Andrew had high expectations of this book as he’d enjoyed All the Light We Cannot See and the sense of place in About Grace. What he was hoping for was a work of great imagination and scope, with beautiful imagery that would take him on a journey - a magical mystery tour.
There are 6 main characters in 3 main storylines - Omeir & Anna in the 15th century, Zeno & Seymour in the 20th and 21st, and Konstance on a spaceship in the 22nd – plus Aethon forever travelling in the ether of time. Perhaps Diogenes’ manuscript is also a character.
And there are myriad connections between people and books and libraries and owls and oxen and centuries and plants and trees. Plus links between names like Arkady/Arcadia, Konstance/Constantinople, and Trustyfriend.
Doerr dedicated the book to librarians and said it was his attempt at a “literary-sci-fi-mystery-young-adult-historical-morality novel”.
Andrew thought it was a fabulous fable, full of wonder, a beautiful jigsaw of a book whose disparate pieces fitted brilliantly together. A beautifully woven tale about the need to look after the Earth and each other.
Not everyone in BBBC agreed.
With Aethon, soaring high above the clouds
Andrew, Steve, Richard, MarkW really enjoyed this book. It does require the reader to accept the magical world of Doerr’s story, but they all felt pulled into his world and engaged by the characters, and looked forward to picking up the book.
Andrew and MarkT found the stories of Anna and Omeir beautifully written particularly how Omeir’s grandfather cared for him. Andrew liked the surprises with the spaceship being on the ground, Seymour with his owl windows, wanting to reveal the world as it really is, back to his angry environmentalist beginnings railing against the dodgy tech giant, and how the tension built towards the end. And the brilliant ideas such as Library Day, writing to every Rex Browning in England, Ilium as the nasty tech giant, and Zeno’s realisation at the end that the gaps in the story didn’t matter because the children’s imagination would do the rest.
ChrisB loved the Greek stuff, enjoyed the story of the book, loved the different places and times and thought it hung together well. He couldn’t stop reading it, even at bedtime, and it will stay with him for a long time. It was clever as it only resolved at the end, the sci-fi part was convincing as was the terribleness of war. He enjoyed the personalisation of the stories of Anna and Omeir on opposing sides.
Steve loved the book, the twists in the strands of yarn and the links between them. It reminded him of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, and he thought it was better than All the Light We Cannot See. Each storyline had its gripping individual qualities, particularly Zeno with his quietly tragic childhood, and his slow life shovelling snow until awakened by his recollections of the text that Rex introduced him to. He also enjoyed the rich and interesting supporting cast – a real achievement to keep this whole cast up in the air throughout the book. But for him it was Seymour’s story that most gripped and resonated - a tale of the 21st century: sensitive to the damage we are causing to our environment but not knowing how to channel it, and accentuated by his discovery of, relationship with and eventual tragic demise of Trustyfriend. So sad, so believable.
Richard really liked the multiple story lines, the great sweep of the overall story and all the different characters held his interest. Some lovely turns of phrase and some lovely ideas. Doerr’s love of books and of libraries matches Richard’s (and MarkT’s) own and came through strongly, and the major descriptive passages (eg the transportation of the cannon to the walls of Istanbul) were superb. All the children had such rich fantasy lives. Doerr is very good on environmental damage, especially from the perspective of an autistic child, and very good on the logistics of sieges, and of moving huge armies.
Both Marks found the Constantinople part brilliantly written, with Omeir and Anna their favourite characters. For MarkW, the death of Anna probably the most moving episode of the book. Seymour’s early childhood and Zeno’s episode in Korea were particularly good, and he felt Doerr’s skilful writing made you care about the owls and oxen as characters too, as did Steve. MarkT was moved by Seymour and his owl and despite hating sci-fi grew to enjoy the Argos journey. John also enjoyed and got deeply involved in the stories of Anna and Omeir, and the troubled life of Zeno Ninis, his fraught childhood and later life, but most particularly his love for Rex and all that flowed from that unrequited love.
ChrisW did like many of the themes with Constance on the spaceship - they were thought-provoking and could have formed the basis of a book in its own right. The storyline about climate change, global warming, the decay of humanity was good and explained the need for Argos to boldly go to a new planet 659 years away. Seed banks, food printers, and the virtual reality Atlas library were interesting concepts as well as in a different storyline the use of Seymour whilst in rehab by the Ilium Corporation to edit out unpalatable activity captured by aerial photography.
