Amazing book. Started out modestly - I wondered what the fuss was about. Then, gradually, it became more and more absorbing, until I was thoroughly impressed. The two sections set in the future are particularly stunning. ( )

Interesting to see that not everyone loved this novel. I found the format of different tales, all except the middle one placed in two halves, clumsy. The characters mostly failed to be engaging, although I took a liking to Sonmi and the tortured musician. Some of the tales are interesting enough, although not prize winning, in their own right. The middle tale completely failed to engage me and I skipped most of it, as it by then seemed clear that the links between them were tenuous at best. There was a theme of slavery, that he could have illuminated in many better ways, but he did succeed in portraying the different ways we are enslaved. Reasonably skilled writing. ( )

almost every narrative voice was overdone and annoying in some way (too loquacious, too redneck, too many gimmicky x's, says "ruddy" too much, etc...) and the connections between characters merely existed, instead of being meaningful (like in the movie Babel, saying "we're all linked in some way" is not a profound statement). Also extremely heavy handed throughout, i.e. the Son-mi chapter & the ending journal entry. Unable to make an argument through symbolism or imagery. Deeply disappointing. ( )

Absolutly fantastic!
David Mitchell has a unique ability to interweeve stories in a way which has captivated me. I spent the time it took me to read this book on the lookout for the little links and wondering where the story would take me next. It was almost disappointing when, half-way through, the layers of the tale ceased to increase in number.
I've been trying to decrease the number of books on my bookshelf, but this is one book this is not destined to a BookCrossing release. I look foward to reading more of David Mitchell's works in the future. ( )

Soaks you into possible and unlikely worlds and 'never ending' cleverly (dis)connected stories of (de)human condition. ( )

Rather than actually enjoying the story, which involved 6 different narratives of different characters in different times and places around the world, I found myself become more and more fascinated with the author as I read on. I also spent most of the book trying too hard to figure out what it was that linked them together, but I couldn't really figure out, except for one thing, which was the strange birthmark they all had, but I'm sure that there is something much deeper and more interesting than that. Seriously, though, talk about imagination! What I didn't like about the book was that it ended in midsentence. Noooo!!!

Is that annoying or ( )

Some of us liked the language and writing of this book. It raised more questions than answers in our group, but made for a good discussion. What wast the overall theme? WAs there one - connecting the strands together. Would love to see study notes on this book - it'd be great! ( )

A collection of short stories on the topic of slavery. But the fascinating thing is that each one is split in half - like pealing an onion the stories are interlinked.

It's amazing. ( )

I bought this because my son recommended it. I really couldn't get on with it at all, I found the format contrived and the characters unattractive and was unable to really empathise with any of it. I suppose technically it is very good and shows a lot of research but it left me uninvolved and unmoved, and so I have to say it really didn't work for me - I actually thought it took a long time and a lot of detours to be long winded and unpleasant. But it has had rave reviews and my son loves it, so I seem to be in a minority. ( )

Mitchell is a talented writer, in that he can turn it on and off at will - the different styles, the construction of narrative, the rounded but quirky characters, the vividness of description. However, his attitude towards writing feels a bit like that of a surgeon towards the body: slice, dice and try to leave everything in good working order but once you leave theatre, you have forgotten whose body it was you have just worked apparent miracles on.In other words, the sensibilities informing this work, like the rather banal comments that some of the figures in this kaleidoscope of a novel pronounce as profundities that are in fact no more than platitudes, are cold and abstracted. There is no warmth that a lover or carer might lend to the body of writing under their affection or charge, but more of a sense of job done.If you want a slightly more challenging and more than usually diverting aiport novel, this is it; if you are looking for great literature, give this guy maybe another 20 years of living. ( )

This book,( along with 9 of the 10 Library Thing recommendations for those who like this book), picked me up by the shoulders and carried me along, leaving me dropped and wrung out after 509 pages. A ripper. ( )

A drift through time?alternate universe?a dream? Usually don't have patience with such, but book moves through the lives and times of who/what/wherever and is painful, moving and lovely all at once. Dont' worry, it does have structure and a plot of sorts, it just takes a while to put it all together, so don't get irritated. Mitchell is a fine writer. ( )

An intricate series of somewhat connected stories that begins on a 17th-century ship and culminates in a post-apocalyptic Hawaii, Cloud Atlas is a precisely crafted and challenging novel. Each story ends abruptly, wrenching into the next, moving forward in time like progressive notes on a scale, and then descending back to the beginning.

During the upward run, it’s difficult to grasp the connections between, say, the South Pacific schooner and a composer’s mansion in 1920s Germany, or between 1970s California and a near-future Japan where our clones are our servants. Although the physical connections are apparent — one character in each story experiences in some way the story that came before, such as through discovering and reading a lost manuscript or watching a computer-projected hologram. And it’s implied that one character in each story is the reincarnated version of someone who came before. But the theme that connects all the stories — of apocalypse and annihilation of the “other” — does not become clear until the reader is descending backward in time. ( )

David Mitchell is an amazing writer. He makes such good use of metaphor in his language. He writes engagingly, without wasting words and his work is thoughtful, powerful, and with a clear message.

