All the Birds in the Sky

432 pages

English language

Published Dec. 8, 2016 by Titan Books Limited.

ISBN:
978-1-78565-055-0
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4 stars (7 reviews)

Patricia is a witch who can communicate with animals. Laurence is a mad scientist and inventor of the two-second time machine. As teenagers they gravitate towards one another, sharing in the horrors of growing up weird, but their lives take different paths…

When they meet again as adults, Laurence is an engineering genius trying to save the world — and live up to his reputation — in near-future San Francisco. Meanwhile, Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the magically gifted, working hard to prove herself to her fellow magicians and secretly repair the Earth's ever growing ailments.

As they attempt to save our future, Laurence and Patricia's shared past pulls them back together. And though they come from different worlds, when they collide, the witch and the scientist will discover that maybe they understand each other better than anyone.

5 editions

Exactly what I needed

5 stars

I picked this book up in my local book store while on a quest to find something to restart my love of reading. A year plus of near complete isolation during the onset of the pandemic led me to rely increasingly more on my phone for bursts of serotonin and I wound up wrecking my focus. Standing in the book store, I figured anything in the sci-fi section would do the trick - it’s worked in the past. I wound up purchasing AtBinS solely on the cover art not knowing anything about the story or the author. The book sat among my looming “to-read” pile for months until I was several days deep into a week long vacation. I figured it couldn’t to take an hour away from my phone, and by the time I looked up from the book over an hour had passed. I finished the book the …

Review of 'All the Birds in the Sky' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

All the birds... is such an enchanting story, a true modern fairy tale that still finds time to dig deep into doomsday ethics and build venn diagrams of science and magic. The characters spoke to me. I love how well it is researched, and the edginess of society's dynamics that Anders portrays. These characters feel real to me, even the machines. Also, Peregrine's consciousness, how it uploads itself, reminded me a lot of Stross's machines in Accelerando, which stroked my programmer itch. What an incredible book. I guzzled it. I've done nothing else since last night but read. Ahhhhhhhh...
So good

Review of 'All the Birds in the Sky' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This book was recommended to me, soon after I'd finished Robin Sloan's Sourdough, and then declared that modern-day magical realism was exactly the genre that meant the most to me, particularly the stories in which California-based millennials struggled to find humanity and meaning in a tech-centric world. It's a kind of science fiction where all the technobabble is familiar and real, but a dose of mysticism is needed to keep Silicon Valley palatable. Venture capitalists already believe in too many fairy tales.

All The Birds In the Sky is decidedly more magical than realism, and because it's more about the duality of magic and science, both worlds are represented more or less equally. The refreshing take here isn't that it's magic versus science, at odds with each other, forever warring for dominance and yet must be maintained in some kind of cosmic balance. Or even the Harry Potter version, where …

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5 stars

Subjects

  • Fiction, science fiction, general
  • Fiction, fantasy, contemporary

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