My Review:⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/ 5 stars

I loved All The Light We Cannot See From Anthony Doerr so I was beyond excited to read this 600 pager. There are multiple POVs from Anna/Omeir in the 1400s in Constantinople, Zeno in the 1950s/present, Seymour, an assumed Autustic man, and Konstance in the future on a spacecraft with her family. The one main thread is the Ancient Greek translated tale of Antonius Diogenes’s Cloud Cuckoo Land - which is obvious from the title.

Doerr’s writing is incredibly descriptive, compelling, and the only motivating factor in how I got through this monster of a book. My favorites were Seymour and Anna - but there was too much going on. It felt every chapter was a different book - historical fiction, science fiction, and contemporary fiction all jammed together. As much as the writing was wonderful, I did not love the overall story as much as I really wanted to.

Thank you to Scribner books and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

I loved this so much- it was everything I enjoyed about All the Light We Cannot See, and then some. I loved that the story spanned many countries and many generations, yet all tied together. This had so much heart and was just an epic story about resilience, nature, survival, and just pure love of story. Thanks so much to the publisher for the early copy, I’m so grateful!

I’ll be honest, I spent the first 40% of this book asking myself what in the hell was I reading. We begin with 5 very distinct storylines ranging from the 1400’s all the way through the 21st century. Individually, I found the stories interesting but it was quite confusing to keep track of everything going on. Then, as if by magic (or genius!), you begin to see the threads that will link these stories together. And when those links are made, be prepared for your mind to be blown! I seriously have not stopped thinking about this book since I reached the last page. I can’t wait to chat about it with my girls in #readspinrepeatbookclub next week!

Purely by coincidence, I read 2 books by Pulitzer Prize winning authors in a row. Both Oh William! and Cloud Cuckoo Land are 5 star books in my opinion but they could not be more different from each other. There is nothing better than excellent writing and storytelling. I’m tempted to keep up this streak and read The Candy House by Jennifer Egan sooner than I planned.

I don’t even know where to start with describing this book! I could tell you about the plot, but I don’t think that would begin to capture the strangeness or the beauty. But I’ll give it a go!

So, this book is told from 5 different viewpoints in very disparate points in time. In the 15th century, there is Anna, a young Christian orphan in Constantinople, and Omeir, who lives in the country outside of Constantinople and is born with a cleft palate which makes everyone afraid of him other than his family. In the 20th and 21st century, there is Zeno, who we see at different times throughout his life from his childhood to his 80s, and Seymour, mostly during his childhood and teenage years, who has some significant sensory and emotional issues. And in the far future, we have Konstance, born on a spaceship en route to another galaxy. What connects all of their stories is an Ancient Greek tale called Cloud Cuckoo Land which comes into all of their lives at different times in different ways.

And all that is just a drop in the bucket as to what the book covers! At 640 pages, it is LONG! And with so many different POV characters in different times, it definitely takes quite a while to really get into, as just as you are getting into each character you’re transported into another one. So I can’t lie, for a while I was like “ok, these are all good stories, but why do they all have to be in one book?” But once I got into it, I couldn’t put it down, and it really gelled into something wonderful - connecting the stories both thematically (with some themes including loneliness, being different from others, search for home, environmentalism, and more), and on a deeper story level.

You have to give props to Anthony Doerr for trying something so different. He achieved fame, best seller-dom, and a Pulitzer Prize for All the Light We Cannot See, a unique but still conventional WWII novel. He easily could have done something similar for his follow-up, but instead he wrote this crazy, century-spanning book. And you know what? It was even better.

The last third of the book was 5 star quality for sure and when I finished it I was crying and felt like my mind had been blown. But because it was SO slow to get going, I’m going to give it 4.5 stars.

The brilliance of this book does not escape me but geez.......I was the wrong reader for it because it had.....
Too many words
Too many pages
Too many worlds
Too many descriptions
Too many genres
Too much going on
Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land was a brilliant and imaginative idea and many readers have and will continue to love this very complex book. I don't believe I could describe what happened in the book where it would be a benefit to any future reader so I won't try. Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the copy of this grand adventure. I only wish I would have enjoyed it more. My 4 star rating is for the over the top imagination to develop and write such a tale.

Anthony doerr weaves magic with his words. There’s no other way to describe his writing. I was utterly enchanted with all the light I cannot see, so I was deeply excited to receive this arc and I was not disappointed! Once again, Doerr brings together characters and storylines that shouldn’t work, but do. I loved every second of cloud cuckoo land and can’t wait to get my hands on a physical copy so I can reread and annotate it!

Absolutely beautiful book - very well could be THE book of the year! Doerr does it again with this novel. I was in awe - it made me laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time. The way the stories weave around each other and connect in the end is beautiful. Highly recommended as a first purchase for all libraries.

