Cloud Cuckoo Land is a ticket to an epic novel that spans centuries. Anthony Doerr’s book is genre-bending - tying historical fiction, fantasy/mythology, contemporary fiction and sci-fi into a rich piece of literary fiction. This blending thrilled me – I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book that has done this. I enjoy reading books that weave multiple storylines together, and even more so when the weaving involves different eras. In these books, I live for the ‘ah-ha’ moment where all the connections are made.

Being the nerd I am, I love that a library plays a central role in the story and the preservation of books and stories is a theme.

In seminary, I wrote a paper on myth, allegory and the gospel, and in the paper, I addressed our pull to myths. A good story, as J.R.R. Tolkien would say, births desirability. This desire is to be a part of the journey and the adventure. It is almost an ironic balance; the reader is pleased to be in the comfort of their home, safe from dungeons and dragons, but as Tolkien writes in his article, “On Fairy Stories,” there is a part of each of us that wishes we could enter the dangerous unknown world. And, in reading Doerr’s book, there was a part of me that wanted to join Aethon on his journey to find Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Myths identify psychological, metaphysical and historical truths that are important today. Myths present characters that all can relate to and offer the opportunity to take part in an adventure of growth, learning and pleasure. Doerr’s book does this.

We travel to Constantinople, small-town Idaho, Korea during the Korean war and on a spaceship headed to a new planet. And that isn’t counting the travel we take to ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land,’ the story the book centers around.

Konstance takes us on a journey on the Argos, a nod to Jason and the Argonaut’s journey on the Argo in Greek mythology. It is fascinating to think about what the world will be like in the future and what we’ll do with the knowledge we’ve gained.

Seymour is a complicated character, and as we read, we learn about the circumstances that led him to the library carrying a bomb, and our compassion and empathy have a chance to grow.

I don’t believe I’ve read much about the fall of Constantinople, and I enjoyed reading Anna and Omeir’s stories. They are characters on either side of the wall. Through their stories, we see both sides of the story and the humanity on both sides.

I wish I could be friends with Zeno. Spending an afternoon with him in the library in Lakeport, Idaho, would be a day well-spent. His character throughout the book is endearing. Great men and women come from both big and small towns, from wealthy families and poor families.

Many thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for the free Advanced Review Copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

A mind-bending, fantastical mash-up of several genres and themes. Cloud Cuckoo Land follows a diverse cast of unique and strongly developed characters through various journeys that seem somehow linked by an ancient story. As the book progresses, the reader slowly starts to see a clearer picture of the connections.

It is hard to compare this book to All the Light We Cannot See. The writing is descriptive but the books are just so different that there couldn’t be an equal comparison. I wasn’t blown away and moved by Cloud Cuckoo Land as much as I was with All the Light We Cannot See, but overall, it was a good read.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for a complimentary copy of this book. The opinions expressed in this review are my own.

I was not the right audience for this book. It read like a YA novel to me. So for all of you YA fans out there, you will most likely love this one! For me, much of the book plodded along, but the ending was very good.

The story deals with five different characters, who live in the past, the present, and the future. Their stories are tied together by an ancient story that involves a tale regarding a foolish shepherd who longs to visit a place called Cloud Cuckoo Land. Anthony Doerr dedicates this book to all librarians and uses all the characters as examples of people who realize the importance of preserving stories.

Thanks to NetGalley, and Scribner for my advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

DNF 46% of the way through. I loved All the Light We Cannot See, but as other reviewers have pointed out, this book has a very different feel to it than ATLWCS. While Doerr again proves his mastery over language in Cloud Cuckoo Land, the Gordian knot of plotlines and character arcs in this novel overshadow the beautiful syntax. I found myself engrossed in certain chapters—especially Zeno's—only to be dragged back into other characters' chapters (especially Konstance's chapters, whose sole purpose for me was to remind me that Konstance was a main character).

There is suspense woven throughout the novel, but disjointedly. Reading Cloud Cuckoo Land unearthed complaints I had while reading All the Light We Cannot See five years ago. All the Light We Cannot See was also a novel with multiple POVs—just three, if I remember correctly—and even that was a difficult balancing act for Doerr and the reader alike. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, not only are there myriad POVs but also myriad timelines, both of which make for a confusing read.

