Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for a free electronic copy in exchange for an honest review.

I'll start by saying I love All The We Cannot See - an easy 5 star read for me! I love the imagery and storytelling that Doerr displayed in that book. So I requested this one without knowing the premise nor its thickness.

The book is separated into 3 storylines - past, present, and future in a non-linear fashion. Mix in a bit of mythology which ties all 3 storylines together. I loved the mythology story!

The Past - Anna and Omeir. This storyline was my least favorite because their individual stories progressed slowly and felt rushed once they met.

The Present - Seymour and Zeno. Their stories were my favorites, perhaps because they were linked from the beginning and then a retelling of how they got to the end. I loved both these characters, and I would have been utterly satisfied if the book was entirely about these two!

The future - I loved Konstance's undeterred quest for the truth! Her discoveries left me with a range of emotions but also many unanswered questions.

The ending did bring the story together nicely and left me satisfied. Overall, the book is about connections - the people around us, our past, future, and world. We all struggle, and we all hope. Many of us search tirelessly for a utopia only to ultimately long for home, to feel connected.

"For the Librarians then, now and in the years to come."

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr is a tribute to the ones who write the stories and the ones who preserve and encourage them to be read by all. The fact that the book is dedicated to librarians is the first step to falling in love with the author's storytelling.

This book spans over 500 years, is 600 pages, almost 15 hours of listening for the audiobook, has 5 POVs and it is all connected by a story written around the first century. There are many themes from climate change, how we are responsible for future generations and, perhaps most predominantly, that we are interconnected through the past, present and future.

All the characters are effected by an ancient lost Greek tale entitled Cloud Cuckoo Land. It is the story of Aeothon who wanted only to become a bird and find a utopian paradise in the sky.

In the 1400s, during the Constantinople siege, young Anna and Omeir are on opposite sides of the wall but their destiny lies in the discovery of this Greek story. As a POW during the Korean War Zeno learns Greek and will come to translate Aeothon's story. In current times young Seymour fears if trees are constantly destroyed there will be no birds in the sky. Then there is the future Konstance who has only lived on a spaceship and has never touched land. She finds inspiration from the same centuries old story.

I both read and listened to this epic saga. The book helped me distinguish the characters and the audiobook gave me their substance by the brilliant performances of narrator Marin Ireland and Simon Jones.

There is a lot to unpack here. I was confused at times but patience and a bit of rereading led me to a surprised ending and a book that I will remember through time.

I received a free copy of this book
(via #Netgalley)and audiobook from the publishers for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

All the Light We Cannot See is one of my favorite novels of this decade. I was very excited to read Doerr’s latest book.

I’m disappointed to say this novel just didn’t do it for me. It was disjointed, cumbersome, and fails to impress a lasting impression in my memory. The novel centers around 4 POVs, some more interesting than others. I liked that the storylines intersected by the end but at over 600 pages, I felt it took too long to get there. Additionally, in Kostance’s storyline when it did get interesting it felt a bit rushed and left me wanting more prose.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC. I’m a fan of this author’s and based on his strong debut I’ll give his next book a try.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. Pub date: September 28, 2021

I’ve been waiting for this book forever and was thrilled to receive an early copy. In Doerr’s follow up to his Pulitzer winning novel, All the Light We Cannot See, Cloud Cuckoo Land journeys through 5 different points of view across 3 different timelines…if you know that going in, you can prepare for this massive, complex read! Clocking in at over 600 pages, I was still astonished at how much was fit into this novel. This is so wonderfully written, you can’t help but get lost on a journey through its pages, though I did find myself favoring some storylines over the others. Another astounding novel from Anthony Doerr.

Anthony Doerr brings together multiple timelines and characters together with one story. The power of how telling and re-telling of a story through generations, centuries, passing it down by word of mouth and print. Cloud Cuckoo Land at first takes a bit to get into and wrap your head around what is being presented to you. Once though you start to piece it together, you can't but help to continue reading to see where the story leads and how it ends.

CLOUD CUCKOO LAND is the latest of Anthony Doerr’s incredible works of fiction- this will surely be one of my favorite reads of 2021 and will stay with me for a long time.

CLOUD CUCKOO LAND is hard to adequately describe- it transcends space and time, hops between narratives, countries, time periods- it features heartfelt, interweaving storylines; complex, imperfect characters; richly detailed settings; and universal themes of love, loss, adventure, hope, perseverance, and the power of a great story. I would highly recommend this book to all- particularly to fans of Doerr’s other work- and would encourage any readers to push through the first 50 or so pages, during which it can be tricky to juggle all the perspectives.

