I don't know how Anthony Doerr does it. He can take the most disparate elements and weave them into a fictional love song. In this case I feel like it is a love song to a book, to how story can inspire us and save us by reaching across time and space.
There are three tales in this book, not counting the Greek play that keeps popping up. Each is set in a different time and place. In the 15th Century we join Anna and Omeir at the siege of Constantinople. Anna is inside the city walls, Omeir is outside. In the present time a library is under siege as Zeno, an eighty year old, is directing children in an old Greek play. In the future Konstance, a child on an interstellar space craft, sits in quarantine reconstructing a tale her father told her.
Each story is real and gripping and somehow they all make sense together.
(This is a review of an ARC.)

Writing: 5/5 Plot: 4.5/5 Characters: 4/5 Drama/depression index: high!

Greek classics, a love of books and literature, and the twin pillars of human suffering and hope pervade this broad, sweeping story which spans interstellar travel, the siege of Constantinople, and eco-terrorism in an Idaho library. The published book description is actually very good, so I encourage you to read it directly rather than my trying to do an inadequate recap.

This is a beautifully written, deeply researched, cleverly interconnected story and by the end I was enjoying it a great deal. The characters are intricately done with their memories, desires, and deep need to survive, understand, and have agency in their lives. However, there is an awful lot of pathos for my taste. Before each character can succeed, there is an incredible amount of (too well) described suffering. This is not surprising — the siege of Constantinople is not a great place to be an orphaned girl with an antipathy for embroidery or a hare-lipped boy considered a demon by the greater population. But I clocked 65% through my kindle version before things stopped being utterly depressing. I did love the way literature and the classics were woven throughout, and I found the interstellar generation ship running away from a dying Earth thread quite interesting. The slowly emerging resolution of these independent threads was remarkably well done giving me an overall positive view of the book.

This is a strong and brilliantly executed book. If you loved his Pulitzer Prize winning All the Light You Cannot See, you will likely love this as well.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr is amazing. I usually avoid superlatives in my reviews because they can sound fake but I honestly loved this book and it is hands down my favorite so far in 2021 (out of 72 books). There are five different characters / points of view and three significantly different timelines. The timelines move at different paces and cover different amounts of time and also feel like they are different genres. Libraries, librarians and books are a big part of each storyline. It really felt like reading multiple must-read-one-more-chapter page-turners at one time. And they all fit together and make sense at the end, without feeling contrived. There was one small unanswered question I was left with but actually one of the characters was left with the same so was likely intentional and it was really a minor point. I couldn’t stop reading last night until I finished but wish now I had saved some for today. Thanks to Net Galley and to Scribner for the advanced copy to read and review. This book is expected to be published at the end of September 2021.

Well, the title is right. As others have noted, this is a book covering an almost unfathomable amount of ground, both in time and in the number of POVs. I was really looking forward to the challenge, having heard such good things about this author. But this book was impenetrable to me. Perhaps it is the season - it’s summer here in New England and there are many things competing for attention. It was just too much mental effort to keep track of what was going on and it felt like I was learning to juggle just to enter the story, only to have a new ball tossed in to manage every few pages. Too much all around, without the usual pleasure of being immersed in a story. That said, I will try it again this winter and see if it’s more suited to a quieter time of year.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book.

Thank you to Scribner Books and Net Galley for the eARC of Cloud Cuckoo Land by Antony Doerr.

Cloud Cuckoo Land is a novel about an ancient text; the story of Aethon, and how it connects five different people together. You will meet characters from 1453 on into the future: Omeir, Anna, Zeno, Seymour, and Konstance. While reading the novel, you will have no idea how the story of Aethon connects the stories of these five people but in the climax of the story, the author weaves the character's and their stories together in a very precise way with a powerful message for all of us. I don't want to give spoilers because you would have no reason to read it. Let's just say that the message is one of hope, love, books, and our planet. With so many POV's and multiple timelines, I often found myself perplexed and muddled. The writing is beautiful but there is a lot of it!!!!! I believe this just may be the author's writing style. Many readers will find this mesmerizing but for me it was just too much. This is a long read and one that you can't binge. Overall, I enjoyed this read. It's a book that I know many will love!

