Cloud Atlas in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Sep 14, 2007 Katie rated it liked it

This book is supposedly (if you read many other reviews I've found) a bit like Marmite - you either love it or you hate it. The weird thing is, I can't decide either way. My family keep asking if I'd recommend it, and I honestly don't know if I would.
It's certainly an interesting idea - 6 (sometimes loosely) interlinking stories which span centuries as well as continents, all written in very different styles. This shows off the author's range of talent, although at times I felt that having so ma ...more

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Jun 15, 2011 Jane rated it it was amazing

Shelves: recentfiction, favorites

An amazing book, particularly in terms of structure. It is structured unlike any book I've ever read, and that doesn't mean that it's obscure. Linked stories, in a way, but also returning stories. Genre experiments, theme echoings. Just amazing. The book I read on the cabin porch at Juniper while snowed in and unable to do any hiking to my favorite swimming lakes (which were nearly frozen over). Pages I want to return to 82, 212, 218, 380, 445, 449. The book is brilliantly written all the way th ...more

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Dec 12, 2012 Christine H rated it it was ok

I can recognize the skill and care that went into crafting six different styles of narrative, but I wasn't drawn in by the stories very much. The Sonmi tale was the most engaging, but it was a bit silly and concluded with something akin to "it was all a dream," which I always find annoying. Don't get me invested in a character and a story, then invalidate the whole story at the end!

The rest of the stories I just couldn't generate much interest in, and the central tale's use of phonetic dialect w ...more

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Jan 22, 2011 Sarah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, sci-fi, tv-movie

This is the best book by an author new to me that I've read since I first turned a page of The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss two years ago. It's one of the 6 books I bought from a second hand bookshop whilst sheltering from the rain during a week away by myself in Castleton about 3 years ago, and now I'm very glad that I picked it up.

The way the story is executed reminded me a little of Perdido Street Station by China Miéville in that to start with nothing much seems to happen. The charac This is the best book by an author new to me that I've read since I first turned a page of The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss two years ago. It's one of the 6 books I bought from a second hand bookshop whilst sheltering from the rain during a week away by myself in Castleton about 3 years ago, and now I'm very glad that I picked it up.

The way the story is executed reminded me a little of Perdido Street Station by China Miéville in that to start with nothing much seems to happen. The characters are interesting, the plot is involving, but there isn't much momentum and you don't really know where it's all going - despite the latter, it still draws you along because you can tell something great is going to happen and you can't wait to find out what.

My favourite chapter by far in the first half of the book was Robert Frobisher's, he was such a cad and a charming rogue that you can't help but love him.

I found the first Luisa Rey section dragged for me. There were a lot of names and intrigues that I found it hard to keep a grip on. My lack of enthusiasm for it meant that I didn't make much time to read it, so my progress in fits and spurts only acerbated the issue. Perhaps if I'd made for time for that chapter, it might have read more smoothly for me. Hard to know now.

Sonmi~451's chapter was quite brilliant, a fascinating and terrifying vision of a corpocratic future where money and consumerism rules completely over all, and the world has literally started to consume itself.

Some unknowable amount of time passes after that future and we meet poor Zachary, scraping an existence out of the harshness of a post-apocalytpic world and, through his simple outlook on life, we start to see how all these lives intertwine in a wonderfully elegant way.

Mitchell then draws the reader back through the years and the major players in an ever-increasing spiral that leaves you dying to turn each page and discover what happens, what has already happened, and how we ended up where we did.

One of the cover reviews describes this book as a roller coaster and I definitely agree with that simile. What a ride! ...more

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Aug 05, 2013 Emilie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Ok so it wasn't so bad... ...more

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Jul 27, 2008 Elizabeth rated it it was ok

I had higher hopes for this book but got lost in it somehow, and not in a good way. So I gave up after about 150 pages in. Let me know if that was a mistake.

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