Overall, this book was an unforgettable read for me that felt timely and yet timeless.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for the ARC which I kindly received in exchange for my honest review.

I never read the author's first book, so I cannot compare the book as many others have done. The descriptions given are wonderful. The characters are insanely relatable. I did not like the order of the chapters because it became quite confusing. There were constant pauses to understand what time frame I was on and who was narrating. I felt like I was powering through the book in order to finish it. There was nothing keeping me attached to reading and many times, I picked up another book and finished it before continuing with this one. The ending is nice but it is not a page turner for me.

I was a little worried picking up „Cloud Cuckoo Land“ since a book worthy of following the wonderful „All The Light We Cannot See“ just seemed a gigantic feat but Anthony Doerr delivered. Cloud Cuckoo Land is a book I’ll remember, recommend and gift. It is a truly great book.
It is an ode to home and to books and libraries – so my very favorite places.
Five protagonists, from 15th century Constantinople to Idaho, the war in Korea, Idaho again, than to a space ship may seem like a wild ride but it‘s a wild ride well worth taking ! Through its exploration of loss, heroism and destiny, Cloud Cuckoo Land even manages to grapple with the climate crisis and humankind’s culpability, in a beautiful and ultimately hopeful way – which makes me want to put this book into my teenagers hands right away.
Each of the five main characters in the novel has a relationship with a librarian or a broader definition of what a librarian can be, a custodian of books or gatekeeper in some way. The book is unabashedly celebrating the power of books and their caretakers providing access to the written word and the story contained – a tribute to the magic of reading and storytelling.

A true masterwork of fiction. One of the absolute best books of the year! A lyrical, beautiful, emotional, and captivating love letter to the power of storytelling and a tribute to those who preserve and pass the stories on and the threads of these stories that connect us and bind us across time. Anthony Doerr writes so magnificently that you feel shame about anything you’ve ever written. This book is just brilliant! Read it!

What seems to be an unpopular opinion, I did not love this book and really struggled to get through it. I found that there were too many perspectives, too many characters and unnecessarily wordy and descriptive. Although all perspectives are connected, they did not feel connected while reading the book, in fact it felt like reading multiple different stories, which at times became confusing. I loved All the Light We Cannot See, but this just did not live up to my expectations.

Anna, an orphan, who lives in Constantinople, finds and reads the story of Aethon, while a great siege occurs outside her home. Omeir, a village boy, lives outside the walls with the invading army - and their paths cross. 500 years later, Zeno, rehearses the play of Aethon’s story with 5 children, unknowingly in a library where a teen planted a bomb. Konstance, a girl locked in a vault on an interstellar ship in the future, is alone copying scraps of Aethon’s story told by her father.

I struggled to describe the book, which is how I felt reading it. There was just too much going on to keep track of and truly enjoy.

Thank you to Netgalley and Scribner for my Advanced Reader Copy.

Surprisingly, I've never read All the Light We Cannot See. My students, though, love it and check it out regularly. This is my first book by Doerr, but I will certainly be going back and reading more. This, to me, was very reminiscent of David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas or the Bone Clocks) which is absolutely my cup of tea. Great book.

Look, I have a soft spot for books about books. This is a long and unusual book, but it carries at its heart a love for libraries and reading that feels unbound from time and space and threaded instead through pure emotion. It’s worth the read to experience the joy of storytelling across an eclectic backdrop of libraries and nearly surreal settings.

I loved All the Light We Cannot See. Like I LOVED it. This book, however, has too many plot lines, timelines, characters, and sudden stops for me to fully commit to 700 pages. I wish I loved it; I wish I could follow it. I wish for a lot that this book just didn't deliver.

Thank you to Scribner and Netgalley for an ARC of this novel in return for my honest review.

If I'm being honest I went into this book believing that I would not like it. That it would be a trudge. An ancient story weaving in and out of 3 other stories seemingly unrelated and centuries apart. Cloud Cuckoo Land??!! 640 pages!!

Turns out I was wrong! I flew through these 600+ pages and enjoyed all the storylines (and there are many). I was pleasantly surprised how some of the stories ended and just enjoyed the ride with all of them.

If you are looking for an escape Cloud Cuckoo Land is it!!

