If you are a young person who feels as if they are living at the end of things or a not-so-young person wondering about the world you will leave behind: read this book. Doerr expertly weaves together five perspectives linked by a fantastical ancient Greek text, each of his protagonists finding new meaning in the story of a young man searching for a utopia in the sky. The characters almost seem to reach out to each other from across time and space, binding together 15th-century Constantinople, a town in present-day Idaho under siege from developers, and a lonely girl on the interstellar ship Argos. Themes of environmental and historical disaster dominate the narrative but don't drag it under, leaving the reader with an oddly hopeful message: yes, this is the end of everything, and yes, there will be more ends to come.