Having already seen the movie adaption before reading the novel did probably spoil most of the fun for me, as I already knew about the major ways, in which the six stories are interconnected. I also liked the way in which the movie hops in a round-robin manner between the six stories, which places a stronger emphasis on the eclectic aesthetics of the work than the actual book does. Probably this would not have worked out that well in written form, so in general there is nothing to say against the inlay-style (or pyramidic structure, or Matryoshka doll style) which M. chose to intertwine the six texts in the novel.

The book employs loads of self and cross references, which appears to me as the old postmodern trick, that keeps the reader's attention by making you feel smrt and well-read. Some of these references are sufficiently subtle, others come as broad in-your-face hints. The allusion to "Fahrenheit 451" in the protagonist's name in "An Orison of Sonmi~451" feels OK as a nod to Ray Bradbury's famous dystopia, but that Sonmi~451 requests the works of Huxley and Orwell from the library, appears to me like a very dull way to make sure, that absolutely no reader misses the reference to 20th century dystopian literature.

I found the recurring topics in the stories very interesting, especially the various aspects of the objectification of human beings which starts with the colonial view of native tribes, recurs for example as the "undead" in the Aurora house and finds its most extreme expression in the Sonmi~451 story.

Where I felt disappointed as a reader was the quality of the plot or better "the plots" in plural, as each story is unbearably loaded with clichés. Even the Somni~451 story, which I find the strongest in terms of imagination, concludes in the inevitable "unforeseen twist".

A good part of this is presented by M. as intentional, as the quality of some stories is also object to self-reference in the book, when f.e. Tim Cavendish reviews the Luisa Rey pulp novel or when Robert Frobisher is criticizing the writing style of the "Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing". The same holds for the novel itself, as M. let's Frobisher ask the question, if the structure of the "Cloud Atlas Sextet" was "revolutionary or gimmicky?". Has M. intentionally and masterly tuned each story to just the precise level of lameness that he needed for his composition? Or was this a clever move by the author to avoid foreseeable criticism?