I did find that once I picked this book up, I couldn't stop reading. Perversely, however, it was also easy to put this book down.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A beautifully complex and extraordinary read

I didn't think twice when requested a copy of this book. Although it was nothing like what I was expecting, I was absolutely amazed at how much I loved and was consumed by this book. I have never read anything quite like this. Cloud Cuckoo Land left me speechless and in awe of such an amazing work of art.

The story revolves around an old Greek book. The book travels from the past, present and future and then as the story progresses all of them are weaved together in one masterful story. A world of challenges, hope, love, fear and heartache.

I wanted to love this book. I expected to love it with a blazing passion for its beautiful writing, and unforgettable characters - everything that made me love All The Light We Cannot See so much.

However, this book left me feeling a bit disappointed. The writing was still beautiful, but the story felt like it was trying to be too many things. Historical fiction, check. Futuristic science fiction, check. Ancient mythology, check. Realistic fiction, also check. As in ATLWCS, Anthony Doer links disparate characters together through his storytelling. But in this book, I found some of the connections obvious from the beginning, and others to be tenuous and far-fetched.

I’m glad I read this book, but it was not the experience I hoped for.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Imaginative and ambitious, CLOUD CUCKOO LAND is testament to the transcendent power of stories. It is a truly unique novel by @Anthony Doerr, author of ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE (one of my all time favorites).

Doerr is a masterful storyteller, but he takes his time within these 640 pages. This is an innovative story that you’ll need to settle in with. If you’re in the mood for a breezy read, this isn’t it.

What the novel lacks in brevity, it makes up for in brilliance. Doerr seamlessly weaves together three storylines that at first glance seem wildly unrelated: 1400s Constantinople, present Day Idaho, and a spaceship in the distant future.

Cloud Cuckoo Land highlights the threads that connect humanity over centuries. In that spirit, I believe this novel is meant to be read in community. Don’t go at this one alone--it begs to be thoughtfully discussed.

RATING: 4.5/5 (rounded up)
PUB DATE: 9/28/21

A big thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for an advanced electronic copy of this novel.

I received this book via Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.


Anthony Doerr has been an author I’ve enjoyed for a long time. All of his published works are unique and beautifully written and diverse in storytelling composition. This was no different.

I did love the premise of Cloud Cuckoo Land surrounding libraries and mysterious books of legend but I did find it took awhile to really get into the book and it’s quite hefty at over 600 pages.

Multiple points of view is always a format I enjoy in reading but I did struggle to keep up with them all due to the enormity of the book and how fast chapters changed. A few less points of views with longer chapters would have flowed better.

I wouldn’t say I was blown away by this book like I have his other works but it was still worth a read because of his characterizations and the development of the stories he writes.
I would give it 3.5 /5 due to the overall length and the odd ending that left me a bit unsatisfied

I had really hoped this would be the best book I have read this year!. I had read so many wonderful reviews and I loved Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See. Well, what a disappointment. First, it started out so wierd, then I couldn't get going, so I just put the book down and didn't finish it. Hope everyone has better luck than I did.

I can become fatigued by lengthy, beautiful prose, but I don’t feel that way when I’m reading Anthony Doerr. As a huge fan of All the Light We Cannot See, I knew immediately that Cloud Cuckoo Land was a book I would not want to miss. His book was long, and took effort (but in a good way). The storylines were different people, different times, different moods, and touched different genres.
Cloud Cuckoo Land is not a beach read, but I enjoyed it and am glad I took the time for Doerr’s work.

Thanks to Net Galley and Scribner for the opportunity to read Anthony Doerr's gorgeous new novel. I was fearful that it might be a bit of jumble, albeit a jumble filled with splendid prose, because of the multiple time frames and characters the author presents, But no, I was completely drawn in and finished it in a few days. Thank goodness I was on vacation because I could not put this book down. Despite the author's honest depiction of brutality and pain across the centuries, I felt hopeful that the human connection that weaves the characters together here will continue in our future.
I so appreciated the author's love of libraries and books that shines through in every chapter of this wonderful volume.

The concept of tracking a single, ancient story, being transcribed over hundreds of years was really unique to me and I enjoyed reading the story parsed out at the beginning of each chapter. Moving back and forth thru time from 1439 to the future, you learn about the Diogenes folios from 5 characters who are impacted by the story in different and profound ways. It's a slow-burn of a read, but enjoyable overall.

