Cloud Atlas in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Apr 08, 2015 Krissy rated it liked it

Shelves: audiobook, buddy-read, pgs-500-599

I had really high expectations for this book. I just knew it was going to epic. But sadly, I was mistaken. It was good, don't get me wrong. Unfortunately parts of it were boring and some annoying which brought the rating down. I'll break it down into parts:

1. Adam Ewing's part: Interesting but a little slow to get started.

2. Robert Frobisher's part: I liked Robert. He was witty and a little bit of a manslut but he had no shame in his game! He was definitely my second favorite character.

3. Luis ...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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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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