Loved itIt's a beautiful book and it's a genius book.
Review 1 of 4
Cloud Atlas (2004)
Others: Leaning positive From David Mitchell, the Booker Prize nominee, award-winning writer and one of the featured authors in Granta’s “Best of Young British Novelists 2003” issue, comes his highly anticipated third novel, a work of mind-bending imagination and scope. A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; an ambitious journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing the mendicant and violent family of his star author; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation -- the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small. In his captivating third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity’ s dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us
- ISBN:
- 9780345807472
- Length:
- 528 pages
Genres: fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction
Lists: …
Similar books
1 of 6
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut
1956 · 192 pages · 15 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveSlaughterhouse-Five is one of the world's great anti-war books. Centering on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
On 5+ of the same lists55%Also fantasy and historical fiction31%2 creators loved bothPersonalize your recommendations14%Dune
Frank Herbert
1965 · 535 pages · 35 reviews
Others: Mostly positiveSet on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the "spice" melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for... When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul's family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad'Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream. A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
On 5+ of the same lists46%Also fantasy and science fiction39%2 creators loved bothPersonalize your recommendations15%The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin
1969 · 304 pages · 13 reviews
Others: Mostly positiveComment by Kim Stanley Robinson, on The Guardian's website: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin (1969) One of my favorite novels is The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K Le Guin. For more than 40 years I've been recommending this book to people who want to try science fiction for the first time, and it still serves very well for that. One of the things I like about it is how clearly it demonstrates that science fiction can have not only the usual virtues and pleasures of the novel, but also the startling and transformative power of the thought experiment. In this case, the thought experiment is quickly revealed: "The king was pregnant," the book tells us early on, and after that we learn more and more about this planet named Winter, stuck in an ice age, where the humans are most of the time neither male nor female, but with the potential to become either. The man from Earth investigating this situation has a lot to learn, and so do we; and we learn it in the course of a thrilling adventure story, including a great "crossing of the ice". Le Guin's language is clear and clean, and has within it both the anthropological mindset of her father Alfred Kroeber, and the poetry of stories as magical things that her mother Theodora Kroeber found in native American tales. This worldly wisdom applied to the romance of other planets, and to human nature at its deepest, is Le Guin's particular gift to us, and something science fiction will always be proud of. Try it and see – you will never think about people in quite the same way again.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
On 5+ of the same lists54%Also fantasy and science fiction30%2 creators loved bothPersonalize your recommendations16%The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood
1985 · 334 pages · 19 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveThe Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England, in a strongly patriarchal, totalitarian theonomic state, known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. The central character and narrator is a woman named Offred, one of the group known as "handmaids", who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "commanders" — the ruling class of men in Gilead. The novel explores themes of subjugated women in a patriarchal society, loss of female agency and individuality, and the various means by which they resist and attempt to gain individuality and independence. The Handmaid's Tale won the 1985 Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987; it was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
On 5+ of the same lists65%Also fantasy and science fiction29%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations6%Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell
1949 · 314 pages · 12 reviews
Others: Mostly positiveNineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often referred to as 1984, is a dystopian social science fiction novel by the English novelist George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair). It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
On 5+ of the same lists53%Also fantasy and historical fiction45%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations2%The Time Machine
H. G. Wells
1895 · 122 pages · 7 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveThe Time Traveller, a dreamer obsessed with traveling through time, builds himself a time machine and, much to his surprise, travels over 800,000 years into the future. He lands in the year 802701: the world has been transformed by a society living in apparent harmony and bliss, but as the Traveler stays in the future he discovers a hidden barbaric and depraved subterranean class. Wells's transparent commentary on the capitalist society was an instant bestseller and launched the time-travel genre.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
On 5+ of the same lists58%Also fantasy and historical fiction31%TheBookchemist loved bothPersonalize your recommendations11%
Loved it
Loved ita very famous book that you've probably all read and it's great it's so great in fact that they adapted it into a terrible film with the worst Tom Hanks performance I've ever seen
Not a fanmy experience with Cloud Atlas was a bit of a fiasco I don't not finish books very often but that one that one I quit on
Loved itwhat a towering achievement what an amazing book basically six great novels all compressed in a single book all interacting with one another in beautiful engaging thrilling ways
Not a fanI was reading it really small chunks so it was hard to follow along with everything that was happening because of so many different perspectives and a really complex storyline. So I ended up putting this book down when I got to one chapter which is set in the future and it was just quite odd. I wasn't expecting it so I think I was just put off a little bit so I put it down and yeah.