Review | The Vanished Birds [CC]

[@LG-lp7cl]

This is, without any doubt, one of the most magnificent books I have read in the past 10 years. Probably ever

[@ThatsSoPoe]

Agreed! It's so beautiful, and so moving, and such cool sci-fi!

[@PaulWeymouth]

The first few chapters of this book are my favorite beginning chapters of any sci-fi book.

[@ThatsSoPoe]

They are basically short stories in their own right! Really, just such beautiful writing.

[@TheBookFinch]

There's something kind of Peter Pan -esque about that quote you shared. Really piques my interests, because intertextuality is my jaaaaam. 💖

[@ThatsSoPoe]

There are for sure a lot of layers to this book. Sush just finished it too and we had a discussion of a bunch of meanings he read into it that I didn't even see. I can totally see a Peter Pan theme as well!

[@MishelleLexi]

Sounds poetic! The world building and themes sound very good. I look forward to reading this one. Thanks for this great review, as usual ☺️

[@ThatsSoPoe]

I hope you love it too! 🥰

[@teaonarainyday5497]

Great review, I'm excited to pick this up!

[@ThatsSoPoe]

If you get the chance to read it, let me know what you end up thinking!

[@paulroberts3639]

What a wonderful review. This book sounds brilliant.

[@ThatsSoPoe]

I thought it was incredible! Really one of my top reads this year.

[@aerialruin8568]

Loved this book, just finished it. Very cool review and perspective you have here, thanks.

[@ThatsSoPoe]

It's such an amazing book! Glad you loved it too. I'm always interested in these sorts of sci-fi books with beautiful writing and interesting themes. This year I read Arboreality by Rebecca Campbell that was along that vein and loved it too, so I'd recommend giving that a try.

[@aerialruin8568]

@@ThatsSoPoe It really is in many different ways, and thank you for the Campbell recommendation, I have not read her. I read mostly Sci-fi and fantasy, but I'm a prose snob which rules out a lot of authors that have good story ideas but can't write characters and dialog to save their lives, so when I find someone like Jimenez it's a real treat, especially as he is so young and we likely have decades of great books to enjoy from him.

[@ThatsSoPoe]

@@aerialruin8568 Jimenez is such a strong author! I can't wait to see what else he publishes. Also, another thing I'd recommend if you're more into the literary style of SFF is the short story collection Drinking from Graveyard Wells by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu. I thought she also was doing some really interesting things.

[@bookwhimsy]

My library has a copy of it so it’s immediately going into my TBR!

[@ThatsSoPoe]

Yay!!! If you end up reading it, share thoughts on Voxer if you like. I'd love to hear what you think of it, especially the deeper meaning.

[@ReadBecca]

Love hearing your thoughts on this and the prose sampling, I continue to be remiss in not having read it.

[@ThatsSoPoe]

That's kind of how I feel about half the books you talk about too, though! Just hard to find time to read all the things that we are so interested in reading. 😁 Here's hoping the chance to read this comes up soon for you!

[@AlwaysDoing]

You're selling on me on this despite the body horror content note (thank you for those!). I'll go into it when I'm in the right headspace, it sounds great! 😊

[@ThatsSoPoe]

The body horror bit is actually fairly graphic, but it's just a bit at the end and is very meaningful in terms of the role it plays. I'm usually very not much into that, but here it didn't even lessen my enjoyment of the book.

[@AlwaysDoing]

@@ThatsSoPoe Good to know, thank you!! Just to brace myself - is it someone losing a body part? That gets to me the most 😖

[@ThatsSoPoe]

@@AlwaysDoing I'll Voxer you about it!

[@LiteratureScienceAlliance]

I finished and loved it but also don’t know what to do with myself now 😅😭💜

[@ThatsSoPoe]

Right?!?! It was just so indescribable and confusing and beautiful and heartbreaking. So glad you ended up loving it too!