Cloud Cuckoo Land is a beautiful testament to the importance of books and the power of storytelling. Doerr intricately weaves the storylines together, connecting the human experience across centuries. It was sometimes jarring to jump between the timelines of each character's story, but the structure of the novel was well suited to the story. Highly recommend.

• Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for providing this Advance Reading Copy. Expected publication date is September 28, 2021.

Cloud Cuckoo Land begins with a 2nd Century tale by Diogenes’s about a shepherd named Aethon in search of a utopian world outside of space and time. This is an epic tale that encompasses three narratives about those protecting the Ancient Greek codex:
Anna and Omeir (Constantinople, 1450)
Zeno Ninis (Lakeport, Idaho, 2020)
Konstance (aboard the Argos spacecraft destined for a habitable planet, mid-22nd century)
The survival of this book mimics humanity’s quest to survive.

I had a hard time getting into this book at first. I actually found myself making a flow chart of who the characters and time periods were. Once these characters were settled in my mind I looked forward to their interwoven stories —some more than others. This was not an easy read but it was definitely worth the effort.

This was a beautiful book about the power of storytelling. Its a book that makes you wish you read more books because of the power they can have.

There are three separate timelines going on in this book. The oldest timeline takes place around the 53 day siege of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmed II in 1453. Anna lives inside the city and works as an embroiderer, but gets drawn into the world of reading. Doerr introduces her and says "before she turns fourteen, every person she knows will be either enslaved or dead." Omeir is born with a cleft palate far outside the city and grows up ostracized by his hometown and is forced to live outside the city until he is drawn into the war effort. In the present day there is the intersection of Seymour and Zeno at a tragedy at the Lakeport Public Library in Idaho. Seymour is a child who always felt like an outsider and was driven to act by changes in his town. In the present day, Zeno is a translator who is bringing a group of children to the library to perform a lost play he has translated. There is a future timeline with Konstance aboard the spaceship Argos, travelling to a distant planet. In the prologue we learn she has been inside Vault One for a year with scraps of paper around her. Amidst all of these plotlines are Doerr's fictional story of Cloud Cuckoo Land, presented in small pieces at the start of each chapter. The story is about a man who wants to become a bird and ends up on a classic Greek tragedy adventure.

These plotlines were not all perfect all the time. While Seymour and Zeno have a clear end point as Doerr tells their backstory, the other two plotlines drag in the beginning. The book took some time for me to get started, but as I moved through the rest of the book, I realized how Doerr was setting up the three different worlds for each of the sets of characters that made the later chapters so enjoyable and heart-wrenching. While these timelines are disconnected for a majority of the book, they are revealed to be connected in surprising ways by the end.

It is impressive how many genres Doerr works in throughout these books. Zeno's story brings features of a romance and war story. Seymour's plotline is reminiscent of the excellent The Overstory, and while it gets a bit repetitive in the middle, its ending was beautiful. Konstantine's story aboard the Argos is a sci-fi story with great themes about the power of preserving knowledge. Omeir's plotline is a war tragedy that takes the individual's view of war to show its extreme costs. Anna's story is a coming-of-age tale about learning, with elements of a heist story as well. These plotlines were all strong enough to stand on their own, but they are so effectively weaved together by Doerr to create a magical book. It is dedicated to librarians, which makes complete sense given the positive influence libraries have on all of the characters. Doerr created a fantastic, moving story that I know will stay with me for years to come.

I am so thankful to NetGalley and Scribner for giving me an ARC of this excellent book in exchange for a review.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr is a stunning work of art.

When I finished the book I was rendered speechless by how genius this story is. Every single story line was written with vivid and beautiful language. I was transported to 15th century Constantinople, to Lakeport, Idaho, and to the Argos spacecraft. I was not only emotionally connected to the characters, but even the animals they cared for. Throughout, everything held together by a fable that was translated and passed on through the centuries.

The beginning of the book was slightly overwhelming as all of the characters and their stories were introduced. I wondered if I was going to be able to remember all of the important details being delivered. The reading became much easier as I pushed on and became familiar with and tied to the characters.

The storylines break down as follows. Seymour and Zeno who both live in Lakeport, Idaho and whose paths eventually cross. Anna and Omeir, in and outside of Constantinople in the mid 14oo's. Lastly we have Konstance, who is on the Argos spaceship in the future. Each of these characters are tied together by Cloud Cuckoo Land: The story of a man on an odyssey of sorts to find a heavenly land.

