All the Birds in the Sky in Do Better: SFF without Sexual Violence

Jul 31, 2017 A. _____ rated it really liked it

Shelves: beauty, fantasy, sci-fi, 2017, romance

Not for the first time, Laurence thought this was one of the annoyingly incommunicative features in the English language. Much like the inability to distinguish between “x-or” and “and/ or,” the lack of delineation between “x-we” and “in-we” was a conspiracy of obfuscation, designed to create awkwardness and exacerbate peer pressure—because people tried to include you in their “we” without your consent, or you thought you were included and then the rug got pulled out from under you. Laurence

Not for the first time, Laurence thought this was one of the annoyingly incommunicative features in the English language. Much like the inability to distinguish between “x-or” and “and/ or,” the lack of delineation between “x-we” and “in-we” was a conspiracy of obfuscation, designed to create awkwardness and exacerbate peer pressure—because people tried to include you in their “we” without your consent, or you thought you were included and then the rug got pulled out from under you. Laurence dwelled on this linguistic injustice as he watched his parents walk back to their car, across the crunchy parking lot, without him.

This was...I'm not sure what adjectives to use - the story was in parts charming, heartwarming, disturbing, sad and terrifying; optimistic and pessimistic in turn.

The writing was certainly delightful, but given how troubling parts of the story are, 'delightful' feels like the wrong word to use. The writing absolutely hooked me in from page 1 until around 2/3 of the way through. I love the juxtaposition of children's book style prose with adult themes, and I think the combination worked really well and kept me both engaged and off balance. (Actually that would work very well as an one phrase review - kept me engaged and off balance, and I loved it!)

In general, I enjoy following characters from childhood into adulthood (or at least getting flashbacks of protagonists as children), it sets context for their actions and shows us not just who they are, but why they are the way they are. I loved watching Laurence and Patricia (particularly Patricia) grow up. My favourite part of the book is her entrance back on to the scene as an adult - I could see it happen in my head and I could believe how Patricia's childhood led to her becoming Adult Patricia. I loved how all the elements of the story and major characters come together at the end, in weird, unexpected ways.

I really liked the romance developing in the background, subtle and absolutely integral to the plot. I love romance in sci-fi/fantasy, especially in books where one wouldn't otherwise expect it. Liked it enough to shelve the book under 'romance' since it is handled so well.

This book started off at a 5, and went down to about 4 in the middle. This is one of those books where the writing is also a character (unlike say, Sanderson, where the writing itself is unobtrusive), and I much preferred the writing in the first third of the book to the middle bits, where it sort of slowed down the story.

Such a strange, wonderful book though. I'm really looking forward to my reread. ...more

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Feb 02, 2019 Tm, pilot-in-training on the Rocinante & cake yum! rated it it was ok

I’m not sure what happened here.

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Mar 18, 2020 Joanne rated it it was amazing

I normally have a tough time focusing on books with the printed word lately. I have been listening to audio books more than reading lately. This book made me want to change all that!

The characters were very relatable. I felt engaged in the story mostly all the time. I really enjoyed Charlie Anders writing style. It is conversational. Sometimes, I read it aloud to my cat. It felt so natural and flowed extremely well.

I normally don't like a lot of sex, violence or foul language. I would say that ...more

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Apr 10, 2017 Leticia rated it liked it

Shelves: books_read_2017_not_comics, books_read_2017_fantasy_scifi, science-fiction, read_all_the_books, magical-realism

I'm a bit in doubt about what to say in my review. I liked the story and the ending although I would have liked more if it would have gone to more depths in its original and interesting premise and tried less to be everybody's taste in an amusing way. ...more

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