Reviews - Der Wolkenatlas | The StoryGraph

5.46k reviews for:

Der Wolkenatlas

David Mitchell

3.99 AVERAGE

kalmalainen's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous emotional medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

juliarunaway's review against another edition

3.0

3.5 stars. Cloud Atlas was quite a hard read for me, but, as pretty much all other reviewers said, it is also a very clever book. The structure of the book goes like this: every chapter takes place in a different year and place, follows different characters and is a different kind of narrative; the first chapter is diary excerpts, the next one is told through letters and so on. The language also changes to suit the setting of the story through each part and it even becomes some sort of imagined futuristic English in chapters 5 and 6, which made it a particularly challenging read for me. Chapters 1 through 6 follow a chronological order from past to future, however after the middle chapter, we revisit each story backwards to find out the ending of each story and how they all fit together. While at the beginning each story is linked only by small details, after chapter 6 more links are revealed and the stories fall better in the bigger picture.
A slow read for me, but very clever and a different, imaginative read.

molly_vi0let's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous challenging dark hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

dibdab_18's review against another edition

3.5

mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

dinahsanders's review against another edition

5.0

I experienced this through the Audible unabridged audiobook and that turned out to be fine, thanks to the good readers. Took me a while to get into it; it got under my skin quickly, but I didn't like these people 100% and so, though compelled to continue and finding the writing quite good, I was finding it entertaining but not enjoyable per se. Then through the first sections with Luisa Rey, Sonmi-451, and Zachry my feelings flipped completely. By the end I was a thorough fan and, as an author, fascinatedly taking it apart to see how Mitchell built the beautiful thing.

lydia_a's review against another edition

2.0

Cette lecture me laisse dubitative.

Construit comme une poupée russe d’histoires pratiquement sans lien (sinon une marque sur l’épiderme), Cartographie des nuages m’a laissé sur ma faim. En toute transparence, je ne vois pas en quoi il apparaît pertinent de croiser autant de trames narratives pour ne pas, au final, servir un feu d’artifice au lecteur.

J’ai souvent eu envie de mettre ce livre de côté pour ne plus y revenir. Je reconnais que l’auteur sait bien écrire et qu’il tire habilement profit des différents styles littéraires (qu’il explore à travers chacune de ses histoires), mais je n’ai pu trouver le fil d’Ariane que j’attendais.