I just learned my lesson about requesting an ARC on author alone. I really wanted to love this book, after devouring All The Light We Cannot See. I would up abandoning this one fairly early on. It is a mish-mash of many story lines and time lines (5? I am not even sure) that did nothing but confuse me and make me cuckoo. Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest opinion. Cloud Cuckoo Land is available on 9/28/2021.

Complex and Long Ambitious Work: Brilliant Narrative, A Long Read

Many of us dream about utopia, a heaven or paradise. It is an ideal place, a fantasy, actually. This very long book is telling us about the search for humanity and kindness, people and benevolence. The setting for the novel is in three separate times: Present day Idaho, 15th century Constantinople and lastly on a spaceship traveling into the future to a new planet. The one bond they all have is a story about Cloud Cuckoo Land. This story transverses the narrative albeit in different time lines.

Doerr masters his characters’ place in history and crafts their stories with nuance and detail. We are artistically introduced to Anna and Maria in 1450 in the city of Constantinople. Present day is about Zeno, Seymour and a library. And the future, Konstance, who is traveling on a spaceship, anxious to learn with the help of an AI, named Sybil.

It is a long book, carefully developed, sometimes too wordy for me. Like many philosophies, utopia aka Cloud Cuckoo Land is not perfect.


My gratitude to Simon and Schuster for this pre-published book. All opinions expressed are my own.

“Each of these books, child, is a door, a gateway to another place and time. You have your whole life in front of you, and for all of it, you’ll have this. It will be enough, don’t you think?”

I admit to being hesitant to read Anthony Doerr’s latest book, Cloud Cuckoo Land I didn’t love All the Light We Cannot See (although maybe that’s because I read it all while I was on jury duty) but I tend to love stories told from different pov that all end up meaning something when looked at together.

This book is so incredibly ambitious. The descriptions are luscious and immersive and even though the chapters are short and the book jumps around so much, I didn’t have a problem seamlessly going back and forth between characters and times.

My favorite characters kept changing. Sometimes it was Zeno, who learned Greek as a prisoner of war and now is teaching children in a play adaption of a Greek story. Sometimes I couldn’t wait for Anna, an orphan living inside the walls of Constantinople- or for Omeir, just outside those walls. Konstance, living inside a vault years and years in the future was maybe the most intriguing.

I couldn’t help but compare this book to David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, both because of the name and the way the stories all came together. I liked this book much more than I thought I would and even though I read an e-copy, I actually think an audio version of this would be beautiful.

I did have some issues with the character of Seymour and will be curious to see how others view how he was portrayed. His chapters were by far my least favorite and I wasn’t sure about some of the choices the author made around his character.

Fans of Mitchell and stories and Greek comedy will love this ambitious and at times both challenging and lovely novel. I’m choosing to view this book as a love letter to stories and libraries and that through the stories we tell, we can be immortal.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Scribner for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Epic, skillfully told tale through multiple generations that were each a genuine story in and of themselves. But, putting them together was brilliant and a gorgeous piece of work! Utterly Unique!
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

1.5 stars rounded to 2.

All the Light We Cannot See is one of my favorite historical fiction books I have read, so I was so excited to read Cloud Cuckoo Land this autumn. I have to say that I was kind of disappointed. The writing was just as beautiful but I find that there was no plot anywhere to be seen. The book as a whole was a little bit of a mess for me. Jumping stories and timelines it all just felt difficult to keep track of things. I almost put the book down 2 or 3 times which was very sad for me. A few of the storylines didn't interest me at all because it seemed like a bunch of waiting. I also found a problem in making the "villain" character autistic, basically making the person who is different bad which made me really uncomfortable. While he has a redemption story was making him autistic really necessary?

I found that I had some focus issues while reading this like I really had to force myself to read at times. Just a disappointment all around for me.

Thank you, Scribner and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review,

For the Booklovers and Storytellers

Cloud Cuckoo Land is a beautiful, heart-breaking portrait of human connections and how they are facilitated through stories even across time and place. Doerr conveys the absolute magic of escaping into a book all while casting a spell that pulls you so deep into this one that you forget how long you’ve been reading. His characters are so richly drawn that to part with them by finishing the book feels like a loss. And all throughout this immersive experience and encomium to storytelling, Doerr examines how we interact with each other, nature, animals, and information in ways that have rippling effects beyond our own experiences. He shows how these ever blazing connections make us human. This is the best book I’ve read all year and I expect it will persist as one of my favorite novels.