There were parts of this book that had me laughing out loud. But it is not a comedy book. Indeed it is really 6 short books in one, set out with a clever mirrored structure and interconnected despite their very different styles, structures and stories. This is really a very clever novel, and one that I highly recommend.

But honesty forbids that I give it 5 stars despite the fact it is so good. The structure of the book caused a problem for me in that the book started very slowly, and I was more engaged in some of the stories than others. But despite that criticism, it is really worth reading.

Ultimately the book makes some very profound points about human nature, and the mirror structure of the book reflects also on us its readers, encouraging introspection and a deeper consideration of who we are. ( )

Fantastic book. Several separate but linked stories told pyramid style, one is about an investigative journalist, another about Darwin-era explorers, another about AI in the future. ( )

I admit that this was 'clever stuff' but I ran out of steam by half way. I've never been at ease with science fiction - if that's what you'd call the chapters set in some north Korea like state and so when when we returned to that setting in the second half I couldn't summon up enough oomph to continue. ( )

6 separate stories, ever-so-slightly interlinked. Finished it feeling kind of lost. but i think that was the point. ( )

Excellent book, and unlike anything I've read before. ( )

This was one of those books that I loved to hate, I muscled through and really was completely awed by the scope of the book but THE MIDDLE SECTION! Oy vey, so tedious. And yet, I read this years ago and I still remember it, and mostly remember the tedium of the middle section, so does that mean it was actually good?! ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel the first time I read it when it came out and I still enjoyed it on this second reading although perhaps not as much. Mitchell's prose is (apparently) effortless and it's a pleasure seeing the way the words unfold on the page (and it makes me aware of how clichéd my wording of this review is). Each section of the novel holds my attention but how they fit together thematically is something I still haven't fathomed even though I was looking out for this in particular this time. I felt sure it went beyond the comet marks and the other relationship connections but now I'm not so sure - and will enjoy looking at other reviews to help me see what I haven't found myself. ( )

At the end, I'm still sorting out what I think of this book. In one sense, I feel let down by it. Common elements and images appeared in each story that built suspense throughout the novel, which gave me the expectation that as the book came to its conclusion something would fall like a lynchpin and completely alter the significance and context of each of the stories, uniting them into a coherent whole. This was not to be.

Each story was it's own, with only vague connections to the other stories. The relationship between the stories enriched them somewhat, but less than I had hoped. I found myself devouring the book just to get to the end and find out why these stories mattered so much to each other and when I got there, I didn't find it.

The moral--the common thread--seems little more than a platitude, and for that I'm disappointed.

Finally, the characters in one story seemed contrived and shallow to me, specifically, the female reporter and her boss were, to me, caricatures of Lois Lane and Perry White, and I found myself distracted from the story by the cliched dialogue. In another substory, I think setting it in Korea made an interesting story out of what would otherwise have been yet another dystopian cliche, and I don't know whether to admire the choice of setting or condemn that it may otherwise have been unimaginative.

BUT. . .

Cloud Atlas still gets 3 stars from me. I didn't love it, but it had many redeeming features.

First and foremost, the mood of the book was achieved remarkably, and I was particularly impressed at how the author selected such different writing styles to achieve different tone and mood from one story to the next.

The prose, tempo, and flow of the writing was fantastic. The book really pulled me into the characters' worlds (except for the noted exceptions), and I couldn't set it down.

I enjoyed the read, and I enjoyed how engaging the book was, but some of it had a bit of a pulpy and sentimental cast, and after I finished, I had a feeling like I'd been reading too much fiction and needed to dig into something more significant. ( )

Fantastic read and a brilliant display of how to construct narrative! ( )

An excellent book, the kind you wish you could read more often, rocketing straight into my top ten favourites of all time. Cloud Atlas consists of six separate narratives, ranging across time and space from the Pacific Ocean in the 19th century, to a dystopic sci-fi Korea, to a post-apocalyptic Hawaii. Each story cuts off halfway through until the "final" one, which is whole, and then the arc swoops back down again and finishes every narrative off, like a mirror image; a more complete and satisfying version of "If On A Winter's Night A Traveller," if you will.

The stories, in order, are:

The Pacific Journal Of Adam Ewing
The diary of an American notary circa 1850, returning home from a business trip to Australia, who makes a brief stop at the Chatham Isles and then sets off again bound for Hawaii; the diary cuts off in mid-sentence as we are sent to...

Letters From Zedeghelm
... a series of letters written by a Robert Frobisher, a young, bankrupt English composer in 1931, fleeing debt collectors by hopping a ferry to Belgium and offering his services as an amanuensis to a reclusive, eldery composer. Frobisher ends up stealing books from the library to pay off his debts and sleeping with the composer's wife, but before things are wrapped up we find ourselves in...

Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery
Written in the style of an airport novel, featuring a determined young reporter taking on a corrupt nuclear power company in 1970s California. This was my least favourite of the stories, but that's okay, because it's not long before we're reading...

