Book Review: Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In the interests of keeping it real, I almost put this book down after the first three sections. The subject matter of the first story was challenging, the second story seemed a bit pointless (although the best of these three) and the third was simply annoying. But perseverance won the day and in the end, the story I liked the least became one of my favorites.

Told linearly yet abstractly, if that is even possible, the book is divided into six stories connected by various threads. You get the first half of five of the stories, then the entire sixth story and then you cycle backwards through the second half of the five stories. Make sense? It does when you are reading, oddly enough.

What makes this fascinating, besides the constant puzzle to figure out connections, is that each story is completely self-contained and a totally different genre than the others. I can only imagine the storyboarding that went into writing this thing.

I would normally write a longer, more detailed review for my blog, but honestly, to reveal more would be a) too spoilerrific and b) plain confusing. To sort of get a feeling for the WTFness of this book, I highly recommend watching the film's trailer. There have clearly been quite a few changes, but it gives a better summary than I can - and you will still be shaking your head at the end.

I am looking forward to seeing how this is adapted when the movie comes out in October.

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