I felt most emotionally connected to the stories of Omeir, Zeno, and Seymour in that order. Anna's storyline was more difficult for me to imagine. Konstance wins the award for most development of a character and also biggest plot twist, but I won't spoil it!

My heart was captured by the book early on, and as I read it I wondered just how badly Doerr was going to break it. The content is both serious and heavy as all of the characters are facing extreme difficulty in various forms. The comic relief is provided within sometimes silly language used in the fable of Cloud Cuckoo Land. The suspense, anticipation, and anxious feelings that built throughout the book were resolved by a sense of hope. That humans can persevere and that life goes on through the happiness we build and the sense of home we create.

Hopefully all of this is to say, I loved this book. It is a truly unique, magical, and beautiful story.

This was my first book from this author and I absolutely loved this story. I love how it all connects and weaves through time. The connection of the book that shares the same name as the title is fascinating. Everyone needs to read this!

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I think Cloud Cuckoo Land may be my new favorite book of all time. I hadn’t even finished it yet and was already eager to start over and read it again. It is an epic, flawless masterpiece, and I honestly could not love it more.

Though the book spans centuries, Doerr brilliantly connects all of the characters to one another through the ancient text at the heart of the story. In doing so, Doerr explores many beautiful dichotomies – the endurability and vulnerability of stories; our need for connection to the Earth, even while contributing to its destruction; humanity at its best and worse – ultimately producing an insightful and thought-provoking novel that is unlike anything I’ve ever read.

I am so grateful to Scribner for allowing me to read an advanced e-copy of this book. I will absolutely be buying a copy to keep and read again (and again).

*** I will post the above review (with a note about the publication date) to Instagram, Goodreads, and Amazon closer September 28. ***

WOW, WOW. WOW.

At 622 pages, this sweeping epic is part sci-fi, part historical fiction and part Greek mythology. It centers around five main characters, all tied together by a lost Greek manuscript.

From 1453 Constantinople to the future, the book binds all of them through the ages. The telling of the story from generation to generation.

It is moving, enchanting, and the perfect book to remind us of the importance of telling a story, of sharing the human experience through the written word, It speaks of hope, home, love and longing and the appreciation of the world we live in.

A stunning novel you will not be able to put down.

This was a fantastic follow up to All The Light. Such amazing scope! It was incredible how many relevant issues were woven into the story. What a great tribute to librarians! :)

I jumped at the opportunity for an advance reader copy from #Netgalley and #Scribner since I had loved All the Light We Cannot See by Doerr. But this book is very different, not bad, just different. I might have abandoned it if it wasn’t from Netgalley as it took me to almost 40% complete to really get into the story. It seemed very disjointed at first, but then slowly as you get to know the characters more you and see how they are connected, the story definitely draws you in. There are also a few unexpected revelations to keep things interesting. I did ultimately enjoy the book, but wished the overall theme (climate change?, importance of knowledge?) had been a little more evident from the beginning. This might be the kind of book that benefits from a re-reading to catch all the subtle nuances and connections.

*netgalley copy*
4.5 stars

What a magical story!! I absolutely loved the interconnectedness of the characters & how everything revolves around an ancient book. (I’m a sucker for any type of book in book action!!) I enjoyed the depth of all of the characters too, they were so well written that you felt like you were right there with them every step of the way, experiencing every joy or sorrow. This was just an amazing book & my only complaint is that I can’t experience it again for the first time!!

This novel is an incredibly ambitious testament to the power of storytelling as a means of childhood resilience and even survival., in the face of trauma..

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for this advanced reader's copy of Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr.

This book features three storylines, all interconnected by the characters fascination with the ancient story of Cloud Cuckoo Land. We meet Anna and Omeir, both in ancient Constantinople, and Seymour and Zeno, both in modern day Lakeport, Idaho. We also get to meet Konstance, who lives on the Argos, a spaceship on a journey to deep space to find a new home for Earth's inhabitants. All of the characters will be touched by the story of Cloud Cuckoo Land in some way and we readers get to go along for the ride.

Anthony Doerr does an amazing job of writing completely seperate stories and weaving them all together beautifully. It must have been difficult to keep track of the plots and how they connect, since the characters live in completely different eras and can never meet each other on the page. Doerr makes it look easy ensuring that Cloud Cuckoo Land will be another classic. Don't miss out on this one!

