Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life. For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics -- and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly's life, affecting all the people Holly loves -- even the ones who are not yet born. A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while …
Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life. For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics -- and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly's life, affecting all the people Holly loves -- even the ones who are not yet born. A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list -- all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.
Much like everything I have read so far by David Mitchell, I loved this.
The last part of the book, "Sheep’s Head, 2043", is one of the darkest, bleakest, and yet most plausible descriptions of a post-oil post-civilization near-future I have ever read, and its ending is surprisingly emotional - I suppose because by then we have spent over 600 pages and 60 years with Holly Sykes, from teenage runaway in Kent in 1982 to grandmother in a dystopian Ireland in 2043, via many other parts of the world (or should I say "worlds" - this is a fantasy novel in many parts).
Yes, the penultimate chapter was a bit cartoonish, but it was also WICKEDLY fun. It was the final chapter that seemed out of place to me - almost like a completely different book, sans the Deus Ex Marinus. However the more unforgivable sin in this book is the failure to follow up on the Soleil Moore thread. Why was Crispin in the Script? Very frustrating when everything comes full circle except for that.
If you enjoy Clair North's style you'll probably enjoy The Bone Clocks.
Set pretty much in our world, with the addition of one magical ability, Check. A struggle between different factions using the magical power for good or evil, Check. Delving deep into the character's lives, Check. Pretty heavy left wing politics. Check. (At some point I even wondered if it's written by her under a new pseudonym).
The main difference is that in North's novels the main characters and reader are very much aware of the rules of the magic system, while in The Bone Clocks it is very much held as a mystery.
I did find the last section to be a bit too heavy handed for my taste.
David Mitchell's novel The Bone Clocks is a satisfying, pleasingly written page-turner. I usually enjoy nonlinear plots that involve many stories that manage to come together. Additionally, some of the stories contained within this novel seem realistic, while others belong to the realm of fantasy. The lives of mortals ramble on, while two groups of immortals are fighting a war. It's a clever and riveting good-versus-evil story with a cautionary ending.
I found the characters to be multidimensional and had fun reading this. Bravo!
Another one of Mitchell. Like Cloud Atlas it makes a strong bet on how this world – or at least our world – will be / is bound to change beyond recognition. It is good that readers of a mainstream novel are reminded how lucky we are to have endless and reliable supply of things like heat, electricity, communication channels. Journalists in not-sto-lucky places don't transmit this enough when reporting how life is in war torn countries, or even not officially at war, where there is no internet and electricity is available randomly. The story itself falls in the fantasy genre, but tehre are themes of human interest that makes one put the book aside and think – the greatness of true love, teenage problems, family, tenderness, and the arrogance and privilege, revenge and sorrow. And personal sacrifice. The setback is that in too many passages there are sentences that …
Another one of Mitchell. Like Cloud Atlas it makes a strong bet on how this world – or at least our world – will be / is bound to change beyond recognition. It is good that readers of a mainstream novel are reminded how lucky we are to have endless and reliable supply of things like heat, electricity, communication channels. Journalists in not-sto-lucky places don't transmit this enough when reporting how life is in war torn countries, or even not officially at war, where there is no internet and electricity is available randomly. The story itself falls in the fantasy genre, but tehre are themes of human interest that makes one put the book aside and think – the greatness of true love, teenage problems, family, tenderness, and the arrogance and privilege, revenge and sorrow. And personal sacrifice. The setback is that in too many passages there are sentences that are puzzles that will be solved only later in the plot. There are so many of them I only fully enjoyed and understood the book the second time I read it – but then it was sublime and most moving.
Irked at first by the switching narrators, I was definitely charmed by the main characters. The supernatural mumbo-jumbo seemed overbearing at first, but it turns out to be deftly woven into a human story which sees its character relationships enriched by the otherworldly business.
