The Bone Clocks

hardcover, 624 pages

Published Nov. 8, 2014 by Random House.

ISBN:
978-1-4000-6567-7
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
879370677

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4 stars (66 reviews)

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 …

3 editions

Review of 'The Bone Clocks' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

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).

Review of 'The Bone Clocks' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

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!

Review of 'The Bone Clocks' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

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 …

Review of 'The Bone Clocks' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

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.

Review of 'The Bone Clocks' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

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 …

Review of 'The Bone Clocks' on Goodreads

3 stars

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.

Review of 'The Bone Clocks' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

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.

Review of 'The Bone Clocks' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

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.

Review of 'The Bone Clocks' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

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 …

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