Am 150 pages into it, and I'm disappointed

[Lily]

I adore David Mitchell. He is so damn talented, it hurts. I was looking forward to this new book like the Second Coming and heard great advance reviews. I found the first 150 pages barely coherent. The characters aren't particularly well-drawn or intriguing. When he gets into the dark side, the story gets interesting but that thread disappears quickly.
Does the book pick up? Hope so.

[Micaela]

Hi Lily. I wish I could help you out but I felt the same way. I could NOT make it to the end and actually returned the book.

[Josh]

This is my first David Mitchell book. I'm 150 pages in also. However, I'm really enjoying the characters and plot. I have a bit of a hard time with the British slang and dialects, but that's really the only complaint I have.

I also really like that you imply that his other books are better...? Is there a stand out book? I'm looking for a recommendation on what to read next.

[Micaela]

Josh wrote: "This is my first David Mitchell book. I'm 150 pages in also. However, I'm really enjoying the characters and plot. I have a bit of a hard time with the British slang and dialects, but that's really..." Josh, I really loved Cloud Atlas. It has a lot of the quirky characteristics of Bone Clocks but somehow...not sure how because it jumps all around time and the characters change into each other kind of...but its really lovely in a bizarre life enhancing way.

[Lily]

Cloud Atlas is superior -- it is far more streamlined, elegant and fun. Cloud Atlas rolls out like water from a fountain. Bone Clocks feels like misty rain that doesn't stay on the ground.

[Genevieve]

Check out the reviews from readers in the 3/4/5 star range and see what people who enjoyed the book liked. If you think you might like the same things, you might want to give The Bone Clocks another chance. I personally thought it was wonderful, though in a different way than Cloud Atlas. The biggest difference narratively is that the sections in The Bone Clocks are more connected; the characters actually interact more than in Cloud Atlas.

[Cecily]

Gosh, Josh: this is not the easiest into to Mitchell (and, sadly, not the best), but it's good you're enjoying it. It's closely linked to The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, though all his books have some connection with others.

[Cecily]

Lily, Genevieve's suggestion is good, though you'll need to be wary of spoilers. Another factor is that the fifth section is VERY different from all the others. You may find that swings the book in your favour, though you've a fair way to go until you get to that point.

[Tash]

I found the first quarter of this book very enjoyable and engaging, but the rest was just so much hard work. I read it, but I dunno what I read.

[Marc]

Really disappointed in the book. Cloud Atlas had a theme throughout the diverse times & generations, couldn't see anything linking the sections here except for the relationship of the characters across time which wasn't that interesting to me, because too much went on unseen during the periods where we don't see them (eg do you believe Holly & Hershey would be friends? I didn't. Why didn't Ed make a move on Holly as a teenager if they ended up together as adults etc)

Also several of the voices were annoying. The teenage Holly was the sound of a middle aged writer trying to imagine how teenagers spoke in 1970s Kent. Hershey was a writer writing about the trials and tribulations of a writer (which is self-indulgent to my mind).

There are 2 different David Mitchell types of books. This time/generations hopping sort, of which "Ghostwritten" is better than either Cloud Atlas or Bone Clocks IMhO. The other type is a more straight approach to fiction such as and are good examples and again IMho better reads. depends what you like

[Cecily]

But if you finish The Bone Clocks, you'll realise that The Thousand Autumns is not as straightforward as it seems, even though it doesn't itself, jump around time-wise.

[Marc]

Cecily wrote: "But if you finish The Bone Clocks, you'll realise that The Thousand Autumns is not as straightforward as it seems, even though it doesn't itself, jump around time-wise."

I don't buy that and to be honest I prefer retaining De Zoot as a complete whole because it was such a beautiful book. All the filigree and finesse constructing that world would be destroyed at a stroke by the imposition of a laughably supernatural/paranormal element from Bone Clocks.

[Cecily]

And you don't have to "buy that". Jacob can be whatever you want it to be, which is quite clever, I suppose.

[Jpmist]

You're not alone. "The Bone Clocks" was a grudge-finish read for me. It was so disappointing as I really loved "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet". But "The Bone Clocks" rarely reached the level of wonderful prose that "Autumns..." did. Nor was it cohesive, more like a short story collection than a novel.

[Marc]

sorry, I just never bought into the whole supernatural/paranormal (under-)world of the story so I didn't find these links significant or interesting in the slightest. As a character Holly was only sporadically interesting, but I did not find her any more engaging by the last two chapters than before.

[Mark]

The last chapter of "The Bone Clocks" has haunted me for three months since I finished reading it. That rarely happens.