Rating: 
Summary: A good airplane read but pedestrian.
Review: 1920s. Esko fights the Bolsheviks in Finland before fleeing to the USA to be a skyscraper architect. 2 stories fused together with little to link them. Well sketched characters, except for the principal love interest. Historical color. Good pace. Easy to read.
Rating:
Summary: A good airplane read but pedestrian.
Review: 1920s. Esko fights the Bolsheviks in Finland before fleeing to the USA to be a skyscraper architect. 2 stories fused together with little to link them. Well sketched characters, except for the principal love interest. Historical color. Good pace. Easy to read.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but flawed
Review: A man goes from harsh winters in rural Finland, to the fast-paced excitement of New York. A story I can relate to because it applies to my own father. It is also the story of Esko Vaananen, the central character of The Cloud Sketcher. Imagine my excitement at discovering a book that is set largely in the home of my ancestors! It's a grand tale too. Accurately telling the reader about Finland, it's Civil War, the Big Apple in the Jazz Age and the competitive world of architecture. The story also centers around the protagnist's undying love of a woman despite innumerable obstacles. Like many "epic" style novels, The Cloud Sketcher depends on repeated chance enounters and discoveries that stretch credulity. But what keeps this from being a great story and turns it into a flawed one, is the inexplicable actions of so many characters. I think I love you after all. I suddenly don't love you. I don't really know you but I'll hire you. Get away from me, no, let's work together. I trust you, no, I want to destroy you. Many characters are stick figures whose actions cannot be explained other than they help move the story along. I believe a good story is driven by characters, in The Cloud Sketcher, the characters exist to move along the the plot outline. Certain type of readers, such as myself, will still be unable to resist The Cloud Sketcher (architects, Finns, Jazz Age fans) but others will be quickly discouraged by characters acting out of... well, character.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but flawed
Review: A man goes from harsh winters in rural Finland, to the fast-paced excitement of New York. A story I can relate to because it applies to my own father. It is also the story of Esko Vaananen, the central character of The Cloud Sketcher. Imagine my excitement at discovering a book that is set largely in the home of my ancestors! It's a grand tale too. Accurately telling the reader about Finland, it's Civil War, the Big Apple in the Jazz Age and the competitive world of architecture. The story also centers around the protagnist's undying love of a woman despite innumerable obstacles. Like many "epic" style novels, The Cloud Sketcher depends on repeated chance enounters and discoveries that stretch credulity. But what keeps this from being a great story and turns it into a flawed one, is the inexplicable actions of so many characters. I think I love you after all. I suddenly don't love you. I don't really know you but I'll hire you. Get away from me, no, let's work together. I trust you, no, I want to destroy you. Many characters are stick figures whose actions cannot be explained other than they help move the story along. I believe a good story is driven by characters, in The Cloud Sketcher, the characters exist to move along the the plot outline. Certain type of readers, such as myself, will still be unable to resist The Cloud Sketcher (architects, Finns, Jazz Age fans) but others will be quickly discouraged by characters acting out of... well, character.
Rating: 
Summary: The Finnish point of view
Review: As a Finn I was really interested in reading a book about a Finnish man, written by a writer who has never lived in Finland himself. There are not many such books, since not many people are really interested in Finnish history. I got the book as a Christmas gift from my brother, so I didn't know what it was about. I was really surprised when I started reading it, because the point of view was quite fascinating, and I couldn't stop reading until I had finished it. I loved the historical background, although the desrciption of Finnish culture in the beginning of the century was a little depressing (made me think wheter it really WAS like that in Finland back then...). However, I also enjoyed the latter part of the book that described life in NYC in the 20's, since I have spent a year in the States, and also visited New York City. The story told me a lot about American way of thinking, and the meaning of money in it. Life really was totally different in America than in Finland in the 20's. The story itself was a little too much to be true, but I took it as a Story, not as a biography. Esko's passion for Katerina seemed like a stupid fixed idea, and it seemed like too much idealism, living one's life just to get a girl you fell in love as a kid. I thought, However, that it was a beautiful story, and Rayner had cought a lot of true Finnish character in it. The descriptions of the Finnish civil war seemed truthful, and I even recognized the places in Tampere, where the most bloody battles took place. The book revealed many things about the civil war that are not really spoken out loud in Finland, even nowadays. I read the Finnish translated version of the book, and I think the translation was quite good. Finnish is a very poetic language, and the translator seemed to have used a lot of efforts making the text sound like good Finnish. And finally about the word "pilvenpiirtäjä" (cloud sketcher): As a child I had never seen a skyscraper (since there is none in Finland), and when I heard the word "cloud sketcher", I really thought that it ment a person who was sitting in an air plane with a massive paint brush and painting the clouds!
