Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel

This huge novel is thought-provoking, funny, moving, entertaining and involving from the very start. Doerr drops us right into different places and times with no preamble, bringing his settings and characters instantly to life, with none of that stilted language or dutiful exposition that spoils so many historical works. The time-spanning intellectual mystery recalls David Mitchell perhaps, but this is so much more humane and resonant. I loved it.

Cloud Cuckoo Land is immensely readable, and we as readers are dropped into many worlds; Constantinople in the 15th century, a Spaceship travelling in interstellar space, Lakeport, Oregon in 2020. The various stories are achieved with such precise narrative skill, humour and humanity. I wake early to read more, so much do I want to solve this Rubik Cube puzzle of a novel. One of the most extraordinary and compelling reads I have come across. Buy it. If you like History, Sci-Fi and mysteries, then this is the book for you.

Starting a new book, to me, always feels like a bit of a gamble. Will this be worth many hours of my time? Especially if it's a slow-starter. More and more it seems slow-starter books are no longer published these days, given people have so many distractions competing for attention. It doesn't help that this book has at least five different storylines and timelines and is told, much of the time, out of chronological order. Normally, I dislike this kind of "gimmick" or possible-flight-of-fancy by an author. Often multiple stories are frustrating to read because you get to the end of one chapter and just when things are getting good, you are whisked away to a totally different story that may or may not be related. ...but.... but, but... when done right, a slow-builder that promises much can sometime deliver most. Multiple stories, when told right, can deliver multiple times the load. Cloud Cuckoo Land is ABSOLUTELY a quality read that doesn't fail to deliver and the mythical tale of Aethon's adventures tie it all together beautifully, even as it seems possibly "annoyingly quirky" to begin with. There aren't too many "all in one" works of fiction these days, with a start, a middle and and end. It used be that fiction had this to aim for at least, but nowadays never-ending book-series seem the order of the day. To my mind, the best fiction is a story that builds to a knockout ending that leaves you dazed (and likely confused) by the end. This IS such a tale. I still don't know if it all makes sense (well, I kind of know it doesn't / also of course it does) - but it doesn't matter. I still haven't thought enough about it to figure out if there are some inconsistencies or a coincidence-too-far in places. Part of me is looking forward to thinking on it for a long time to come and part of me doesn't want to over-analyse it. There's a lot to digest here, but sometimes, like a good cake, it's best to gorge and enjoy rather than spend time dissecting the ingredients, trying to find an element that could be eliminated. The little tangy taste you get from an isolated under-ripe raspberry can be just what's needed to raise the flavour of a slightly-too-musky dark chocolate. And maybe you don't like cream, but when it has just the right consistency, with just the right flavours flowing through, the whole is many times more than the sum of its parts. That's not to put-down the individual parts of this book. Each, in turn is magnificently told and a lovely read. But, stitched together with "Diogenes's" thread, the whole is multiple times more special. Thank you for restoring my faith in modern fiction.

From the Pulitzer Prize Winning Author of “All the Light We Cannot See”, Anthony Doerr has just released his new novel titled “Cloud Cuckoo Land”! With extraordinary writing skills, this author to me, is a master story teller. His ability to transport readers into breathtaking worlds is surely a cut above the rest, and certainly makes him worthy of being an esteemed member of the Pulitzer family in the category of fiction. Is it similar to” All the Light We Cannot See”? No, not at all. In fact the author jumps off the diving board into a whole new realm and does it quite brilliantly. To say that I have never read such a creative and clever story such as “Cloud Cuckoo Land” is simply the truth. This is a story about a story told in 4 stories. Yes, that is what I just said. Fact: In ancient Greece, there was an author named Antonius Diogenes who wrote a fantastical fairytale-like story called “The Wonders of Thule”. Today only fragments of 12 pages remain. With snippets of Homer’s Odyssey, The Golden Ass of Lucius Apuleius, and what I think reminded me of the journey that Pinocchio took, the tale is of a poor shepherd boy who embarks on a wondrous pilgrimage wishing all along that he could be transformed into a bird. Within four different narratives of people in three different times and places, Anthony Doerr deftly interlaces the wise old Greek fable into each of their lives in the most creative and unique ways possible. Current times. Inside a small town library in Idaho an elderly Greek man named Zeno Ninis is directing a group of children who are acting out a play of "The Wonders of Thule", when a young and troubled young man named Seymour enters the building planning to set off a bomb. Constantinople 14th century. The lives of a young girl named Anna and a young boy named Omeir collide in desperate times with their individual stories of tragedy and survival. Omeir was born with a cleft lip leaving him ugly enough for his parents to sell him and his two pet oxen to a Sultan on crusade planning to attack the city of Constantinople. Anna and her sister are orphans raised by a wealthy Greek man who employs them as master embroiderers. When her sister falls ill, she learns of a young man who scrounges for anything worth selling in order to eat. When Anna becomes his assistant in theft she finds a valuable codex copy of "The Wonders of Thule". Far in the Future. On a spaceship named the Argos, teenager Konstance lives with many families who are traveling to a distant planet after Earth has been devastated from fatal environmental disasters. When Konstance was a child her father read a bedtime story to her. It was called "The Wonders of Thule". When a deadly virus mysteriously leaves her the sole survivor onboard the Argos, magical advanced technology helps Konstance uncover many secrets of the real truth behind ...

This book is hard to invest in due to the multiple characters in different times, past, present, and future. You spend a significant part of the novel's first half trying to build empathy with the protagonists, but their point-of-view is short and seemingly unconnected to the other segments. It feels to me that the use of classic Greek is an intentional throwback to the oral history tradition you encounter with The Odyssey and Iliad, which I believe is the intention of this novel. A story presented as a tale told about a history lived. The value of the work is not in the individual lives but in the totality of the woven tapestry, with each life contributing color and texture to the whole. In this recognition, stories from before the common era got to us in 2022 because many people touched them, cared for them, and passed them on. The strength of humankind is our ability to tell stories that carry forward and become knowledge and entertainment many times removed from the source. The book is a bit of a slog until you invest in the characters. The end, however, is worth the work. A connection that, in the end, frees the future protagonist.