All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders was very much outside of my “normal” reading preferences. It was a book club selection at work. We’ve switched up the formatting and a member of the team picks each month now. This happened to be a girl’s final month (before moving on to a new job), so it was special that she got to pick.

The Story

An ancient society of witches and a hipster technological startup go to war in order to prevent the world from tearing itself apart. To further complicate things, each of the groups’ most promising followers (Patricia, a brilliant witch and Laurence, an engineering “wunderkind”) may just be in love with each other.

As the battle between magic and science wages in San Francisco against the backdrop of international chaos, Laurence and Patricia are forced to choose sides. But their choices will determine the fate of the planet and all mankind.

In a fashion unique to Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky offers a humorous and, at times, heart-breaking exploration of growing up extraordinary in world filled with cruelty, scientific ingenuity, and magic.

My Thoughts

Unfortunately, I wasn’t much of a fan of All the Birds in the Sky. It had such promise for being an interesting concept. I mean, the world of magic and science colliding? No one ever writes about that. However, I feel the story was very poorly executed.

To begin, the first chapter or so follows Patricia as she discovers she can talk to birds. She then follows a bird to a massive tree of talking birds. As someone who is afraid of birds, it just got off to a very rough start for me.

For the majority of the book, I thought it was written for a YA audience. For the record, it was not. The writing was just…childish. Not in the sense that Anders wrote like a child, but like it was written for children. My book club agreed with that assessment. However, you get toward the end, and there’s a fairly explicit sex scene. Because why?

I also had issues with the parents of both Patricia and Laurence. They were far too apathetic to not be considered negligent. The kids ended up leaving their families, but still. It was too unrealistic even to be fantasy.

Overall, I really enjoyed the magic side of the book. It had a promising backstory and yielded some interesting “rules” that carried into other portions of the story. The science half was just ridiculous. I absolutely understand that this book fit into the “fantasy” genre, but there’s still logic to fantasy.

Now, though I didn’t enjoy the book, there are still people I would recommend All the Birds in the Sky to. It was written for a very specific type of audience, and I just wasn’t the right person.

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