The Ghastly Ordeal Of Timothy Cavendish
Set in early 21st century Britain, in which a man in his 60s, perfectly sound of mind and capable of living, is accidentally sent to a nursing home from which he finds himself unable to leave. Unjust imprisonment is a favourite theme of mine, so I was somewhat disappointed when I was yanked away and sent to...

An Orison of Sonmi~451
Dystopic, futuristic Korea, where an archivist is interviewing a "fabricant" on death row, tracing her life voyage from worker in a fast food outlet to champion of clone's rights and freedom for a secret rebellion group. One of the best science fiction stories I've read in a long time, fully realised in technological, social and political dimensions, but the creeping sensation of humanity's march towards destruction culminates with...

Sloosha's Crossin' An' Ev'rythin' After
Set in a rural post-apocalyptic society in Hawaii, where young Zachary relates the story of his visitor Meronym, a woman from an advanced culture across the ocean (tones of John Wyndham's "The Chrysalids"). Written in the spoken style, as a campfire story told by someone with a rough accent, which means a lot of apostrophes and phoenetic words, annoying at first but I soon grew used to it. This is the middle of the story, the mirror, and following this we retrace our steps through Korea, through Timothy's nursing home, through 1970s California, through 1930s Belgium, all the way back to the lonely trade ship on the South Pacific in the 19th century.

These stories can easily be read on their own, but they share three common threads. The first is that each one is, ostensibly, read by a character in the next; Frobisher finds Ewing's journal in the library at Zedeghelm, one of the characters in Half-Lives is the man Frobisher was writing to, Timothy Cavendish is a publisher who receives a manuscript for Half-Lives, etc. The second thread is that a character in each story has a comet-shaped birthmark; suggesting reincarnation, I suppose, although that doesn't quite work out, as Timothy Cavendish was most certainly alive at the same time as Luisa Rey.

The final common thread is the theme of the book itself - one of dominion, of slavery, of power and predation and the vicious heart of human nature. Each individual story contains dozens of miseries, of humans forcing their will upon others, from the invasion of the Chatham Isles by Maori, through to the more civilised but no less malevolent imprisonment of Timothy Cavendish, right back to savage brutality in Hawaii centuries from now, as Zachary's home valley is pillaged and his friends and family slaughtered by the brutal tribes on the other side of the island. Almost every major interaction between human beings in this book reveals, upon closer examination, the will to exert one's influence over the other - whether with intimidating words over drinks at a formal luncheon, or with sword and spear on the battlefields of the barbaric future.

The writing itself is perfect; Mitchell paints pictures with words and constructs sentences with elaborate care, resulting in one of those few books you can pick up and read again at any point, any page or sentence, and enjoy. The simple aesthetic pleasure in seeing words strung together so well, even outside of any greater narrative scope - that's a real accomplishment, and I could count the number of books that achieve it on one hand. I absolutely love this novel, and now I really have to read "Vernon God Little" - because to have beaten Cloud Atlas for the Booker Prize, it must be staggeringly brilliant. ( )

A book that is truly more than the sum of its parts. It's really quite an insult to call Cloud Atlas the 'Love Actually' of novels but that is the first and easiest comparison that springs to mind. Six wildly different narratives that span hundreds of years. I only fully appreciated the common thread, indeed, the book's 'message', when I reached the last two pages. And whew! because I was starting to wonder what the point was, despite thoroughly, thoroughly enjoying the ride. So thanks, David Mitchell, for bringing this novel home in such a satisfying way that made it all worthwhile.

I found the comet birthmark that appeared in every narrative a bit unnecessary (unless I missed something important.) Aside from that I found this novel engrossing, frustrating, thrilling and ultimately uplifting. ( )

Why have you given your life to books, TC? Dull, dull, dull! The memoirs are bad enough, but all that ruddy fiction! Hero goes on a journey, stranger comes to town, somebody wants something, they get it or they don't, will is pitted against will. 'Admire me, for I am a metaphor.'

The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing
Letters from Zedelghem
Half-Lives - The First Luisa Rey Mystery
The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish
An Orison of Sonmi-451
Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After

This fascinating novel consists of six stories, but each of the first five stops half-way through, and the second halves come after Sloosha's tale in reverse order, so that the book starts and ends with the same story. Each story mentions the one before, with Adam Ewing's journals being found by Robert Frobisher in the library of Zedelghem, while Frobisher's letters are discovered tucked into a Gideon's Bible and given to Luisa Rey. Each story involves a reincarnation of the same person, three times as a man and three times as a woman, all of whom have a birthmark shaped like a comet. Some of them are self-centred shits, while others are more serious, socially-responsible individuals, but each time echoes of their past and future selves resonate through each of their lives.

Half-way through the book, my favourite sections were "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing" and "An Orison of Sonmi-451" and "Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After", while my least favourite was "The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish", but while reading the second half of each story, I grew rather fonder of Timothy Cavendish, and less interested in the stories of Adam Ewing and Robert Frobisher (who wrote the letters from Zedelghem), so in the end my favourites were "An Orison of Sonmi-451" and "Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After" and my least favourite was "Letters from Zedelghem". ( )