Rating: 
Summary: Rayner captures an era
Review: Fans of historical fiction will hate to finish this book...it is a satisfying read from cover to cover. For those many of us that know little of Finland early in this century, much will be learned. And the potent mix of NYC, gangsters, jazz and architecture provides a compelling blend indeed. Very satisfying, very wonderful. Congrats.
Rating:
Summary: Howard Roark, take a hike -- Esko Vanaanen Has Arrived!
Review: First off, leave 'The Fountainhead' out of it. Ayn Rand's dense polemic, interesting as it may be, is an exercise in "How to Use the Novel to Convey an Idea Otherwise Distasteful In the Mouth of Your Average Reader," and as such, has no connection to the Real World; Howard Roark and his career, fascinating as it may be, is no match for the genuine pleasures and real lessons to be gleaned from Richard Rayner's 'The Cloud Sketcher.' This is a book for those who loved the intoxicating romance of Helprin's 'Winter's Tale,' the real-life difficulty of making tough decisions that will impact the lives of others found in the novels of John Irving, and the Big City rhythms that provide a strong backbeat for writers as disparate as William Kennedy, James Ellroy, and Michael Chabon. Compellingly readable (I knocked out the first 200 pages + at a midnight sprint), this tale of the life of Esko Vanaanen, and the geas laid upon him by Finland's first elevator, is the very definition of the "Traditional" Modern Novel. Modern in the sense that it takes into account the new approaches to the writing of fiction developed during this most literary of centuries; and modern in that it wrestles with the realities brought to life by the American domination of the 20th century. And traditional in its dedication to character, motivation, emotion, metaphor, narrative, STORYTELLING... Forget the latest ... by the 5th Avenue BOMC taste of the month; if you want to read the kind of book that Dickens, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck all would have loved, then read 'The Cloud Sketcher.' And then be sure to read 'The Blue Suit.' That one is as good, and funnier.
Rating:
Summary: Howard Roark, take a hike -- Esko Vanaanen Has Arrived!
Review: First off, leave 'The Fountainhead' out of it. Ayn Rand's dense polemic, interesting as it may be, is an exercise in "How to Use the Novel to Convey an Idea Otherwise Distasteful In the Mouth of Your Average Reader," and as such, has no connection to the Real World; Howard Roark and his career, fascinating as it may be, is no match for the genuine pleasures and real lessons to be gleaned from Richard Rayner's 'The Cloud Sketcher.' This is a book for those who loved the intoxicating romance of Helprin's 'Winter's Tale,' the real-life difficulty of making tough decisions that will impact the lives of others found in the novels of John Irving, and the Big City rhythms that provide a strong backbeat for writers as disparate as William Kennedy, James Ellroy, and Michael Chabon. Compellingly readable (I knocked out the first 200 pages + at a midnight sprint), this tale of the life of Esko Vanaanen, and the geas laid upon him by Finland's first elevator, is the very definition of the "Traditional" Modern Novel. Modern in the sense that it takes into account the new approaches to the writing of fiction developed during this most literary of centuries; and modern in that it wrestles with the realities brought to life by the American domination of the 20th century. And traditional in its dedication to character, motivation, emotion, metaphor, narrative, STORYTELLING... Forget the latest ... by the 5th Avenue BOMC taste of the month; if you want to read the kind of book that Dickens, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck all would have loved, then read 'The Cloud Sketcher.' And then be sure to read 'The Blue Suit.' That one is as good, and funnier.
Rating:
Summary: The sweep of history
Review: I enjoyed this story, which carried its protagonist through the years of the Russian Revolution and the Jazz Age. The book has a lot of interesting things to say about architecture, and the portrayal of Finland is certainly compelling.
The author's execution, however, left something to be desired: Some of the supporting characters are stereotypes, the dialogue was a trifle trite, and the story gets bogged down in rehashing certain doomed relationships. This book certainly could have been better.
Rating:
Summary: good but somewhat disappointing
Review: I hoped this book would meet the expectations I had when I began it (and promised by the jacket when I saw it in a bookstore)--but alas, it was really somewhat disappointing ....as another reviewer stated, it too closely resembles The Fountainhead and the people --are sort of Ludlumian in that they are larger than life and too heroic to be believable -- the primary love relationship stretches credibility and the author relies too often on ironic and unexpected appearances of the main characters for somewhat contrived dramatic effect. There is some interesting "history"as far as the Finnish Civil War ..but I found it a seriously flawed book.
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