I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley.

Doerr is a phenomenal writer, but I just didn’t find myself emotionally invested in the title book’s journey, or most of the characters. I think this could have worked a lot better without Omeir and Anna’s story- those parts almost felt like an afterthought compared to Zeno, Seymour, and Konstance’s parts.

There is so much to unpack here! Like the two previous novels of the author, the writing is beautiful. The way the author weaves the story throughout the characters and plot is awesome. It was definitely an adventure, so much to take in. Have already recommended to friends.

Cloud Cuckoo Land
Author, Anthony Doerr

This was my first read by Anthony Doerr and I started reading on @netgalley, but then purchased a finished copy to add to my collection of Doerr's novels that are still unread- All the Light We Cannot See is on deck! Yes, I know I should have read it already...

Sometimes when I read a book like this one (all 623 pages), I get a little intimidated when I try to form sentences to adequately describe the masterpiece that was this novel. That is the case here with Cloud Cockoo land that I read several months ago and still have not been able to put together a proper review and I'm not even sure that I can...

Instead I will share some highlights (not in sentences) and hope that I can do this novel justice:

~Written with the magic and love for reading and literature
~Sweeping timeline- from the fifteenth century to today
~Interconnected cast of memorable and magnificent characters
~Themes of resilience, hope, coming- of- age, environmental awareness, and "stewardship- of a book, the Earth, and of the human heart"
~Dramatic, immersive, imaginative, heartbreaking, and yet uplifting
~A true tale of humanity in all its forms
~Will make you reflect on yourself and those in your circle- will open your eyes and make you want to close them- will open and break your heart, and then open it up again
~Intertwined, but fluent genres- science fiction/ utopian society, historical fiction, mythology/ fairy tale, eco- fiction, speculative fiction- it has it all!
~Unique, atmospheric, and brilliant!

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner books for my e- arc!

Oh, wow! I did love this. It was absolutely magical when the stories started to meld together. And how all those disjunct stories were woven together was absolutely masterful. Bravo! This will be on my favorites list.

Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land is certainly ambitious--a novel spanning time and several characters. Doerr does not disappoint. The book is certainly a departure from All the Light We Cannot See. The narrative weaves between characters in the past (the Ottoman empire), the present (2020 Idaho), and the future (an interstellar colony that takes to the stars to escape an environmentally ravaged earth). All of these stories are connected through an almost lost Greek text known as Cloud Cuckoo Land. There is something here for everyone, and book lovers will rejoice. The book is a love letter to the written word, showing how books have the power to transform and save us.

I LOVED this book. It had great character development. The different points of view jumping around left you thinking about the characters you just left until you got back to them again.

I loved All the Light We Can See but I honestly couldn’t get into this book - not a fan of dystopia. This is onLu reason I gave it one star.

But reading a long long and long book with multi POVs who are weekly connected with long long long descriptions about doing nothing with the long long long storylines that are stuck in somewhere without direction make me lost lost lost during my reading journey!

I thought this book was quite a bit different from what I usually read. The historical aspect gave insight to the significance of the story over centuries. We got to see the story told from four different points of view. Two in the past one, two in the present, and one in the future. I thought the story was woven together in a beautiful way. The only thing that I have to complain about was the ending. I needed more information from Konstance and her story. There wasn't enough clarification so it felt open-ended.

Thirteen-year-old Anna, an orphan, lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople in a house of women who make their living embroidering the robes of priests. Restless, insatiably curious, Anna learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds a book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. This she reads to her ailing sister as the walls of the only place she has known are bombarded in the great siege of Constantinople. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, miles from home, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the invading army. His path and Anna’s will cross.

Five hundred years later, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno, who learned Greek as a prisoner of war, rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege. And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father. She has never set foot on our planet.

Doerr does it again with this expansive, complex, sad, beautiful novel about human suffering and the power of story to help us learn, heal and connect.

Good story!!

Description
On the New York Times bestseller list for 19 weeks * A New York Times Notable Book * A Barack Obama Favorite * A National Book Award Finalist * Named a Best of the Year by Fresh Air, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Associated Press, and many more—one of the ten books that appeared on the most lists for 2021

“If you’re looking for a superb novel, look no further.” —The Washington Post

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, comes the instant New York Times bestseller that is a “wildly inventive, a humane and uplifting book for adults that’s infused with the magic of childhood reading experiences” (The New York Times Book Review).

Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of 2021, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope—and a book. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr has created a magnificent tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness—with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us, and with those who will be here after we’re gone.

This book is a very interesting concept. It wasn’t quite for me this time around but I will pick it back up and try again another time as I loved his last book.

For a while I thought this book was headed towards one or two stars for me. There were so many characters and it was hard to follow. It did get interesting for me but only about 70 percent into the book. Overall a decent read, but I think quite a bit could have been cut.

I wanted to like this book so much more than I did as I loved All the Light We Cannot See, but I think it was such a chunkster that I got tired of having to fit all the pieces together. I am usually fine with a sci-fi edge, but I found myself thinking, "Wait! What?" as I was reading and attempting to "connect all the dots." My patience was tested and I ended up skimming a lot near the middle and end of the book. I may return to it later, but the very different timelines were difficult for me to keep interest long enough to become immeshed in the novel. I'll continue to read Doerr's novels as he's an awesome writer; maybe the timing just wasn't right for me!

Cloud Cuckoo Land shifts between five characters. These five characters, connect over hundreds of years through their relationship to a single book.

Konstance, 14, on an interstellar, generational ship. She is laying out on the floor of a large room the scraps of pages that comprise the book.
Anna is an orphan in the 15th century Constantinople we follow her from age 7 to early adolescence. She and her older sister, Maria, work as seamstresses.
Omeir was born in 1439, like Anna, but with a cleft lip and palate.
Seymour does not fit in. He lives with his mother, who struggles to get by on low-wage jobs.
Zeno is a child. He realizes he is gay at an early age. But it is the 1940s in Idaho, and this is simply not allowed.

Anna lived inside a convent, embroidered robes for priests during the day. Having been taught to read, she finds a collection of old books in an abandoned priory, among them the transcript of Cloud Cuckoo Land, which she takes with her when she takes flight from the monastery.

This book was definitely interesting. I wanted to know what was going to happen to each of the characters. It’s beautifully written with characters that felt real. It is an ambitious, imaginative story that drew me in.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for sending a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow. What an amazing book. It reminds me of Cloud Atlas (a coincidence with the "Cloud" titles? I don't know) in that he tells three very different stories set across the centuries and the world/universe, going back and forth between them.

They are well-written and interesting and I find myself wrapped up in the story of a girl in 1400s Constantinople, and then I turn the page and we're back to a library in current day Idaho where some major stuff is going down, and then we're reading about a teenage girl stuck alone in a small compartment on a spaceship in the future. Each story is interesting on its own, and when they started coming together I couldn’t put the book down.

I just finished it and now I am going to read it through immediately a second time. Now that I know the big picture, the whole story, what a joy to read it again and revisit all the small details and see just how he did that. This is a doozy of a book in the best possible way and I recommend it highly.

I am certainly in the minority of readers in that I attempted "Cloud Cuckoo Land" without having first tackled Doerr's "All the Light We Cannot See."

Ultimately, I got 20% into this title before deciding to indefinitely DNF. There were elements of each of the 3 separate worlds and timelines that would capture my interest, but I found the world-building and plot establishment in each of them so slow that I was struggling to retain any of the story as I read on.

This is an absolute doorstop of a book, and so it's quite possible I just needed to push through a bit further to start to really appreciate the story. It's also quite possible I'll revisit this title, but not right now. To readers who are ready and willing to tackle this, I would say be prepared to feel lost for quite awhile. I expected to feel so for about the first 10%, but got too frustrated at 20% to read any further.

*Many thanks to NetGalley & the publisher for providing my advanced review copy of this title*

Once started, I couldn't put this down. When I finally read the last paragraphs, my emergence into the 'real world' felt a shock.

This book was breathtakingly beautiful. Three storylines that were woven together by the thread of a book. I loved each and every one of the characters (although Zeno is who really had my whole heart). I almost set this book down 3 different times. However I trusted Anthony Doerr, and I knew that if I was patient I would see his genius, and I definitely did. This is a slower paced, very character driven novel. There is plot, absolutely. But this book is ALL about the characters. My only complaint was I actually wish it were longer. I wanted more of each storyline. I didn’t get nearly enough time with these phenomenal characters.

Book: Cloud Cuckoo Land
Author: Anthony Doerr

Review:
Overall, I felt this book was okay. It had a lot going on. The writing was beautiful. The pace in the middle of the book was rather slow, but things did pick up in the end.