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Book Review of The Book of Flying

The Book of Flying
ritaloud avatar reviewed on + 3 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3


Pico is a librarian born to winged parents, but has no wings himself. So he is raised by a kindly librarian. Pico watches the winged people fly above the town each evening, longing to be one of them. Ultimately he falls in love with one and sets off to find the Book of Flying, so he too can get wings and join his love.

I agree with other reviewers that Miller's prose is beautifully written and his ideas creative, but those 2 elements alone do not make a good or even okay read. From the beginning, character development is lacking. What we learn about the characters are what they say about themselves, not from what happens in the story. Pico's adventure consists of traveling to places that are just bizarre and gratuitous sex scenes that just seemed out of place. The reader gets little background information about the places or characters in them. Miller creates a series of adventures that are creative, but not related enough to move the story along. The only thread running through the adventure is Pico's desire to return to his true love. Sometimes it appears that he has forgotten that!

I really expected Pico to learn something about himself or life. I was hoping the end of the story would wrap things up a bit. I was very disappointed.