Cloud Cuckoo Land

Slow build up in the begining but in the end it was so worth it! This book is told from multiple perspectives at different points in time and it was really interesting to see how they all were connected to each other in the end.

If you enjoy reading historical fiction, I'd highly recommend this book!

I didn't even know this book existed before the beginning of October, when I unexpectedly received the audiobook. And because I'm a extreme mood reader, I forgot about all the arcs I've yet to read and my library borrows and picked this up, despite feeling that I might not like this.

And my instinct wasn't wrong. The author's writing is undoubtedly very beautiful and metaphorical but also too descriptive and wordy, and if I wasn't listening to the two narrators do an excellent job in the audiobook, I don't think I would have been able to finish the book. It's also very ambitious - spanning multiple genres like historical fiction, contemporary as well as speculative fiction/ sci-fi; while also telling a story that spans across centuries. To add to this complexity are five POVs, multiple timelines, and another subplot which connects all the storylines while also rendering the name for this book. I can't deny that I do enjoy multiple POVs because I'm a fan of ensemble casts, but the cast in this one are separated by time and they are very individualistic plotlines. And with the chapters being very short, we never get enough time at once to spend with one character and empathize with them. Not all are interesting either.

I think I loved Zeno and Konstance the most, with Zeno being my favorite with his penchant for surviving all obstacles in his life and finding joy in little things. I just kept wishing that he could see the results of his translation and how many hearts he touched, and maybe had found someone he loved and loved him back. Konstance is fascinating and I was impressed by her resourcefulness and resolve to find the truth, but one of the main twists of her plotline never got resolved and I'm still salty about it. While Anna and Omeir are the main catalysts behind how all these characters' stories intersect, I found their parts pretty boring because they both are just waiting for the war to happen and ultimately nothing comes out of it. I probably felt more emotional about Omeir's oxen Tree and Moonlight. And finally Seymour - he probably has the best character arc of everyone and we see so many facets of him, but I can't say I was too engaged with his story knowing what he was gonna do. And I also found the choice to make the only neurodivergent character in the book an antagonist very telling, especially when it didn't need to be so.

Ultimately, despite the multiple genres and centuries and characters, this is a story about books and stories and the connections they create. It's an ode to the love of books, the power of literature in helping us survive, the joy of finding words which were once considered lost, and the importance of translating antiquated works. But this was not enough for me to love the book because the writing wasn't for me. But if you are a fan of the author's previous works, you might enjoy it a lot more.

“Sometimes the things we think are lost are only hidden, waiting to be rediscovered.”

No other word to describe this but simply, wow. A beautiful story about the power of stories, the power of connection, and strength that can be found in our darkest hour. I haven't felt this moved by a story since One Hundred Years of Solitude, and it'll be a couple of days until I can digest it, but this is a simply can't miss story.

I have so much trouble rating this one. Powerful, beautiful, but sad.
On the one hand, this is well done. The characters are so real. The challenges they face are believable. The separate but dependent plots are interesting and creative.
On the other hand, the stories are all depressing; aside from a few moments for readers to catch their breath, this is a downer. I felt it in my heart.

I wasn't sure about this at the start, but I persisted and I'm so glad I did because it has been such an excellent read!

I'm so sad to have come to the end and will really miss all the characters!

It was beautifully written with everything from heartbreak and sadness, but also hope and happiness too. Zeno was a lovely character and I admired his bravery and courage.

I felt bad for Seymour who all things considered wasn't a bad person, in my opinion. I think sadly circumstances and maybe loneliness? played a part in what happened to him.

I loved how intricately all the little threads fit and came together in the end. It's hard to imagine how much time and effort went into writing this, so that the interwoven threads worked!

A definite 5* read. Highly recommend it.

Thank you to PH and Anthony for the chance to read this book.

How lucky have I been to finish this year out with so many amazing 5 star books? I feel like I never rate 5 stars anymore, but this one certainly merits it.

I'll start by saying that in the beginning this book is work. There is unpeeling to do, and a lot of attention that needs to be paid. However, it picks up momentum and by the end I couldn't put it down.

This was lovely and tender. Inspired and inspiring. It felt like books within a book about books. I loved it.

This feels like a book you'd read and analyze in school - and it does require some attention to follow the 6 stories, but it's so freaking rewarding. I know some people really dislike Anthony Doerr and his slow-burn / descriptive style, but I LOVE it. It's so easy to fall into the world and truly love the characters with this style.

This story follows 5 characters in 3 different timelines, while mirroring the 24 folios of Aethon's story of finding Cloud Cuckoo Land in 24 chapters. That might sound complex, but the whole thing points to the importance of persevering stories and knowledge. Personally, I loved this one and the audiobook really helped me to separate the characters and timelines.

If you're not ready to really pay attention, or maybe take a few notes along the way, this book is not for you. If you want a good read for a book group or to discuss in a class - this is absolutely beautiful.

This is my second time reading an Anthony Doerr book and I think that he's just not an author I'm meant to love. I enjoyed the overall plot of this book, but I found myself confused throughout most of it. The multiple timelines just threw me off. I did that the whole “book within a book” trope, though and I think the author did a good job telling the story throughout the book. I was hoping I would rate this book higher, but unfortunately, it just wasn't for me.





Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for providing me with an eBook copy to review.