All a bit cuckoo
However, for John, this book was a salutary warning that if you enjoyed an author’s earlier books it is no guarantee you will enjoy or even appreciate one of their later works. He saw it as an interesting collection of short stories ingeniously woven together, but in a way that was overly complicated and therefore not a satisfying read. Not a book he would recommend.
John and ChrisW both felt it read as an authorial indulgence trying to weave a collection of stories together in a rather ingenious (or over-engineered) way. Some ancient text being the possible common link between the stories or that many of the characters were facing imminent death at some point in their stories wasn’t enough. John pointed out Diogenes didn’t write the sort of stuff Doerr has him write in this book so why pick a real writer and give him a made-up book? He particularly disliked the spaceship part.
The book didn’t appeal to ChrisW at all - confusing, overlong, self-indulgent and followed a typical theme nowadays of taking a number of storylines and mixing them all up with a thread only being detectable at the end. He found the story of Seymour becoming an urban terrorist and being groomed online rather facile. He enjoyed the Constantinople parts, but felt that whole section of the book was simply about how the Diogenes scroll got to Urbino to then be referred to in the present day storyline. Some interesting themes but many unanswered questions.
Despite finding it a skilful, clever book, MarkW didn’t find it particularly memorable and thought it lacked substance with the gradual linking of the plots through the text ingenious but less successful. The main plot looked like science fiction but turned out not to be as they were still on the ground, and he was unsure of the purpose of the big scam but not sure if it mattered – was Ilium doing it for the government? It felt a bit Cloud Cuckoo Land, unrealistic. And it took him time to get used to the short chapters.
MarkT loved All the Light We Cannot See so much that he bought the hardback of Cloud Cuckoo Land rather than the usual Kindle download but found the start bitty and confusing and hard to get going with all the different stories. It got better as he got to know the characters and he started to enjoy it, but found the short chapters and sense of time confusing and never quite got the one-page old bits.
Steve felt Doerr tried to cover too grand a scope of issues and there were too many unbelievable factors crowding in as the book reached its climax. What, for example, was the true reason for faking the Argos voyage? Something vague about a secret plot to conceal the true magnitude of the catastrophe about to engulf Earth? And just how far can a man in his 80s sprint with a backpack in a few rings of a phone?
Richard felt the start was slowish and when he was half-way through, that the main characters all had the same voice, but they then started to separate out better. He also wondered why the book was written – the two Constantinople stories were excellent, but their main purpose seemed to be to enable the book to be discovered and then taken to Italy. And Zeno’s purpose was to translate it. And Konstance’s purpose was to continue that telling of the same story, so it goes through the generations.
This Land is our Land
Andrew thought Doerr gave us a glimpse in the spaceship of our forthcoming metaverse - with all the teenagers on their Perambulators in their quarters but brought together in the library through their Vizers - all moving around and talking to each other, exploring books and places and playing games. MarkT pointed out that AI is only as good as its programmers.
Andrew also thought that the ending when Aethon realises he appreciates his sheep and the simple things in life more than the utopia he has sought, may have been a hint that we should abandon our consumptive lifestyle and concentrate on caring for our planet in the here and now – perhaps keeping the manuscript safe is a metaphor for our need to do the same for the Earth (and each other). Perhaps the link between Diogenes’ book The Wonders Beyond Thule and Qaanaaq in Greenland (formerly known as Thule or New Thule) was also a hint that Greenland might soon be one of the few habitable places on earth? “The world as it is is enough.” might be the message of the book.
Printed food for thought
Why pick a real writer like Diogenes and give him a made-up book? - JH
Who were the 49 other inhabitants of the island? - CW
How was Constance pregnant? - CW
Was it a virus? - CW
Had humankind been totally destroyed? - CW
What was the point of the experiment with Argos? - MW
Did Seymour actually kill Zeno? - MW
Life on Argos – what was real? - MT
Was the virus on board a sham? - MT
Why was the Argos still on the ground? - RV
Did Google used convicts to test the original? – SC
And just how far can a man in his 80s sprint with a backpack in a few rings of a phone? - SC
Bath, England, a week before Christmas, 2021
And to end on a topical note, Steve commented that the day he read the passage where Konstance’s friend Omicron was introduced, the name of the currently rampant Covid variant seemed to enter the general media conversation. That was only three weeks ago.
Scores
AA – 10
CW – 5
CB – 9
MW – 8
JH – 5.5
SC – 9
MT – 7
RV – 8.5
WM – get well soon
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