"Cloud Atlas" is on its way from Amazon and hopefully will be here later this week.
Verdict?
bump
Oops -- I haven't been updating. I read Cloud Atlas about a month ago, and definitely enjoyed it. Mitchell does a good job of writing convincingly in a variety of different genres (adventure, thriller, comedy, sci-fi).
On one hand, the structure of the novel is a little bit gimmicky, which the author acknowledges through the composer character describing "The Cloud Atlas Sextet," but it really does make the entire work more thought-provoking than it would be if everything were nice and linear. Obviously Mitchell wants us to think about the consequences of violence, colonialism, and subjugation. By structure the book this way, we get to see oppression play itself out forward in history, and then in the second half of the book we rewind back to its historical roots.
It would be interesting to read an analysis of religion in Cloud Atlas. The characters all vary in terms of their religiosity, with the first guy (sorry, but it's been a while and I've forgotten most of the character names) being quite sincerely devout, the people of Neo San Corpos (?) completely absorbed by a quasi-religious celebration of consumerism, and the Prescients being completely atheist. I'm sure the "Sloosha's Crossin'" story is supposed to make us think about how the roots of religious belief systems may be totally absurd and laughable to outsiders, and in that way one could argue that Mitchell takes a negative view of religion. On the other hand, since the entire novel revolves around the same person being reincarnated in different eras, it's not really that straightforward.
The one problem I ran into in terms of the story itself is how you're supposed to go from the "Luisa Del Ray (?)" story to the "old guy imprisoned in the nursing home" story. It seems like those two main characters are suppsed to be the same reincarned soul (like all the other main characters), but their lifetimes obviously overlap considerably, so that doesn't work.
Overall, a really good read. I'll probably go back and reread sometime. It's the sort of book that probably contains quite a few details that make more sense on a second reading.