A triumph. A fanciful, whimsical, heartbreaking, side splitting, romantic, hopeful triumph. I had high hopes for this book which as always dangerous, but it surpassed them all and surprised me in many ways. Unforgettable.

This book reminded me a bit of “Overstory” by Richard Powers, in that it consisted of stories connected by a common theme, and outstanding writing.

The overarching theme in this book is a fictional book supposedly written by the ancient Greek author Diogenes called “Cloud Cuckoo Land.” Various protagonists in disparate settings and ages find the manuscript and are fascinated by the story of a Aethon, who wishes to become a bird in order to fly to Cloud Cuckoo Land and live in the magical utopian world above the clouds.

Anna and Omeir are 13-year-olds living on opposite sides of the walls of Constantinople during the 1453 siege. Anna is an orphan and thus considered expendable, while Omeir, born with a cleft palate, is reviled as a monster. The two meet when fleeing from the chaos of battle, and Omeir helps Anna protect a transcript of “Cloud Cuckoo Land.”

Konstance is a 14-year-old living on the spaceship “Argos” in the future along with 85 others escaping from a dying Earth. She spends all her time reading “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” which she can access via the ship’s onboard intelligence/librarian/pilot/caretaker named Sybil.

Zeno, 86, and Seymour, 17, both live in Idaho in the 2020. Both of them are outsiders for reasons they couldn’t control but that lead each of them to dream of escape. As the book opens, Zeno is directing a group of fifth graders in a production of “Cloud Cuckoo Land” to be staged at the Lakeport Public Library. Seymour is trying to place a bomb inside that same library, not knowing about Zeno and the children who are in the building after hours, rehearsing.

Somehow, the stories don’t seem disconnected at all, even without the common element of the ancient manuscript. These are protagonists similarly cast adrift by society, and united by the love of stories and hope for a better world.

Evaluation: Although it’s hard to capture the magic of this story in a short review, this book is outstanding, and will give book clubs plenty to discuss.

ARC provided by Goodreads & the publisher—Scribner—in exchange for an honest review.

3.5/5 stars

Cloud Cuckoo Land is more ambitious and complex than All the Light We Cannot See in every possible way.

It’s hard not to compare Doerr’s newest book to his previous immensely successful work: All the Light We Cannot See. And if I’m not mistaken, Cloud Cuckoo Land is the first novel that Doerr published since the release of All the Light We Cannot See; that’s seven years ago. I enjoyed All the Light We Cannot See, but honestly speaking, despite its insane success and praises, I never felt inclined to give Doerr’s work another try. But the premise and dedication just captured my attention so much, and now that I’ve read it, I am pretty sure that Doerr’s newest work, Cloud Cuckoo Land, will be another beloved bestseller worldwide.

“The world we’re handing our kids brims with challenges: climate instability, pandemics, disinformation. I wanted this novel to reflect those anxieties, but also offer meaningful hope, so I tried to create a tapestry of times and places that reflecs our interconnectedness—with other species, with each other, with the ones who lived before us, and the ones who will be here after we’re gone.”—Anthony Doerr

The passage above by Doerr himself has clearly states what the themes of the book are about. In addition to that, Cloud Cuckoo Land is dedicated to the librarians then, now, and in the years to come. It’s an apt dedication; Cloud Cuckoo Land is at its core a book about connections. It shows how an action or a book could affect the lives of people across multiple generations. It also shows how we remain connected with one another even long after we’re gone. And told through five main POV characters, I believe the text in Cloud Cuckoo Land will affect many future readers of this book.

“Repository… you know this word? A resting place. A text—a book—is a resting placefor the memories of people who have lived before. A way for the memory to stay fixed after the soul has traveled on.”

I loved the concept, premise, and messages of the book, but unfortunately, I will have to say that I do have mixed feelings regarding the characters and writings. As I said, Cloud Cuckoo Land is told through the perspective of five characters: Anna, Omeir, Seymour, Zeno, and Konstance. Out of all of these, my favorites were Omeir’s and Zeno’s storyline; I felt that they were the most engaging. I did, however, struggled with getting interested in Anna’s and Seymour’s storyline. It shouldn’t be that way, especially for Anna because Anna and Omeir reminded me of Marie and Werner from All the Light We Cannot See. But it did happen, and I think I can pinpoint this to the way the prose is delivered.

