PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewEngaging and melancholy ... Fascinating rabbit holes ... Shafak’s language often takes on the cadence of a fable, a poetic rhythm that can vary between beauty and a tendency to hold the reader’s hand ... With gorgeous writing throughout and many particularly stunning paragraphs that you’ll want to mark up and return to, these are the moments when There Are Rivers in the Sky explodes into a roaring journey through ecology and memory ... When the puzzle pieces fit into place, and the fates of the present-day characters collide, the final twist is both contrived and genuinely moving.
Elliot Ackerman
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewAckerman attempts to explicate the full-spectrum meltdown of the social and political culture, his vehicle of choice alternate history with a science-fiction twist ... Characters and plot points weave in and out of these dual controversies, but the complicated accusation against Abelson is hampered by the low stakes ... Yet the fact that the novel doesn’t snap, that it barely even bends, and remains idiosyncratic and engrossing throughout, is a testament to Ackerman’s expert juggling act ... Ackerman intelligently forces the reader to think about the mundane, arcane territory of inheritance-threatening lawsuits.
Pete Beatty
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewWhenever the narration risks feeling like regurgitated Huck Finn and its endless vernacular offspring, Meed pops off a rich one-liner, observation or incantation. Beatty evokes the familiarities of genre, history and place while drafting them for a wild new context. In this regard, Cuyahoga is a breezy fable of empire, class, conquest and ecocide ... Beatty revels in fabulizing a region he clearly knows and loves, while the reader is left to stew over the aftermath, over what home and memory and myth carry forth after the fire.