.

Cloud Cuckoo Land
By Anthony Doerr

First: What this book is not – it is not a "beach read", nor a fast paced high adventure. It is not a whodunit.

What it is: A long, exquisitely written, slow building story. But again, that is not the entirety of it. It contains many stories, taking place over vast distances in time and place. Mr. Doerr presents to the reader a variety of characters, who initially appear to be unconnected, and yet, as you make your way through the chapters, the connections unfold like the petals of a flower until the whole becomes known.

The stories take place in the distant past, in the present, and in the distant (or maybe not so distant) future. There are common themes: human belief that the world and all living things are on earth for man's benefit; that we are blindly destroying our world; that the human mind is not ever satisfied, always striving for something different than what we have.

I very much enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it to any reader looking for a book that will stay with you long after you finish it.

Revolving around an ancient myth, Anthony Doerr’s characters like Aethon, the mythical hero, are on a search for knowledge. Zeno, war veteran, retired snowplow driver and translator of Ancient Greek, becomes a public hero. Seymour, sensitive lover of the environment and different from his peers, turns destructive in his quest. Omeir, shunned by the world because of his handicap, becomes gentle and protective. Anna, alone, fleeing from a city under destruction, becomes the guardian of the ancient myth while Konstance, another solitary female who travels through space, having heard about Aethon through her father, seeks answers in the myth. Two characters from the past, two from the present and one from the future proceed through the work, bound to the myth and sharing the tenacity of the hero, often encountering an owl motif. At first these diverse threads demand a commitment from the reader;. As the novel progresses, the threads merge and the theme becomes clear. Like the myth “what seems complicated at first” is “actually quite simple.” Staying true to their quests, the characters are rewarded; so too is the reader.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an ARC of Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. This is my honest feedback.

As most readers in the world, I loved All The Light We Cannot See which won so many major prizes. I was delighted to be able to preview Mr. Doerr's latest book. Cloud Cuckoo Land is a huge undertaking that encompasses many lands, many years, many different people. It is unclear where the story is going for quite a while as it jumps from the 15oos to the present to the future. The only link between the times being books and librarians. The book is dedicated to all the librarians in the world. Each part of the book is prefaced by a page of an "ancient" writing (I believe Mr. Doerr actually wrote it) that tells the story of a being who lived 80 years as a man, 1 year as a donkey, 1 year as a sea bass and 1 year as a crow.

This is a tale of wonder, of travel in lands and in space, of what is happening to our planet both to the earth and the people who live on it and in the end, as T.S Elliot says: "and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

It takes some time to get into the book but I suggest to readers to hang in there. If you love books, and once again, Doerr uses children to tell the story of our lives, and you love the honest curiosity of children, you will admire this book. It is huge in scope and leaves you with a big "Wow!"

I loved All of the Light You Cannot See and was a little nervous starting this finding out the book is set in different time periods and has alternating narrators. It took me a minute to find my groove, but I quickly did.

The story tells the story of how a book survives time. As a book lover how could I ask for more?

This is unlike anything I have read before but, I loved the magical tale.

Anthony Doerr dedicates the book to the librarians, then, now, and the years to come.

How does one describe this book - part history, part fantasy, part sci-fi, that takes place over more than a half dozen time frames from the 15th century to the 22nd century, consisting of several storylines, all connected by one story book that survives over seven centuries. I’m rating it 4.5 stars because for the first third of the book I found it difficult to stay engaged, but then the stories really picked up and I couldn’t wait to find out what happens. It’s a slow build, but if you stay with it you’ll be rewarded in the end.