“Each sign signifies a sound, and to link sounds is to form words, and to link words is to construct worlds.”

Doerr writes beautifully, and in this ambitious and complex novel, I wish the chapters—not all of them—were longer. With five POV characters that jump back and forth in time, things can get pretty confusing at times. But personally, my biggest issue with Cloud Cuckoo Land is that I found the POV chapters changing too quickly to my liking before I even get invested in the said character’s story. This was the same in All the Light We Cannot See; each chapter was so short, but in that novel, we have only two characters to follow. Here, we have five POV characters, with such short chapters, it was hard for me to connect with the characters. Also, similar to the prose in All the Light We Cannot See, there’s a lot of metaphors used that I couldn’t fully click with; they took me out of Doerr’s beautiful writing rather than engrossed me.

“Stranger, whoever you are, open this to learn what will amaze you.”

I did struggle quite a lot reading through the middle section of Cloud Cuckoo Land, and I won’t lie that I’ve thought of putting it down for good several times. But just like the strong first quarter, the final 20% of Cloud Cuckoo Land delivered a strong conclusion. Although I liked it, I’m confident that many readers will love it more than I did.

You can pre-order the book from: Amazon US | Book Depository (Free shipping)

You can find this and the rest of my reviews at Novel Notions | I also have a Booktube channel

Anthony Doerr has created a story of a man seeking to become a bird an enjoy an idyllic existence, by a fictional Diogenes, that surfaces in the fourteen hundreds in Constantinople, present day Idaho and an intergalactic spaceship in the future. You have to wonder how these disparate time frames can coalesce into a cohesive story. Doerr makes it work with five points of view and a translation of the ancient text to move the stories forward.

The book crosses genres including historical fiction, crime fiction and science fiction to unite in literary perfection. From Anna, an orphan who finds solace in reading, stuck in Constantinople during the siege, to Omeir, a cleft palate teen, who has a way with oxen, recruited to help pull the instruments of war to overtake the city, to Seymour, a seventeen year old who tries to bomb a library in Idaho where eighty-six year old Zeno, the translator of the text is leading a group of students in producing it as a play, to Konstance, a fourteen year old hearing the story from her father on a spacecraft, their dreams, hopes and dangers they face interconnect with the stories and lessons that unfold into a stunning conclusion. Enjoy.

That you NetGalley and Scribner for the advance copy. This is an honest and independent review..

Is it sci-fi? *Kinda
Is it historical fiction? *Some of it
Is it a call to action on the environment and an exploration of the connection between humans and the environment that is collapsing? *That too
Is it a week worn piece of fiction that leaves you thinking and weaves together the lives of disparate protagonists and one (fictional?) story to create something greater than the sum of its parts? * Definitely.

Cloud Cukoo Land by Anthony Doerr is a complex book with a message as deceivingly simple as the riddle which forms a turning point in the story. It is a book about finding your place and yourself. It is, ultimately, about life.
The main characters slowly build as Doerr jumps from a young girl on a space ark hurtling away from Earth to a 15th century boy with a cleft palate, to a old Greek man, to a modern young boy (with autism?). We watch as each of these characters move their lives and eventually see what corrects them and in some ways how we are all connected.

I admit that the cook started a bit slowly for me, but by the time ask the characters had been truly introduced, I was hooked. I recommend this book to anyone who is willing to see the world through eyes not their own.

Thank you to the publisher (Simon & Schuster) and Netgalley for the chance to read an advance copy of this book.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr is a well-written and engrossing read with well developed characterizations. Well worth the time spent reading.

I am absolutely enraptured! I am almost rendered speechless! Cloud Cuckoo Land deserves to be exalted atop a cloud of literary prestige with the best books ever written for company because it is simply remarkable. Phenomenal. Exceptional.

I am losing my mind because all I want to do is settle into this novel's spine and stay there, forever. I want to bottle its perfection, open it only so I can soar back into its gossamer depths again and again.

The lush, philosophical prose! The themes! The riveting character histories and connections! I don't even know where to begin, honestly.

Doerr has exceeded his best here. Better than All The Light We Cannot See, I'd argue, which won the Pulitzer.