Thank you to #Scribner and #NetGalley for this digital arc. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

Thanks to Netgalley , Anthony Doerr, and Simon & Schuster for an advanced e-edition.

I must admit that I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. I say that because I am not usually not very enthusiastic about the individual pieces of this book, as it was described to me briefly before I started. It is part historical fiction, part science fiction, part fantasy that share the common thread of a Greek Mythology text. These parts are then all developed at as entirely separate stories with several of them occurring in widely disparate time periods. However, because of the author's exceptional talent at quickly sucking me into having great empathy for each of the unique characters I was pleased to read each short chapter and then abruptly jump to another place and time and catch up with what my other favorite characters were doing. This format would simply not have worked (for me, anyway) if the author's individual characters and stories were not so immediately engrossing. In the end, all things come together for a satisfying conclusion.

I like how the plots from the different years and places (1400's Constantinople; 1950s-2020's Idaho; future on a spaceship) came together in this book. I liked the Idaho portions of the book a lot more than the other two. But this book had a lot of words - a whole lot of words - and they seemed to not all be necessary for me to enjoy/understand the book. I started skimming after about 50 pages and I don't think I missed much. For that reason I can't give this book higher than 3 stars. I

Cloud Cuckoo Land is amazing! What could have been a book with three separate stories creating confusion was a book masterfully crafted. It contains so many stories, so much angst and beauty spanning the past, present and future. I will definitely recommend this book to my book clubs.

I really LOVE Anthony Doerr’s writing, so I was excited when I was awarded an ARC from Netgalley/Scribner of Cloud Cuckoo Land in exchange for my honest review. I expect that this book will be a huge bag of mixed reviews, because it is a bit complicated. I, however, am awarding this 4 stars (probably rounded up, but nonetheless, still 4). It will be out for all to read on September 28th, 2021.

The story of Cloud Cuckoo Land shifts between the points of view of five different characters and takes place in:
- The Past (1400s): Omeir’s and Anna’s stories,
- The Present (2020, with flashbacks into the 20th century): Zeno and Seymour’s stories,
- The Future (2140s): Konstance’s story.

Each storyline POV incorporates the lost, Ancient Greek manuscript of Cloud Cuckoo Land. Since reading the synopsis is easy to do (and you’ve probably already done so), I will not repeat it here. My review will focus on what I think of the book.

My favorite pastime is reading. (I seldom watch TV or waste time on social media). The only other thing I like to do more than reading, is to spend time with people: family and friends, making memories. So I loved the fact that this story focused on the importance of keeping books and stories alive. I loved reading the differing points of view of all of the characters, but through much of the book, I had no idea how it would come together.

This is a book like none I’ve ever read: part historical fiction, part sci-fi, but it all comes together at the end. It’s a challenging read, as the differing POVs often appear more complicated and a bit muddled. I expect that many will abandon it, and for that, I am sad.

During the first half of the book, I found myself wondering how this would all come together, and I found myself only moderately interested in what I was reading. But the writing was so beautiful, I kept with it. It’s a book by Anthony Doerr, so it HAS to be amazing, right?!?

Ultimately, I am very glad I stuck with it, because at about 50% in, the book grabbed me and didn’t let go. Sadly…this may be the reason why many will most probably abandon it (and rate it anything but 5 stars). Because, don’t we want to be captivated within the first 10% of our reading? Or positively by the time we’ve read 25% of it? To the future reader of this book I enjoyed, I say this: Be patient. You will be rewarded. But know that this is not something that will grab you until around the 300 pg mark. It will come together quite beautifully, but it takes awhile.

"It has taken him his whole life to accept himself, and he is surprised to understand that now that he can, he does not long for one more year, one more month: eighty-six years is enough. In a life you accumulate so many memories, your brain constantly winnowing through them, weighing consequence, burying pain, but somehow by the time you're this age you still end up dragging a monumental sack of memories behind you, a burden as heavy as a continent, and eventually it becomes time to take them out of the world."

I finished this book some days ago, and the fact that I haven't stopped thinking about it testifies to its power. I am a great, great fan of All the Light We Cannot See, and as a result I tried not to get my hopes up too high for this book; I just didn't want Doerr to disappoint me. But I need not have fretted. This book, in its own way, is deeply moving as well.

