's arm and they led each other out into the brand-new city.
- Publisher's editor
- Nielsen Hayden, Patrick; Weinberg, Miriam
- Blurbers
- Chabon, Michael; Fowler, Karen Joy; Doctorow, Cory; Grossman, Lev; Hodgman, John
- Original language
- English
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.6
- Canonical LCC
- PS3601.N428
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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