Cloud Atlas

[votingfloater]

I had this one in the old "books you've given up on" thread. After the first couple of chapters, no less.

My gf bought it and said it was OK though, so I might dip in again.

[votingfloater]

Well, that's done.

I thought it was OK, even though novels with contrived structures usually have me stuffing my knuckles into my mouth to stem the involuntary torrent of abuse. (Remember Alex Garland's The Tesseract? GNNNNR. Bad enough to try and tell a story in the shape of a flattened cube, but to boast at the end that you did? Someone smack him into aphasia before he writes anything else!)

The worst was the Adam Ewing strand. That sucked the sweat from a dead man's balls. Actually, even mentioning The Tesseract has now tainted this book forever. Alex Garland owes me ten hours of my life back.

I could handle the dodgy sci-fi, because every other story was a bit hack - affectionate parodies maybe?

Maybe now I'll have another stab at Ghostwritten.