Above Us Only Sky

Narrator Cassandra Campbell demonstrates her prodigious talent for voices and accents in Young-Stone's intergenerational story of magic, family, and survival. Sadly, the distinct vocal personalities Campbell gives each character aren't enough to make up for author's meandering and unfulfilling story. The focus on too many characters prevents the listener from becoming invested in their stories in any meaningful way. Campbell's narration may keep one listening, but pressing the pause button will provide no impetus to press play again. J.L.K. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

March 2, 2015
This charming if somewhat too neatly packaged novel begins with the birth of a winged girl, then takes flight through time to tell a family saga of the girl's Lithuanian and German ancestors, some of whom were bird women. Prudence Eleanor Vilkas's wings were cut from her back at a young age, but she feels their uncanny presence as she grows up. She flirts with death as a teenager but is saved from drowning by a ghostly bird woman, whose eyes are exactly the same green as her own. Young-Stone (The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors) employs breathless prose, full of magical happenings and terror, as she travels back and forth through history, recounting the trials of Prudence's grandfather, the Old Man, whose family was slaughtered by the Red Army; her grandmother, whose own mother was raped and murdered by the Russians; and the Old Man's youngest sibling, Daina, who survives being assaulted and left for dead. The imaginative and vivid storytelling is commendable, but her orchestration of the convergence of all these lost loved ones into a happy ending is too predictable. The coincidences required to tie up all the loose ends strain belief, and do not do justice to those past horrors described so vividly. Agent: Michelle Brower, Folio Literary Management.