This book was kind of a mess. I have to admit I wasn't the biggest fan of Cloud Atlas so I really had no desire to read The Bone Clocks. But fate intervened... I saw it at the library and as one of the groups I belong to here on goodreads had it as its February group read I thought what the heck. I have to admit I enjoyed the ensuing discussions in that group more than I enjoyed the book. Not that the book is all bad because it's not. There are some really interesting chapters, some fun chapters. It's just the sum seemed smaller than its parts somehow. I'm not big on a book that introduces new characters over and over with each new section only to basically ignore them in later chapters. That just jars my reading momentum and makes me question what the heck I am …
This book was kind of a mess. I have to admit I wasn't the biggest fan of Cloud Atlas so I really had no desire to read The Bone Clocks. But fate intervened... I saw it at the library and as one of the groups I belong to here on goodreads had it as its February group read I thought what the heck. I have to admit I enjoyed the ensuing discussions in that group more than I enjoyed the book. Not that the book is all bad because it's not. There are some really interesting chapters, some fun chapters. It's just the sum seemed smaller than its parts somehow. I'm not big on a book that introduces new characters over and over with each new section only to basically ignore them in later chapters. That just jars my reading momentum and makes me question what the heck I am reading? A collection of short stories? A novel? Make up your mind. Too much like Cloud Atlas in that regard. I'm not a fan of magical realism either but that's okay because this book kind of bypassed that whole genre and leapt right into fantasy. And I'm fine with that. It's just this book lacked a human pulse to quote my beloved Mars Volta. I was left feeling kind of empty and disappointed. There was no character in which I felt emotionally invested. A lot of reading and no real reward.
Engrossing disappointment. I don't think I'm reading too much into the self-reference to think that Mitchell knew it would be a disappointment, but I can't read enough into it to make that clever. There's an interesting adventure story in here, underdeveloped and afraid to reveal itself.
So disappointed in Mitchell's latest book. I am a huge fan of his writing, but think he either couldn't make up his mind about what he wanted to do in this book, or was too hesitant to take it all the way there.
I'm finally coming to terms with the fact that Mitchell is never going to write another "Cloud Atlas," which is one of my favorite books. Not only is this book desperately in need of a better editor -- it's 600+ pages of overly-detailed tangents that add nothing to the story -- but the prose is downright irritating. The second half barely goes a quarter-page without a made-up term using the prefix "psycho-" or "sub-", much the way that 80s/90s sci-fi novels gratingly and constantly used "cyber-". It took all my willpower to get through the last 150 pages in the hopes that the end would redeem it. NOPE. Just don't read it.
Another quite entertaining novel from David Mitchell in the time machine fiction vein, although I think the plot doesn't jump in time. Starts out like Cloud Atlas or Ghostwriter, but ends up like an episode of X-men. A nice example of the difficulty one has in maintaining quality when all details are revealed and nothing is left to the imagination.
So, so uneven. Mostly entertaining, well written, but there must be 200 pages that could have been cut. Still, I'll read his next one when it comes out.
As with Cloud Atlas, this book is six interlinked stories, spanning time. Unlike CA, in this book half the stories are wonderfully written. The other half are ...not, and doesn't have nearly the intricately crafted feel of CA. I was super disappointed.
David Mitchell is my favorite author, I think, so this one probably suffers from high expectations. Perhaps it deserves a 4, but I'll need some convincing.
The thing Mitchell always has going for him is his investment in and sympathy for characters. Arlo Guthrie frequently complained of being stuck downstream from Bob Dylan on the river of songs and the Bone Clocks is Mitchell hopping upstream of Neil Gaiman. Instead of some saccharine darkness where you know things are going to get weird, but eventually end up just fine, here you get to inhabit real solid beings with natural and varied reactions to unnatural events. Every character is an individual and full. You could read pages of any of their internal monologue and not be able to guess who wrote them; man or woman, urban or rural, foreign or domestic. It's impressive.
All this brilliant characterization and layered lives builds …
David Mitchell is my favorite author, I think, so this one probably suffers from high expectations. Perhaps it deserves a 4, but I'll need some convincing.
The thing Mitchell always has going for him is his investment in and sympathy for characters. Arlo Guthrie frequently complained of being stuck downstream from Bob Dylan on the river of songs and the Bone Clocks is Mitchell hopping upstream of Neil Gaiman. Instead of some saccharine darkness where you know things are going to get weird, but eventually end up just fine, here you get to inhabit real solid beings with natural and varied reactions to unnatural events. Every character is an individual and full. You could read pages of any of their internal monologue and not be able to guess who wrote them; man or woman, urban or rural, foreign or domestic. It's impressive.
All this brilliant characterization and layered lives builds up an impressive foundation, however, for what is a sadly scant and implausible climax. It's like the massive silver pedestal of the Stanley Cup, engraved with the names of everyone that contributed to momentous seasons, topped with a bruised chunk of coffee-stained styrofoam. The Bone Clocks only loses one star for this, because the rest of the writing is fantastic.
The second star (or maybe just a half) comes off the top for a denouement that is less falling-action/summing-up than an added novella with shared characters.
