Book Review: Cloud Atlas

So I have kind of fallen off of my 'three books a month' resolution – but I am still reading, and this in itself is an achievement.

Unfortunately, I blame this book.

I started this at the tail end of January, and thought I was going to LOVE it, the blurb reads so well and I had heard great things from friends who've read it previously.

However…

I literally could not get into this book, no matter how many times I tried. Not even the pull of finishing the book and then watching the movie was enough for me to persevere. I'm not even sure what it is, but it really pains me to say that I have given up with this book.

I usually have the mantra of ‘start it finish it’ with the majority of things I do in life, reading being one of them. I never pick up a book and don’t finish it, regardless of how much I enjoyed or didn't enjoy it. This is because I always want to know the ending, every morsel of information so I can make an informed decision and also have a conversation around it if the need ever arose. I couldn't do it with Cloud Atlas.

The book is split into sections, and chapters within the sections, and from what I have figured out each section is a different narrator and a different time period. It’s written as a diary which quite frankly has never been my favourite, and somehow the stories all interlink into this epic, galactic story of times and history and worlds unknown.

How cool does that sound?

I persevered through the first section which I found so incredibly boring focussed on ships and a stowaway, maybe a tropical disease, and then all of a sudden the next section was hundreds of years in the future with a totally different voice and storyline? Um hello, what? Where did that come from? How are these two things even related?!

Maybe I needed to give the book more of a chance but for me, I found it dull and totally off-the-wall. I couldn't figure how who I was supposed to like, how I was supposed to feel or what the book was trying to tell me. I usually adore more fantasy based books, which is why I was stoked for this, so I'm not too sure where this book went wrong for me?

Have you read it? I want to know what other people have thought so I can see if I should give it another go. I just think if the book on your side table doesn't get touched for over three weeks, there is a problem.

Book three – failed.