All the Birds - General Discussion, No Spoilers (July 2017)

[Whitney]

This topic is for a general discussion of All the Birds in the Sky; background, first impressions, reviews, and such. No spoilers, please.

Charlie Jane Anders seems to be one of those people who don’t need sleep. She was a founder and editor of the excellent geek culture site io9, is a prolific writer and publisher who has won multiple awards as well as serving on award juries, and is a political organizer and activist, among other things.

Some links:

This is the farewell article that Anders wrote when she left io9 to devote more time to her books. Its main theme is to decry to rise of science fiction gatekeeping.
io9 Was Founded on the Idea That Science Fiction Belongs to Everyone

Two reviews, a gushing one from NPR and a mostly gushing one from the LA Times:

'All The Birds' Overturns Sci-Fi And Fantasy, Gently

Charlie Jane Anders' 'All the Birds in the Sky' has the hallmarks of an instant sci-fi classic

This article from Strange Horizons uses the witchcraft / science clash in “All the Birds” to examine more closely the idea of divergent cultures. It contains spoilers for the novel, so you may want to wait until you’ve finished the book before reading it. f
ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY BY CHARLIE JANE ANDERS


Several of Anders’ short stories are available to read on tor.com. The one titled “Clover”, while certainly not her best, does address the question of what happened to Berkley the cat.
http://www.tor.com/author/charlie-jan...

[LindaJ^]

Thanks for the links Whitney. Very glad to know what happened to Berkley.

I enjoyed the first third of this book when Patricia and Laurence were kids but not so much after it jumped to their young adulthood. Perhaps because of how immature they were and all the angst, especially on Laurence's part.

[Marc]

Apparently, quite a lot of readers wrote to her inquiring about the fate of the cat! Thanks for the links.

[Whitney]

It certainly annoyed me. She insists on rescuing Laurence before going to her dream school, but not a thought for the cat that she is abandoning to her sister's tortures. And she's supposed to be kind, considerate, witchy nature girl?

[LindaJ^]

And what's up with the sister who tells Patricia that it was Patricia not the sister who was the parent's favorite? I would have liked to have heard more about how the sister saw childhood. Maybe she wasn't torturing Berkley but just wanted a companion. Is this part of Anders playing with genres?

[Marc]

Whitney wrote: "It certainly annoyed me. She insists on rescuing Laurence before going to her dream school, but not a thought for the cat that she is abandoning to her sister's tortures. And she's supposed to be k..."

Something like this just seems like a mistake (or, sloppiness)--it's untrue to the character and could have been addressed with half a sentence (e.g., "... she prayed her sister wouldn't touch Berkley... ").

LindaJ^--I think that would be an incredibly generous reading. Seemed more like flat characterization.

[Peter]

Honestly, I gave this book four stars when I finished it the first time (I would probably give it three now) partly because it is a first novel and I am usually fairly forgiving about issues of craft on first novels if they are enthusiastic and have interesting ideas (often first novels have too many ideas), and so I am reasonably willing to forgive little stuff like this.

I have no idea, however, why this book got a Hugo nomination and a Nebula award though. I keep thinking that at least some other people are seeing things in it that I am not.

[Whitney]

Peter wrote: "Honestly, I gave this book four stars when I finished it the first time (I would probably give it three now) partly because it is a first novel and I am usually fairly forgiving about issues of cra..."

I don't understand the accolades either. I was thinking more along the two star line, but largely because of the let-down after all the hype, as well as how much I liked one of her short stories. It's also not her first novel (that one won awards as well), but her first speculative fiction novel.

[Peter]

Whitney wrote: "It's also not her first novel (that one won awards as well), but her first speculative fiction novel."

I hadn't realized that. Thanks! I still suspect some of the pacing issues may be a result of being more comfortable writing short fiction than novels.

[Beverly]

I had a love/hate relationship with this book.
I had read this book a little while ago. (It seems that that the last couple of selections have been books that I have already read :))

At first I was reluctant to pick up the book because I thought it might be a little too YAish for me.

But the consistently good reviews and the theme of magic vs science theme were too hard to resist.

Once I started reading I fell in love with the characters and was enjoying the world building so I did not want to put the book down.

So I started thinking to myself that this was a wonderful beginning to a wonderful series as I saw the conflicts and tensions between the characters being played out in different situations over the course of several books. But some quick research revealed this was not going to be a series.

I was a little disappointed but settled in to finish reading the book the author wrote and in the end I was glad that I did pick up this book and read.

Overall for me it was a satisfying entertaining read with endearing characters with timely realistic concerns regarding climate control.

[Peter]

Thank you, Whitney, for moderating what could not have been an easy book to moderate!

[Whitney]

Amalia wrote: "I finished yesterday -stayed up all night- and I loved it. I didn't think I would enjoy so much, I thought it would be just another dystopian novel with a silly romance plotline, but I was so, so p..."

Glad that you enjoyed it, it is certainly a book that has a range of reactions! And I can't argue that as "dystopian novel(s) with a silly romance plotline" go, this is probably one of the better ones. It would be interesting to break down appreciation of this book by the demographics of the various readers.