This is definitely a novel to "chew on" so to speak. It took me a really long time to make it through this, and I really had to concentrate.
Doerr is good for making you concentrate in a novel!

This is again in classic Doerr style around every corner of the novel. Nothing unexpected from his writing and I look forward to reading another novel by him in the future!

This one was highly anticipated and has generated a lot of awards buzz, and I'm happy to say that it does not disappoint. It's one of those novels with multiple stories and timelines weaved together where you know the stories will somehow connect in the end, but it's not always clear how. I will admit that in the beginning as I sorted through the different stories and not knowing how they connected this book felt every bit as long as its 600+ pages. However, as the stories developed further and started to connect I flew through the pages and what a novel this became! It's historical fiction, mythology, sci-fi, and even present day drama all rolled into one, and somehow with all these genres blending together it still really works. This is a great read worthy of its high praise.

At first, I had a little trouble understanding what exactly was going on. I understood what the overall situation was, but was a little lost moving from chapter to chapter. It took me about half way before I really recognized what was going on, and I started really enjoying it. I think it's supposed to have you trying to draw the lines between connections over centuries, and that was really interesting to me.

I’ll start off by saying in a year of reading excellent books, this is my favorite. Cloud Cuckoo Land is a stellar work by Anthony Doerr, the story complex and compelling. This is a story difficult to explain but it comes closest to Cloud Atlas, another book with ‘cloud’ in the title, and another story that crosses time with an assortment of characters.

There are many main characters in this novel and the story criss-crosses decades and milleniums. For three-quarters of the book, I didn’t know how or why this was all part of one vast story. There is a thread that runs through most of the chapters – an ancient text with an undying theme, an odyssey to another land where life will be far better than the mundane one on earth. Each of the characters are seekers, and the story slowly weaves their separate plots together.

The writing is a brilliant work by a Pulitzer-prize winning author. I’ve read most of his other books but this is my favorite and, in my opinion, his best work to date.

Throughout time, an unlikely group of people are united by their interest in a single text: an ancient Greek tale about a shepherd named Aethon who turns into different creatures and travels to a city in the clouds. In the future, a young woman is all alone on a spaceship and painstakingly recording the tale of Aethon. In 2020, an elderly man prepares to put on a play of Aethon's adventures with a group of children, unaware of the danger waiting on the lower level of the library. And in the 15th century, a young girl finds comfort in the tale of Aethon as the city of Constantinople is under siege. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr carefully weaves these lives together to remind us all about the importance of story and how we are all connected.

Anthony Doerr found great acclaim in 2014 with his book All the Light We Cannot See. If you enjoyed that book, you will find multiple points of view, a sweeping epic, and beautiful writing in Cloud Cuckoo Land too. In fact, his newest book is even more sweeping with five storylines (plus the text about Aethon) that will take you across centuries and countries.

As a reader, your tolerance for epics may vary. I found this book to be a very engaging read, but I also thought it was a bit long and too neatly wrapped up. Doerr is trying to say some very specific things here, but I wonder if it would have been even more powerful if there were fewer perspectives and some things were left unresolved.

Cloud Cuckoo Land is not a casual reading experience. At almost 700 pages, a reader has to commit to this journey with these characters and trust that Doerr will carry them through it. But if you can do that, it's worthwhile to experience this love letter to stories that asks why we keep stories alive and why that matters.



Cloud Cuckoo Land
By Anthony Doerr
Scribner September 2021
656 pages
Read via Netgalley

Thank you very much to the publisher for providing an ecopy of Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr in exchange for an honest review.

I will start by saying that plot-wise, Cloud Cuckoo Land could not be much more different than the author's previous Pulitzer Prize winning novel, All The Light We Cannot See. But that is not a bad thing. It makes it incredibly difficult to compare the two, and so I won't. Cloud Cuckoo Land is a beautifully written novel that is a love-letter to the magic of storytelling. The story takes place over multiple timelines and many characters.

In the beginning, I found it a bit difficult to keep up with all the characters, and even in hindsight I realize I blend some of their storylines together that were not even in the same time period in the story. Even so, each character is so well described that, as a reader, I found myself relating to them all. There were characters and storylines I preferred more than others, however there wasn't one I disliked or felt was unnecessary.

Somehow, this novel touches on so many human problems that are relevant today, as they were in the past, and as they will be in the future. As it has been said, there is nothing new under the sun. While at times, some of the issues described caused me some anxiety, I do feel like Doerr is a master at making melancholy situations more hopeful. Individuals are not all bad or all good and Doerr does a great job of reflecting that in his characters. Basically, I could read what he comes up with anytime and know I would walk away from the story thinking deeply about things, but with an optimistic outlook.

I am only taking off one star because even though the two books I have read of his are impossible to compare, I do know I adored All The Light We Cannot See just a bit more than Cloud Cuckoo Land.

