This book is far too heavy handed. There’s no effort in it for the reader so it’s a bit hard to get into.

Decided not to finish this one after 3 or 4 chapters. Couldn’t really get into it. The tone both serious and light at the same time, not at all dreamlike, even though it’s a dream..
Just didn’t work for me.

Here we have historical figures coming to our rescue to save us from environmental doom.
Oh, and it all happens in a dream. Weird? Yes, very, but it was not bad, actually.
Because this is a dream state, and a lot can be forgiven in this story.. There's a lot of historical information and interesting bits about the magnificent duo from the title.
I liked it fine, but the real storyline felt lacking to me - the main idea was very interesting, but some imoortant plot points were glossed over, as well as characters we meet along the way.

Inventive, but not quite there yet.

Okay, so the title sounds like a joke... which it is... but it also isn't. In the book, Lincoln and Rachmaninoff really do walk into a bar. Ulysses S. Grant is there too. And they're on a mission to save the Earth.

How? In a dream. Why? Probably because the main character is preoccupied with the fact that the planet is succumbing to global warming and anything we can do on the individual level feels inadequate.

Actually, it's so fitting that this story comes as a dream to the main character, because everything throughout the book supports this dreamlike state:
the humorous, on-the-nose writing
absurd situations that are easily accepted
the self-awareness of the characters and the text
the observations that feel a bit too obvious (just like we all make in our own dreams)
the unexpected end that makes it feel as if the story (dream) is continuing even after we finish (wake up)

I am also incredibly impressed with how the author synthesized the characters' real life words into the dialogues.

This felt like such a quirky, light-hearted way to address a serious issues (climate change), but it also calls the reader to action by making us wonder: How would we feel if we had to explain the current state of the Earth to our heroes from history?

Thank you to NetGalley and Mirasol Press for a copy of the book in exchange for my honest review. I appreciate you.

This is the first NetGalley ARC that I've DNFed. At 50%, I flipped to the last chapter (I know, I'm a monster) and read a couple more pages to see how I felt and see if I could power through the finale, at least. Nope.

Listen, I'm sure this book will have an audience. It has quirky Wes Anderson energy. But I struggled with the repetition, and the weirdness wasn't weird enough to keep me going. The death knell for me: Destiny's scattered and inconsistent use of AAVE was painful, and had the awkward energy of a parent trying to connect with their teenagers by using slang they don't fully understand. I have a feeling the race stuff only got worse based on the little bit of the end that I read.

this was a bit of a mess -and only a bit of one because it’s a 100 pages and so it can’t be a huge mess simply because there aren’t enough pages for that.


the author tried.
i guess.
it has a lot of historical facts and situations, details of people that show that the author clearly worked to learn about the characters put into the book.

so that’s the positive, besides the already mentioned shortness of the story.


the rest of this?
it doesn’t work.

the idea was there and maybe it could have worked? but as it was and as it is written, it didn’t make sense.

i think the only way this story makes sense is inside the authors head, where more details and informations about everything that is happened beside what’s written in this story are.

but as the story is?

there is no explanation as to why it’s even a story to begin with since non of the characters seem to really care or have a real interest in the climate change -and why would they being dead and from very different times?
maybe i could have believed the combination of characters IF it would have been better explained and/or explored why specifically Lincoln and Rachmaninoff had to do this.
what exactly qualified those two to inspire making big changes in humanity?
no idea! the story never explained it!

and just if you want to tell a story about that, shouldn’t that at least be part of it than?!


also the characters…. i said the author clearly did the research. and while that is true, it also shows in this story that the author added a lot of wishful thinking/dreaming and didn’t try very hard to write an authentic russian.
this story glossed over a lot of issues that would have been a factor with those characters connecting and coming together and made those people out to be so easy going and understand and frankly way to helpful and pleasing.


i wish i could say the ending made it worth it in the end… but it didn’t.

the ending made me question what the heck i just read this entire thing for to get that kind of ending.


so i sadly can not say i recommend this.

frankly i can not understand how this story even made it so far to go out to reviewers. who read this and thought it was a fantastic idea and needed to published? did they ever read anything else before?
that might sound mean but for this story to be good or at least a nice read this entire thing needs to either be re-written and worked over or heavily edited.



thanks to NetGalley for provoking me with a free e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book really wasn’t for me, and I believe that the proof of this lies in the fact that it took me two weeks to read a 100 pages book. It never happened to me, but I am not feeling comfortable giving this book more than one star, due to the delivery of the story and the tone.

The delivery of the story. The book’s premise was quite enticing, and I really wanted to see what could be the potential for the use of a climate change novella in the classroom. Unfortunately, I don’t think that the way in which the story was delivered did justice to the idea. On the contrary, the impression that I had at times while reading the book was that the author loved the historical figures of Lincoln and Rachmaninov, knew a lot of facts about their life, and had decided to condense all the facts she knew in this book, ultimately making the dialogues hard to read and unnatural. As a result, the focus on climate change moved to the background, being ultimately limited to discussion on trees and resources, with the risk of trivialising an important and complicated challenge. By the end of the book, I couldn’t pinpoint what the book I had just finished was about, and what was supposed to be the main take away at the end of the story. For this reason, I do not feel comfortable recommending educators and students to pick up this book for classroom use.

The tone. The tone of the book was also quite off putting for me. I found the narrator and Lincoln quite paternalistic towards Destiny, the only character of colour that I can remember in the book, and the scenes with the spirits of the Native Americans to be lacking of tact. The message coming across from this was, at least to my eye, that we all should work together to prevent climate change (good message, don’t get me wrong), and that it was thanks to people like the narrator and Lincoln that people of colour and Native Americans got and understood the message. Another reason why I do not feel comfortable in recommending the book to my colleagues.

