Fans of Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See are waiting with bated breath for his new novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, due out in September of this year. For Doerr, I'd say that's a blessing and a curse.
I was fortunate enough to get an ARC (Advance Reader's Copy) from NetGalley.com and devoured it while simultaneously wanting to savor it. It is spectacular. It's whimsical, heartbreaking, time-traveling, intellectually curious, meticulously crafted and unforgettable.
So what's the problem, then? Why the "curse"? Because I'm not sure that everyone who loved ALWCS are going to love this. Or even get it. It's a book about a book which is about a man who finds a book, and then other people who find THAT book within a book at different moments in time (15th century Constantinople, a library in present day Idaho, and a spaceship in the future). Call me crazy, but I'd say there's a smaller market for this book than there was for the other one.
And I love him for not caring.
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