Wow! This is a monster of a book. So many different people and things going on. It was a little hard to get into at first but let me tell you this book is amazing! Everything comes together at the end. Just stick with it. This is a book that you will be thinking about and wanting to talk about for a long time.

I am a fan of Anthony Doerr. His writing is beautiful and he is able to transport his readers across centuries and continents to plunge them right into the story. Cloud Cuckoo Land brings several storylines together, each one its own marvel, and woven together an absolute delight. Despite the length of this book, I did not want it to end. Simply beautiful.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this book.

I LOVED this book. It’s so different from Doer’s other works and yet somehow retains his voice. I enjoyed the way he wove multiple time periods together so seamlessly to show how they impact and influence each other. The characters were so lovable.

As much as I wanted to like this book at a logical level, I didn't find much joy reading it. The storylines didn't weave through each other gracefully—it felt like they kept cutting each other off mid-sentence. Just as one storyline picked up momentum, the thread was dropped and the mental effort felt wasted. The different characters—Omeir, Seymour, Anna, Zeno, and the shepherd from the original Greek text—eventually were joined together at the end. Yet it felt that the pieces fell into place too neatly for the conclusion to feel surprising. The I character I liked the least was Zeno, who languished under his trauma and didn't develop as a character until towards the story's end. Anna was memorable due to her strength of will, and I wish she were given more spotlight.

On the bright side, I did enjoy the prose when it didn't indulge long-winded descriptions of the surroundings. Maybe this is just the way a child's tale is sometimes: the plot unfolds following the path of least resistance and leaves the reader wanting a messier, more engaging series of events.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for the ARC.

I could not get into this book. The story was too far away with too many characters that I couldn't keep straight. I was not able to finish this book.

10 stars! What an amazing tale, Three tales over time periods: 1400s Constantinople, present day Idaho, and in a future time flying through space to a distant planet. Stories of young people all influenced by Doerr’s 4th tale, a fictional ancient manuscript that is passed down through time.

Doerr brilliantly weaves these 4 threads together into a magical whole. What an imagination to have conceived this story and then to render the characters, eras, places w such simple and elegant writing. I wish I could read it for the first time again.

Yes, the book can be confusing at first. Let it go and read on. As for the length, I didnt want it to end! One quibble, I wanted more from the epilogue. When you finish the book, see if you understand what I mean by that.

I love that this book is described as “stewardship—of the book, of the Earth, of the human heart.”

Within its pages we have the story of Anna and Omeir in 15th century Constantinople, Seymour and Zeno in present day Idaho, and Konstance in some future decade traveling to an exoplanet, all woven together by a book’s thread. I think what’s most impressive is that every storyline is captivating. In so many of the multiple viewpoint/timeline books I’ve read, there’s typically one character or time frame I find boring, but that can’t be said for this book.

It took me a good quarter way in before I knew for certain I wouldn’t quit before all 600+ pages were through, and from there I became more and more invested with every page. Stick with it, dear reader!

I feel like I have so much to process yet and so many questions, and yet I’m sated and can tell I will be mulling over this book for quite some time. Don’t let its 640 pages scare you - it’s worth the ride.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for a review.

A wondrous story centering around an ancient manuscript telling the story of Aethon and it's effect on children in different places and centuries. Yes it sound complicated and it is not the easiest book to read but quite marvelous if you can set a chunk of time aside and really dig into it.

This beautiful novel takes a handful of children, outsiders in their own times and places, and weaves them together through a universal tale of ecology, compassion and survival. From the siege of Constantinople in 1453 to a futuristic spaceship hurtling toward a better world we explore the universality of children's hopes and dreams, of the need to conserve and protect our earth and how stories and books can live on through generations and eons to unite us all.

This is a beautifully written, complex series of tales. The characters are so well-crafted that you feel like you are in “ their space.” It has many moments of grace, but also many poignant, painful moments too. This made it a challenging book for me. . .