I am not going to publish a review to this title on my social media accounts, as I believe that this is only my opinion and I am aware it is quite a negative one, and I wouldn’t want to influence people who, maybe, will be able to see what I was not able to see in this book.

Ultimately focused on the global warming crisis, using the title characters real words this imaginative, surreal story tells of a fantastical roadtrip conjured in the mind of the narrator. Whimsical but entertaining its well worth a look.

This book was an experience. There was a lot of it that was fun to read, and then parts that were odd. The premise is that the unnamed narrator is driving Lincoln and Rachmaninoff to a destination where they will write a song together to save the world from destruction from climate change. Not a horrible premise- but at times it felt overdone. Also, there were some weird hints of potential romance that were off putting considering the premise of the book

From the title, I got this book thinking it was a joke book. I read and enjoyed this book. How do you describe a novella written about a very vivid dream involving historical characters dealing with contemporary issues? Well, this book is it! It is certainly of the post-modern genre, although it’s well-researched and well-referenced.

The protagonist picks up Lincoln and Rachmaninoff, having returned to earth via a station in LA, to travel north to a climate conference to help “save the world”. They meet others, both historical people and fictional characters along the way – all of whom have something to add.

They never reach their destination. In this book, the tale is in the journey.

I was about 10 pages into the book before I recognized it was a dream, and sometimes it is hard to figure out just who is being referred to with the pronoun "they" - especially in chapter 4. Thus, I only gave it a 3-star rating.

2,5 stars - Last year, I attended a conversation about climate guilt and anxiety at a festival. So the blurb of this book really appealed to me. Op top of that, allegories have always been right up my street. In this one, Lincoln and Rachmaninov are commissioned to rescue the world in the dream of the narrator, who clearly admires both historical figures. All of them go on a roadtrip and are joined by Destiny, a black music student.

The book is well researched. There are a lot of facts about both historical figures, often in the form of memories. All the elements of an allegory are there, from the typical dream to characters with apt names. However this novella feels like it's not fully hatched at times. Lincoln and Rachmaninov don't have in depth opinions about climate change, that contradict a little bit, so that you get interesting perspectives on climate change. Sometimes the fangirling gets the upper hand which doesn't always work for me, even though in a dream you can fangirl whomever you want.

It would have been better that the novella had been expanded to fully fledged novel. It has a lot of potential, but it remains too much on the surface for me.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

Lincoln and Rachmaninoff Walk into a Bar is told as a dream. The titled characters are charged with saving all of humanity from climate change. By collaboratively writing a cantata. This doesn’t happen during the novella, there is just much discussion of the upcoming cantata. The narrator is charged with driving the two from LA to Humboldt County and hijinks ensue.

I didn’t get it. Saying “hijinks ensue” implies humor and levity I missed. I’m the target audience of this book: devoted to saving the world, battling not insignificant climate anxiety, understanding clinical depression, and being nerdy about history and the arts. The book didn’t land with me. There was so much historical accuracy, but the flaws of the titled characters were ignored.

Is this a fable? An allegory? It’s too preachy for pure creative writing, and I’m squarely a believer in what was being preached.

Maybe I’ll get it as I ponder over the next couple days. I fear I won’t, and it’s the effect of listening to another tell about their dream.

While an intriguing premise this book was not it.
A white washed view of history is dogmatically preached throughout, as well as barely any mention of the actual climate change beyond its bad. Theres no meaningful steps taken to fix it either - more of just a god will take care of it view. Overall a super icky read and not worth anyones time

Califonia road trip

Lincoln and Rachmaninboff walk into a bar – Cherie Magnus

Concern about the problem of the consequences of climate change plunges many people into a depressive state. This also applies to the protagonist and first-person narrator of this novella. She has a dream that Abraham Lincoln and Sergei Rachmaninoff will return to earth with a heavenly mission. She guides these two very different men through California.
Now, as a reader, you naturally ask yourself why, precisely these two personalities who have nothing to do with the matter or with each other.
But the protagonist is a fan of music and has an interest in history. And it's her dream, so it makes sense to her.

It becomes a California road trip as they cruise down the highways from Los Angeles to San Francisco in a Lincoln
If you like road novels like me, you'll get your money's worth.

The novella was really nice, but in the end you have to hold on to one thing. Climate change will not be stopped by dreaming and hoping for heavenly miracles, it will only change by acting on your behavior and on the whole world community.

9780578552576

I really enjoyed this as a concept for a climate change novella, and I thought it was super well written. The characters were what I was hoping for and it does a great job in telling the story. I was invested in what was going on and thought it worked well as a climate change message. Cherie Magnus has a great writing style and I enjoyed what I read.

"Instead of stopping, we cruised by the winery’s impressive wooden building echoing Russian architecture, its huge plate glass windows overlooking a vista of vineyards, the ocean and forests, green meadows, and auburn hills. We watched as a falcon soared over the sunlit vines, now golden red in the autumn."

What a strange, interesting story! I read this because the title intrigued me and I’m glad I did, because it definitely wasn’t like anything I’d ever read before.

this book was impressed by its unique approach to the topic of climate change. The story seamlessly blends historical figures with a modern-day narrative, creating a thought-provoking and entertaining read. The author's creative writing style draws the reader in, making them consider the impact of their actions on the environment. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a fresh perspective on this important issue.