RaveForeword ReviewsThe Bird King is an exquisite fantasy about the end of Muslim sovereignty in the West, the power of desire to disrupt and transform, and how the privilege of naming can reshape the world ... Author G. Willow Wilson writes with a masterful control of perspective. The Bird King is a perfect novel, balancing universal themes and conflicting cultures with eloquently delivered landscape, character, and dialogue. The Bird King is a unique fantasy that combines history with magic, creating an imaginary map of a world that has been lost to time.
Dave Eggers
PositiveThe San Francisco ChronicleIn this taut, claustrophobic corporate thriller, Eggers comes down hard on the culture of digital over-sharing, creating a very-near-future dystopia in which all that is not forbidden is required … Eggers has a keen eye for context, and the great strength of The Circle lies in its observations about the way instant, asynchronous communication has damaged our personal relationships … [Mae] is an appealing focal point, and her moments of unplugged solitude - the poetry of which goes artfully unrecognized - provide the most profound, well-written interludes in the book.
Kayla Rae Whitaker
MixedThe Washington Post...unlike the bulk of literature dedicated to the pathos of creative partnerships, the artists at the center of Whitaker’s narrative are, refreshingly, women ... While the creation of great visual art is terrific grist for prose, the art itself is more difficult to translate. Cartoons rely heavily on movement and timing and visual puns, compounding the novelist’s difficulty...While their partnership, which is at once fervent and wonderfully unsentimental, gives The Animators its soul, the closest we get to their films is a kind of narrative closed-captioning, leaving us to guess what all the fuss is about ... Nevertheless, the emotional heart of the story — the anxiety, competing passions and need for validation that drive Sharon and Mel’s relationships — is well-wrought and evocative.
