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.