Outcasts alienated by their peers, Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead found each other in junior high, forming a tenuous friendship. Patricia was a budding witch and Laurence was a tech whiz, successfully developing a two-second time machine and a potentially sentient computer. But after a painful parting of ways, the two assumed they would never see each other again.
Reunited unexpectedly as adults living in San Francisco, the pair discover they both now use their talents for the same cause: working to save the planet, each in their own way. Patricia attended a hidden academy for the world’s magically gifted and now works with a group of magicians to secretly fix the world’s problems, while Laurence is an engineering genius who works with a group trying to avert global catastrophe by technological intervention. Despite their separate paths, Patricia and Laurence keep being pushed together. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them is determined to force them to work together to save the world.
Author Charlie Jane Anders, editor-in-chief of io9.com, seamlessly melds science fiction and fantasy in All the Birds in the Sky. Anders’ debut novel, Choir Boy, won the 2006 Lambda Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Edmund White Award. In All the Birds in the Sky, Anders adeptly twines magic, surrealism, technological innovation and machinery into a quirky story that, at its base, is about searching for common ground in a world of differences.
This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