The book begins with several different characters in disparate time periods, including the future. And though you know, as a reader, that their stories will intertwine, it takes a good deal of the book (or it did for me) to understand how those stories connect. By that point, however, I was mesmerized. And once again, as with All the Light, toward the book's end I had tears in my eyes.

A tribute to libraries and librarians everywhere and in all ages, this book is not just highly recommended. It is not to be missed.

When I tell you that this book contains multitudes, I’m not exaggerating. It spans time and space and galaxies, taking us from the 15th century siege of Constantinople to a spaceship of humans fleeing a dying plant to 20th-21st century suburban Idaho. You’d be forgiven for abdicating then and there and thinking, no thanks.

‘Day after day, year after year, time wipes the old books from the world.’

In our 15th century timeline, Omeir is a young village boy who is conscripted into the invading Ottoman army. In the same timeline, Anna lives within the walls of Constantinople, an orphan who is fed and clothed in return for embroidering religious garments for holy men. With no access to education, a chance encounter with written language sparks an insatiable curiosity.

‘Almost overnight, the streets glow with meaning. She reads inscriptions on coins, on cornerstones and tombstones, on lead seals and buttress piers and marble plaques… each twisting lane of the city a great battered manuscript in its own right.’

Access to knowledge is central, too, to Konstance’s story. Effectively imprisoned on a ‘windowless disk hurtling through interstellar space’ a hundred or so years from our present day, the spaceship is governed by an AI called Sybil, containing the ‘collective wisdom of our species’. Within the on-board VR library, Konstance is able to explore earth – through a three-dimensional Google Earth type of technology – and begin to piece together the central mysteries about her existence.

In modern-day Idaho, Zeno is a former Korean war veteran with a passion for ancient Greek who works at the Lakeport public library. Seymour is a vulnerable teenage boy who enters the library on a cold February day in 2020 to detonate a bomb.

‘Ambitious’ is certainly the right word for this epic, meticulous novel from Anthony Doerr. The problem is that Doerr doesn’t really know quite how to channel, or hone, his ambition. There’s a lot to love in this book – his trademark way of rendering people and place with precision and empathy, a highly imaginative retelling of worlds far removed from our own, a genre-blending of historical, fantasy, science fiction. But the ambition of the book overwhelms it more than once.

The thread that ties together these seemingly disparate narratives of Zeno, Omeir, Konstance, Anna and Seymour is an ancient Greek story by Antonius Diogenes, telling the comical and fantastical tale of a shepherd’s misadventures to a city in the sky. That story in itself isn’t that important – the point that Doerr seems to be making is that the survival of ancient, long-forgotten texts is a miracle in itself. Upon learning of the discovery of the ancient manuscript, centuries after its inception, Zeno’s voice fills with emotion.

‘Erasure is always stalking us, you know? So to hold in your hands something that has evaded it for so long—’

It’s a compelling premise – but I’m not sure that the central idea is compelling enough to bind this 600+ page novel together, and for the reader to see it through. The worlds are imaginatively crafted, the characters developed and distinct – but we don’t get enough time with any of them, leading to a disjointed reading experience – interrupted further by passages from the Diogenes text throughout, a story that didn’t really interest me much.

All The Light We Cannot See is one of the best books I’ve read in recent years (I mean, it won the Putlizer – that’s not an original thought) and I had so many aspirations for this book. I feel a twinge of sadness that it wasn’t all I was hoping it to be – but that doesn’t mean it won’t be that for other readers.

With thanks to the publisher for the advanced copy. Cloud Cuckoo Land will be published on the 28th September, 2021.

3.5*

I loved this book so much. In some ways, it's quite a bit different from the author's previous book, All the Light We Cannot See, but in some ways it really isn't. His story telling abilities are quite stunning.

This book happens in the past and the present and the future. So it's historical fiction, regular fiction and sci-fi. There is a book within the book which is also an interesting addition. One theme is the importance of language and information, who provides it, how it gets lost, how it makes its own journey. Another theme is the environment. If only Doerr had a magical solution to that problem.

I feel like I just wrote the opening to a book report.

I loved all of the characters and the story and the writing. I even didn't mind when my brain nearly exploded near the end.

I definitely recommend this one.

Thank you to Netgalley for my advance copy in exchange for my review.

Wow! What an interesting premise. This story has several POVs and is told over a long span of time. I will say it took my quite a while to “get into it” and I was pretty confused until about page 100. This was ambitious and entertaining as well as very unique!