All the Birds in the Sky

CHARLIE JANE ANDERS’ novel All the Birds in the Sky, is in many ways a love story, but it’s not a particularly sunny one. The book, out this week, tracks two childhood friends as they discover their special powers—Patricia is a witch, Lawrence a (barely) time-traveling mad genius—and grow apart, only to find each other years later, after they’ve followed their respective paths. The sci-fi/fantasy world that the two live in is essentially the Darkest Timeline version of our own: cataclysmic climate change has led to famine, disease, and more than one nation on the brink of war.