You know the expression, “You can’t judge a book by its cover”? Well, this cover is gorgeous and so is the book. I adored it! I likely would not have read this book based on the description but it was highly recommended and Anthony Doerr is a literary genius.

There is an ancient manuscript called Cloud Cuckoo Land. Anna is an orphan living in Constantinople 500 years before octogenarian Zeno and Seymour, a troubled young man, who live in modern day Idaho. Konstance lives in the future and has never set foot on earth…(I know, sounds weird but she was my favorite!) All of these people’s lives are tied together by this manuscript and Doerr made me laugh, cry, and ignore my family because I was too busy reading! This book might stretch you but if you are open to the mythology it will eventually come together. Such a great read!!!

(More 2.5 stars) Oh man - I so wanted to like this. I LOVE All the Light We Cannot See, and am constantly recommending it. I heard an interview of Doerr talking about this book and was intrigued. But I seriously only finished it because I kept hoping my feelings would change by the end. And because he's such a good writer, I had to at least give him a 2.5. Otherwise, I just felt disconnected from the characters and the story and all the jumping around just set me adrift more. And none of the reveals deepened the story for me. I listened to the audiobook, so perhaps I missed some of the good writing I would've otherwise seen if reading the print; but I listened to All the Light and had no such issue.

This is a title chosen for the list of monthly book club reads at my library. I'm sure you'll like it.

I loved this book. It was impressively ambitious spanning centuries, genres, and a handful of characters you cant help but care about. Doerr's descriptions are amazing, just like in All The Light We Cannot See- you fall into his world building. At times it felt like a collection of separate books stuck together, but the end pulled the threads together fairly well.

Anthony Doerr is a masterful storyteller.

Cloud Cuckoo Land weaves together the stories of Anna, Omeir, Zeno, Seymour, and Konstance. Despite their individual lives spanning centuries, they are all impacted by a story written for an ailing child, niece of the original writer, Antonius Diogenes. The story is that of Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Throughout the novel, highlights both the endurance of the human spirit in the face of misfortune and the search for home and belonging. Anna and Omeir are caught on opposing sides of the 15th-century siege of Constantinople. Zeno story spans from his boyhood, living in Idaho, orphaned after his father enlists to serve during WWII, to manhood when he lives to the ripe age of 86. Seymour lives in the same town in Idaho as Zeno—he's a neurodivergent kid who is radicalized in an effort to preserve what little woodland is left of his childhood home. Konstance lives in the distant future, on a space disk, hurtling through space toward a planet with a similar atmosphere to that of earth—the space disk won't reach the new planet until after over 500 years of travel.

All of them feel the weight of isolation.

But as they interact with the story by Diogenes, the characters in the story are all able to find beauty in a world that isn't what it should be.

Just as it was for Anna, Omeir, Zeno, Seymour, and Konstance, Cloud Cuckoo Land will, as Rex Browning says, help you "slip the trap."

This book was a lot. There is no denying that Doerr has a brilliant imagination and is a fabulous writer, but it took a bit to get into this book with the number of characters, time periods, and genres it contains. Once you do get going, it is hard not to fall for the characters, even Seymour, and want to follow their stories all the way through. My two favorite timelines are the ones that follow Zeno and Omeir & Anna because each are so richly written and filled with love, heartbreak, and strength.

Thirteen years old Anna an orphan lives inside the walls of Constantinople. She learns to read and finds a book in the library the story of Atheon who longs to be a bird so that he can fly to an utopian paradise in the sky..
Omeir, a village boy, lives outside the walls of Constantinople conscripted with his beloved oxen far from home.
Five hundred years later in Idaho, Zeno who learned Greek as a POW rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Atheon's play.
Tucked inside is a bomb planted by a troubled idealistic teenager Seymour.
And not so distance future on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault copying scrapes of sacking the story of Atheon told to her by her father.

In a truly amazing story of how the web of interconnected events each one consisting of the five separate individuals acting for reasons on their own motivations with no concept of the final result to which the actions of either will lead.
Libraries, The Cloud Cuckoo Land, and birds play a interconnected part in this narrative.
Each time the reader comes upon a story of the five they are older.
The folio "Cloud Cuckoo Land" begins each set of quick stories.
"always further up north the brutes drove until the land turned white. "
Zeno is in the land up north as a POW in Korea. Omeir is driving his beloved Oxen north through the snow.

Lakeport Public Library "Owl" you need all the books.
Seymour owl was called Trusty friend.
Zeno friend, Rex, in the POW camp was called Trusty friend.
Atheon wanted to be a bird.

Seymour wanted to be like Atheon believing in an utopian paradise away from "every human is a parasite agent captive to the dictates of consumption."

Kostance learns that the book on her father's nightstand was given to her great grandmother Rachel Wilson who was one of the five children in the library the fateful day that Zeno confronted Seymour.

The sights and sounds of medieval Constantinople, Korea, England, Idaho, and interstellar ship Argos come alive.