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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?"
Quite a difficult book to get into but worth it for it's themes of human nature and breaking free of tyrannical cycles. Every life is important, even if it's deemed insignificant.
Quite a difficult book to get into but worth it for it's themes of human nature and breaking free of tyrannical cycles. Every life is important, even if it's deemed insignificant.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Loved the unique storytelling and interlocking stories. Main themes were the cycles of history, greed, slavery and imprisonment, aging and mortality, and the concept of reincarnation and the interconnectedness of souls. The novel's unique structure, featuring six interconnected stories spanning different time periods, highlights how human actions and experiences reverberate across generations and how certain struggles, like the fight for freedom and the pursuit of power, persist.
Well written and poignant - came away from reading it with a renewed sense of profundity
Well written and poignant - came away from reading it with a renewed sense of profundity
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I like Mitchell's structure. I think it is clever and has a great deal of potential. Unfortunately, Mitchell didn't write six interesting stories to fill the slots of his sextet. The two stars I gave this book are one-each for the middle segments - the parts that take place in an imagined future, and the only imaginative portions of this book that is otherwise too self-consciously clever for its own good, with far too little payoff. They are also the only parts of the book with sympathetic or interesting characters. The rest is a tiresome slog peopled by insufferable egotists, even more insufferable goody-two-shoes naifs, mustache-twirling cartoon villains, and plot contrivances so hackneyed that even the twists feel more like gentle slides along well-worn channels.
The publisher's blurb laughably compares this book to Eco, who could pack more meaning and reference into one chapter than Mitchell draws out in this entire book. The structure and the conceit of Cloud Atlas has the potential to be mind-blowing, but the content poured into that structure is mostly pedestrian. Such a shame. This book could have been so much more but it is ultimately unsatisfying and empty. The ending fizzles. Just disappointing, really. I wish the book had been written by a writer with more depth of ideas.
Though I read the book quickly it was as much because I wanted it over with as because it held my attention. Now that it's done, it is getting worse in my memory rather than better.
I think this is one that is going to stick with me for a long time, and I’ll have to re-read. I really felt like I went on a journey across humanity’s lifespan, and the structure of the book made this possible to reread in a lot of interesting ways.
I hated this book. The story was hard to track and I didn’t care about any of the characters