*Minor spoilers*
Not my kind of book, unfortunately. The premise is sound enough; six stories throughout different points in time that become interwoven through the characters and previous stories being retold. But nature of telling it in almost short story form meant the momentum never gathered and character development was slow.
As well as that, the story itself just never grabbed me. Seeing the first plot line referred to in the second story, or similar instances, is intriguing and makes you wonder of the connection. But nothing solid ever forms, and it’s more a collection on ideas hinted at, with a lot of metaphor, symbolism, and themes thrown around. But the core, the actual story, is lacking.
The main cause for the difficulty in reading is the sheer number of characters thrown your way. There’s no constant with you throughout the story, so each chapter means being introduce to a new protagonist and side-characters. Yet I never felt a connection to any of them, and had no one to route for. As such, any antagonists then faced the same issue of being no threat, because it was hard to care about their intentions.
There was something to admire in the writing of Cloud Atlas; the 19th Century tale is very much told in a Victorian voice, while the distant future story introduces new vocabulary and logical adjustments. Though this can also add to how stagnated the book is to read, the different writing tones do help establish era and passage of time.
I watched the film to help me make sense of the story (a separate review of that would be inane, though), but to little avail. That too never really brought any of the characters to life for me, despite lasting just short of three hours.
Overall it’s a book I won’t forget, but not one I particularly enjoyed.
2/5
Read, Watched, Played 