He has created an intricate tapestry in this novel that not only threads together the past with the present, and the present with the future, but he also transcends genre - quite literally treading across multiple different ones on a trapeze - to underline the enduring, transportive power of the written word. He provides stirring commentary on reading, on learning, on the ability to imagine trekking across mythical worlds. More than anything, though, he writes about books. About libraries. He writes about the preservation of stories and how they can ricochet from one century into the next, giving comfort, providing escapism, provoking creativity, and instilling hope for a better tomorrow in the people who read them.

The true mastery of this book, at least for me, is the way in which Doerr flushes out five different narrative perspectives in three separate time periods. There's Omeir and Anna in 1450's Constantinople, Zeno and Seymour in present day Idaho, and Konstance who's aboard an intergalactic shuttle called the Argos in the future. It's a lot to balance. It's even harder to weave all of those cross-genre threads together in a manner that's both narratively and thematically cohesive. Yet, again, the author manages to do so with tender, thoughtful skill.

Each character, every storyline, draws readers in to expose profoundly human longings, successes, mistakes, and warnings. Everything stokes, stirs. There's not a single element that fails to resonate in some way.

The overall effect is simply breathtaking because the characters appear to be unconnected in the beginning. Their journeys seem to be separate. Divided. Yet it was so easy to get swept up in Konstance's feelings of isolation, in Omeir's sense of shame or "otherness" because he was born with a cleft palate. I enjoyed being along for Anna's ache for knowledge, for Zeno's search for identity, for Seymour's Trustyfriend adventures and Save The Planet extremism. I grew attached to them all. I cannot tell you how many times my heart twinged in my chest or tears pricked the corner of my eyes because of all they had experienced or were suffering.

It felt like I was gifted five independent stories for the price of one.

It also seemed impossible at first that these people - who are separated by age, race, gender, time period, and experience, among other things - could have anything in common, but they did. They do. Over the course of the story the author slowly peels back the layers. It's such a delicate, absorbing unraveling, too. Little by little, piece by piece, he unveils how every one of them has been touched by the magic and perseverance of one ancient text.

It's so, so moving! There's no way to predict in what ways the past, present, and future will connect let alone how certain characters' storylines will converge. I'm still marveling about how it all comes together in the end.

I don't rate many titles 5 stars but this one buried its talons in deep, transported me to a pantheon of imaginative awe. I cannot stop thinking about it, dreaming about it, or screaming about it to anyone who will listen.

That's how much I loved it.

That's how deeply it's woven around the bedrock of my soul now.

Overall, Cloud Cuckoo Land was such an emotionally propulsive, imaginative, examining, metaliterature triumph in storytelling that I would dump an entire thesaurus worth of commendation on it if I could. I'm floored by how incredible it was. One of the best books I've ever had the privilege to read.

In fact, if someone were to ask me if it's "really that good" I'd have to say, no, it isn't, it's a million times better than you could dare to dream or imagine - so what are you waiting for? Fly like the bird Aethon wanted to be and procure yourself a copy already!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC in exchange for my review.

Reading Cloud Cuckoo Land gave me that wonderful feeling of settling in for a good story in a favorite reading spot where nothing disturbs you so that you are completely transported to another world. I wanted to savor it; but towards the end, I couldn't put it down. The story itself is intricately plotted, and you'll just have to trust Anthony Doerr that it will all come together. There are five main characters: Anna and Omeir whose stories take place in Constantinople and Bulgaria in the 1400s; Zeno and Seymour in Lakeport, Idaho in 2020 although Doerr tells of their childhoods throughout the book; and Konstance aboard the Argos traveling towards a new planet sometime in the future. They are all tied together by an ancient Greek manuscript in which Aethon, a foolish, old man tries to get to Cloud Cuckoo Land, a magnificent city in the clouds built only for birds. I love books with a large cast of authentic characters with multiple points of view and a nonlinear storyline, and Cloud Cuckoo Land surpassed my expectations. I cared about all of the characters and can't say that I had a favorite. The chapters were short and jumped from one character to another. The tone was moving, sometimes silly, sometimes heartwrenching, addressing sobering issues but ultimately hopeful. The writing style was engaging and lush, and I felt as though I was experiencing what Anna, Omeir, Zeno, Seymour, and Konstance were seeing and doing. I loved Cloud Cuckoo Land!