All the Birds in the Sky in The Toast

Feb 11, 2017 Ash rated it liked it

There's a lot to love here, but for some reason this one never really came together for me. All the Birds in the Sky starts when two childhood outcasts become friends. Laurence hates going outside and is creating a super computer in his closet. Patricia is a burgeoning witch who loves the woods and can sometimes speak to animals. The first section of the book, while they're in middle school, was very Roald Dahl. The adults are all larger-than-life villains drawn in broad strokes; the other stude There's a lot to love here, but for some reason this one never really came together for me. All the Birds in the Sky starts when two childhood outcasts become friends. Laurence hates going outside and is creating a super computer in his closet. Patricia is a burgeoning witch who loves the woods and can sometimes speak to animals. The first section of the book, while they're in middle school, was very Roald Dahl. The adults are all larger-than-life villains drawn in broad strokes; the other students are unconditionally cruel. It is very much Patricia & Laurence versus the world. This section also sets up the tone for the rest of the book: mere pages into the first chapter, a bird begins speaking to Patricia with no fanfare on behalf of the author or character. Similarly, Laurence develops a time machine with spare parts and schematics he found online. These things are a matter of course, as are the much greater levels of magic & technology that appear later in the book.

Theodolphus Rose is also introduced in this section. He is a Quirky Assassin who needs to eliminate these children before they cause the end of the world, but because of Assassin Rules he can't kill kids, so instead he tries to convince Patricia to kill Laurence instead. Obviously she doesn't. This entire subplot could have been cut without affecting the direction of the book at all, and I wish it had been - it really didn't work for me.

The book picks up when Patricia and Laurence are much more badass adults who run into each other at a party. They have each gained several levels in their preferred skill. I did really enjoy the evolution of Patricia's magic. When she's a kid, she has the magic I wanted to have as a kid (talking to animals, magic tree friend); when she's an adult, she has the magic I'd want to have now (cursing villains, healing friends, unspecified badassery). Laurence is basically a mad scientist. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse, and wars, famine, and environmental disasters lurk in the background. Patricia's witchy friends want to save nature, at any cost; Laurence's techy friends want to save humanity, at any cost. This is a valuable and relevant question that has no clear answer: is it more important to save humanity, even if that means abandoning the planet? Or is it our responsibility to take care of all of the life on Earth, too?

I generally liked the plot. What didn't work for me is harder to pin down. There are some inconsistencies in tone and point of view that got in my way - the first section is Roald Dahl, the middle of the book is told fairly straight and doesn't call much attention to itself, and the third is fairly flippant. As the book starts to hit its emotional high points, the writing becomes increasingly distant and ironic; it kept me from really feeling any of the things that I should have. The point of view changes frequently, too, but I wish that it was more loyal to Patricia. She's a more interesting character than Laurence, with a more relevant role in the plot. Laurence's POV sections became increasingly irrelevant as the book went on. I wanted to be with Patricia during this book's climactic scenes, not with Laurence watching Patricia.

Other reviewers have wondered if this is YA, and despite the drugs & sex & decently constructed plot, I can see where they're coming from. It's just that everyone is so cool. Patricia and Laurence are young and fucking up their relationships (just like you and me!) but they're also super hot and well-dressed and rising stars in their respective fields while they're doing it. There's a scene where they ride a motorcycle through the wreckage of San Francisco, jumping over the ruins of all the hip places they used to hang out, and they just are so cool I can't really take it. There's a lot of wish fulfillment in this book.

It's also very comic/anime/super-hero-movie in its imagery. There's a character with a shoulder mounted antigravity beam; there's this crazy mech that's shaped like a bug and mounted with dozens of high-powered sci-fi weapons. I can imagine these things very clearly because they're sci-fi stock pieces that I've seen many times before. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not really a good thing either; it didn't seem to add enough to the plot to justify its inclusion. It felt like it was there for the coolness factor or to increase this book's sci-fi cred.

The plot structure, too, felt like it was nicked from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This book was very origin-story, equally as interested in showing its characters Cool Powers as in telling the story, so it ended up with something like 80% setup and 20% plot, all crammed into the very end.

So - is a book good?

I don't know. This one didn't do much for me, but there is something undeniably attractive about it. I've probably taken a more negative view of it than most; I expect that readers who are somewhat less jaded and cynical about genre fiction will enjoy its wish fulfillment aspects and its re-purposing of sci-fi tropes. I'll just stay by myself in hater corner, waiting for someone to write a fantasy epic with all of my specific hangups and preferences in mind. ...more

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Mar 02, 2016 MJ rated it really liked it

Shelves: favorites

I looooooooooooooooved it.
it grabbed me from like the second page.

it was so many kinds of wonderful. doctor who references,mixing magic and technology,childreen seeing things adults can't, doomsday machines,the end of the world, misfits, the importance of love and friendship, it hit practically all my buttons!

and I enjoyed the fast pace of the book even though it takes place over several years, it never felt like the story dragged on, or spent too much time on world building or backstory, thing ...more

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Apr 12, 2016 Meghan rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, fantasy, ebook, 2017tob

A showdown between science and magic. A girl and a boy who meet as teenage outcasts and are destined for something big. One of them creates an artificial intelligence project as an experiment, and the bot then gains consciousness and is loose out in the world. One of them talks to birds and visits a very important Tree.

The tone of this is so much like The Magicians. Better female characters than The Magicians. There was something about the pacing that felt off to me, like the unfolding of a gre ...more

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Feb 21, 2017 Emily rated it it was ok

Another ToB 2017 pick.

"All the Birds in the Sky" is an odd mashup of genres that doesn't really work as a standalone in any of them. For most of the book we ping back and forth between a witch, and a scientist who inhabit the same world, but seem to function with entirely different rules and are written about in pretty drastically different tones.

In the first chapter we meet Patricia, a lonely witch. She can communicate with birds and cats! This felt straight up my alley--a Hermione Granger/Kiki ...more

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Nov 22, 2017 Melanie Greene rated it really liked it

Read this back in January & it really stuck with me. I liked the mix of magic and tech, and that the main characters were both outsized and deftly drawn.

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Dec 05, 2017 Flora marked it as lost-interest-in · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-fantasy-speculative

This is really not for me. I don't care much for the wryly detached tone and I don't find either character particularly compelling. It is attempting to be naturalistic but at the same time everything is Heightened in a way that I am not enjoying. It reminds me of the meta-texts-within-texts of Jaclyn Moriarty, except that this is the actual book. ...more

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