The Language of the Birds is a Da Vinci Code-type of young-adult exploit filled with complicated ciphers, codes, puzzles, American history, and conspiracy theories involving Herbert Hoover, the US President who botched the American recovery from the Great Depression. The book involves a seventeen-year-old Arizona, also known as AZ, and her dog, Mojo. She has just lost her father in a motorcycle accident and is with her mother revisiting their family’s favorite sights to scatter his ashes, when her mother disappears. When Arizona and Mojo regroup at the family’s Airstream travel trailer, she finds a note stating her mother’s life depends on Arizona solving a cipher.
Arizona sees patterns and hidden meanings due to her family history (her father was a cartographer by trade and a cryptographer by avocation) and her own brand of neurodivergence. She may be intellectually brilliant, but she is somewhat socially inept. Arizona fears involving the authorities, and attempts to solve the mystery assigned to her; however, once it’s done, the kidnappers present yet another mystery to solve.
There are lots of literary references to Lewis Carroll, Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and Robert Louis Stevenson as well as archaic texts on alchemy. The puzzles she must solve are encased in writings that in part derive from Alice in Wonderland and other poetry. I found the inclusion of these often-lengthy excerpts and fragments of people’s journals and Arizona’s own writings to be overdone and thus skimmed a lot of them, especially since they frequently appeared in both Arizona’s and the villain’s points of view. The novel itself is written primarily in Arizona’s point of view with some excursions into that of her mother and the villain. The bad guy and his minions were quite cardboard; a bit more character definition would have been appreciated. I also wondered how a seventeen-year-old paid for a multi-day diving expedition off the California coast as well as her other day-to-day expenses. I did enjoy the accurate and well-researched details on ghost towns and the California flora and fauna. I also liked Arizona’s feistiness, the fact that as a result of this adventure she was able to expand her life with new friendships, and the fact that neurodivergent youngsters can see themselves in this book and identify with her character as well as non-neurodivergent young folks can get a glimpse into the lives of the “weird” kids they so often bully and make fun of.
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The Language of the Birds (Ballantine Books (May 13, 2025) is available through:
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