Life is often hard and yet sometimes good things prevail. Charlie Jane Anders, editor-in-chief of io9.com, tells all in this story of love, disaster, and outsiders in her debut novel.
This is a tale of geeky outsiders Laurence (never ‘Larry’) Armstead and Patricia Delfine. Patricia is a witch who can communicate with animals, especially birds. Laurence is a tech geek, designing inventions such as the two second time machine.
The novel tells of their days at school, when adversity and bullying brings them together, through to adulthood, when the world is very different.
The first section of the book will sound familiar to the target audience here. It is all about being outsiders, of dealing with the dumber, cliquier cohorts of school, of being an intelligent geek amongst a sea of sports jocks and class prom-queens. “Emo bitch!” is an insult oft-shouted down the school corridors at Patricia.
It doesn’t help that the closer members of their respective families are all horrors as well. Both sets of parents are ghastly, often meaning well but coping with parenting about as well as a chocolate teapot with tea. Patricia’s older sister, Roberta, is just as bad, one of those annoying siblings who get grade-A’s with ease and then bully their sister with special maliciousness. Laurence’s parents sign him up, without warning, to a military school, in the hope that it will curb his ‘maliciousness’ – in actuality, his reputation is created by bullies and teachers alike looking for a target to blame.
From a somewhat Nietzsche-ian environment of ‘school-of-hard-knocks’, small-school horrors and ghastly social relationships, the story then moves forward to a point in the near-future where Laurence and Patricia are young adults. Laurence is now an engineer in San Francisco, working on technological inventions to reduce the impact of climate change and stave off the impending apocalypse. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, a sort-of Hogwarts for the magically gifted, and is trying to deal with the future collapse of society (known as the Unravelling) in her own magical way, using her skills to secretly repair the damage done to Nature by man.
Despite being on opposing sides of a battle between science and nature, and despite life moving them apart, when global warming moves the planet towards a worldwide catastrophe, both Patricia and Laurence find themselves drawn back to each other.
Putting it simply, All the Birds in the Sky is a combination of a feel-good tale of love-conquers-all and a discussion of science versus magic/nature, a romantic coming-of-age tale with potential global extinction thrown in for good measure. This is a tale that knows its audience and clearly preaches to the converted.
The book’s biggest strength is the main characters, who readers may accept and grow to love. This is for the geeks, for the oft-derided ‘outsiders’, proof that in the end, despite everything, things can end well. To convey this, Anders fills the book with references to geek-stuff, and often works hard in the plot’s initial stages to convey a slightly whimsical, rather droll tone. It doesn’t entirely work for me here, for what is conveyed ends up as what seems to be a basic and rather surreal coming of age tale.
The ‘bad guys’, such as in the form of assassin Theodolphus Rose or even Laurence and Patricia’s parents, do not convey a real sense of menace. Rose in particular seems to be a comedy character that fizzles out to nothing, which seems odd for someone allegedly so efficient at their job. The real danger in the narrative happens when events become global and the story takes on a different tone for the remainder of the book.
The effects of global change, subtly weaved through the narrative, are particularly well done. Though it is rarely explicit, it is clear that some parts of global society are grimly attempting to carry on as normal whilst others struggling to do so. Talk of power outages, drought, floods, of dead bodies and disease are dropped into the tale in such a way that their cumulative effect may not be entirely noticed until after you’ve read them. Pleasingly, the global events of the book are not entirely focused on the USA.
However, even in these latter sections of the novel, though the tale is much deeper and more confident, it’s not perfect – there were times when I felt that the book was a little too full of its own self-importance, and that it was a tale that rather manipulated me as a reader. There are also minor unresolved plot holes along the way – for example, though admittedly it is mentioned as a concern, whatever did happen to poor old Berkley, Patricia’s kitten familiar? How did she pay for her education at Eltisley, because it just seems to happen? What happened to Patricia’s sister in the end?
Such thoughts, though minor, ensure the book is not an unqualified success for me. I did feel at times that things were a little too convenient, to the point where my suspension of disbelief was sorely tested. But there’s no denying that it is a book that will find an audience and its ending, though somewhat expected, is appropriate. Consequently it should do very well.
An at-times whimsical tale, filled with ifs, buts and maybes that becomes something bigger and better towards the end, All the Birds in the Sky is an entertaining read that, if you can see beyond the contrivances (which of course may be the point of a Fantasy novel), is a good read.
All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
Published by Titan Books, January 2016
ISBN: 978 178 565 0550
432 pages
Review by Mark Yon