There's a lot to like in Cloud Cuckoo Land: the prose is just as pretty as you would expect from the author of “All the Light We Cannot See.” The characters are varied, charming, a bit morally gray at times, but easy to cheer for. The frame story is an ancient Greek fable that's hilarious and touching, and his love for storytelling and the power of books is tangible everywhere. And I learned a whole lot about the world of the Byzantine empire's final days before Constantinople fell to the Turks, which was a fascinating corner of world history I'd never come across before. In addition to that world, there's also a Korean War veteran from Idaho and a teenage boy living near him who becomes an environmental terrorist, plus a girl in a spaceship far in the future. Each of these settings is thoughtful and comes alive in Doerr's hands.

Cons:

There are still so many different things happening that, while it's never exactly hard to keep track of, it's still a bit disorienting/disjointed. (Although the two young girls did bleed together in my mind a bit since I felt like they had similar personalities and a similar dilemma.) You end up having 5 main characters spread across 3.5 timelines, plus the framing story of the Greek myth. That's a LOT of balls in the air at once. Although the themes of the framing story generally hold them together, and there's lots of overlapping symbolism, at the end of the day I felt like they were loosely connected novellas instead of a cohesive story. Some books are able to make that multifaceted of a plot fit together as tightly and thoughtfully as a jigsaw puzzle (Station Eleven in particular comes to mind).

(As a final aside on the ‘plus' side, this book has a good amount of similarities in its goals to “The Starless Sea” by Erin Morgenstern, but this one's much, much better. So if you were ever thinking of reading Starless Sea, read this one instead)

I was afraid when starting this book that it would just be a collection of mediocre stories joined by their superficial connection to the lost manuscript that gives its name to the title. Ultimately, I thought that that connection was indeed pretty tenuous, but the stories ended up being much more engaging than I was expecting, and I raced through the book in just a couple of sittings. Overall, I'd say the book is much more style than substance, but I'd recommend as a beach or plane read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC!

I was initially apprehensive about reading this considering that the top liked review was a one star, but it seemed to keep calling out to me.

Needless to say, I loved it. It was beautiful.

A story about a story that lasts lifetimes and all the people it touched. How it effected their lives, and how their lives, in turn, helped it (and each other) endure.

“What's so beautiful about a fool is that a fool never knows when to give up.”

Humans are not good or evil but a secret third thing (stupid).

The foolish perseverance of humanity and how our legacy as a species lies securely in the stories that we keep alive.

It even managed to somehow catch me offguard with a fairly common twist! (A testament to how engrossed I was in the writing.)

Moral is: Don't let other people's reviews discourage you from reading a book. Not all stories are for everyone, you learn along the way though which stories are for you.

I enjoyed the premise of the story where all these characters, hundreds of years apart, are connected by a single story, written many years ago, nearly lost to time.

The pacing felt very uneven, with about the beginning 40% feeling extremely slow and dragged on. Each character’s stories were unique and but not necessarily interesting. There was a theme of loss of childhood throughout each characters’ backgrounds which makes sense why the interwoven story of a paradise so appealing to each character.

Konstance’s was most interesting to me. What she learned really ties all the story lines together. Omeir & Anna’s stories seemed very isolated from the others and detracted from how each character was linked with the another. Maybe I missed something. 🤷‍♀️

I couldn’t decide whether I liked the book overall. Felt quite average and felt much of it could have been pared down without much impact to the overall story.

The story was amazing. However, it took at least 100 pages for it to start and maybe another 100 pages to understand how these seperate stories might be connected.

From then on it was, almost to the end, pretty strong content-wise but reading it felt like a nightmare and like 500 years or so passed.

I'm giving it three stars because I don't regret reading it but I'm not sure if I would recommend!!

Cloud Cuckoo Land is really five stories set in five places with five different characters. There's the story of Anna, an orphan who works in embroidery in Constantinople in the 1400s. There's the story of Zeno who is a prisoner of war in Korea. There's the story of Omeir who was born with a cleft palate that causes much trouble for him and his family. There's the story of Seymour who finds comfort in nature and is devastated when nature is destroyed all around him. And there's the story of Konstance who lives in the future in a spacecraft headed for another planet.

Somehow all these five stories connect together and are tied to an old book called Cloud Cuckoo Land.

And that's all I want to say about the plot.

I do want to talk about the themes of the story, but I can't really do that without giving away the plot and spoiling the story for others, so I guess I'll have to confine my talk about the book to those who have already read the book. I will just say that it's a long book and it was confusing at first, but it's worth it to read on. It's very good. Very, very good.

I must firstly state that Cloud Atlas is one of my all time favourite books so there was going to be the risk of comparison from the beginning. But having read and been impressed by Doerr's “All the Light We Cannot See” I knew to trust a master storyteller and try to put comparisons to one side.
For maybe until half way through the book the storylines and characters weren't compelling and the comparison was deadly. How to compete with David Mitchell's satire, mystery and gothic horror/Science-fiction, but I should have trusted Anthony Doerr.
IT IS WORTH IT!
Characters deepen, storylines connect up and it is not at all predictable. By the end he took me somewhere else from the experience of Cloud Atlas, more optimistic even with the horrible realities, and fully winning it's place on my shelves not far from David Mitchell's works.