Last month’s fantasy/science fiction book club was a short Young Adult book and therefore we were encouraged to read a second, much longer, adult fantasy novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr.

“The heroes of Cloud Cuckoo Land are trying to figure out their worlds: Anna and Omeir, on opposite sides of the city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and octogenarian Zeno in an attack on a public library in present-day Idaho; and Konstance, traveling toward a new world, decades from now. An ancient story provides solace to these unforgettable characters.”

This is not a spoiler-free review!

I did actually start reading this book about four days before the book club met and we needed to turn our copies of the book back in and I was reading a variety of other books at the time so I didn’t finish the book before book club met. Only about two people in the group actually did read the book, though, so I was not alone in not having read/finished it.

The book starts out with a variety of characters, seemingly unconnected across vastly different worlds and places in history. One of the things we discussed during book club focused on how this book is fully intended as an ode to all books and book lovers out there, reading all the different stories. It’s a book about books and about the way stories impact us, even when we don’t understand that impact until much, much later in our lives. While it required a few mental gymnastics for me to keep track of the different characters and the different locations of each story, about halfway through the book, things definitely clear up considerably and you can see how the stories are starting to bleed into each other and the impact each person’s story has on the story itself and also even on the other characters.

One of the things that struck me most with the other members of the book club is that we talked about how all the characters showed that they were going to be who they were no matter what. Anna consistently had problems sitting still and was very unsuited for life as a seamstress, but was very well suited for a life of adventure, stories, and closer to the earth. Seymour was always passionate and the world was always too harsh for him. Zeno was always quiet and patient. Konstance would never have been able to accept her situation – she would always have questioned everything. I think this is one of those topics where you see that your environment absolutely has an impact on who you become but that the seeds of who you are always exist.

The book really got hard for me to read just after the halfway point, especially where things started to get really hopeless for all the characters. When Konstance gets moved into the Vault with Sybil and then when Omeir gets beaten for telling the quartermaster the animals need rest, it was kind of a turning point in my enjoyment of the book. I do know that stories can’t just be happiness and everything work out well for everyone in the end, but I feel as though the world is kind of not in a great place right now in general, so why would I want to voluntarily spend my free time reading about situations where things don’t work out?

I think one of the things that really, really bothered me about the ending of this book was how all the women in the story had their stories end with having a bunch of kids and a family, as though that is the only story a woman’s life can have, as though all women are just there to breed. This bothers me for a lot of different reasons. I do understand that this is a generational story where centuries need to be connected and the only way to do that is for the women to have children, but I guess it just doesn’t sit very well with me that none of the women really had /good/ stories. They were stories of heartache and hardship that ended with having children or extreme disappointment.

Meanwhile, there was also only one queer main character in the entire novel and he spent the entire book by himself. He led an entire life of just survival and then found his purpose in translating the book with the kids from the library, but not until he was in his 80s. I guess that’s a good motivation for the people who just keep going, wondering if there’s really any point in anything, and you can see that sometimes, you won’t understand the joys of life until later. I’m not actually sure if that would have helped me at all in my younger days, just thinking about how my life might not be anything of value until I was like 80? Yeah. Probably not.

I dunno. I think I found this book more depressing than it was probably intended? While it clearly showed the very real horrors of war, the only real hope was in the stories we tell as humans and how one story can get passed down over time to be a part of people you would never imagine. So maybe the stuff you do now won’t matter to you, but it could easily make a difference to someone in the future. And that kind of mentality may or may not help you in your own quest of life 🙂

Overall, I think I am going to rate this book as a two on my scale. I guess I’m okay with the fact that I read it, but I don’t know that I would ever read it again and I’m thankful I borrowed it from the library instead of buying it myself.