Cloud Atlas is an ambitious novel structured like a set of nested Russian dolls. There are six interrelated narrative threads. Each of the first five is interrupted half-way through to begin the next, and then they are finished in the reverse order. The stories range over time from a businessman in 1850 to a goatherd in post-apocalyptic Hawaii, and each has connections to the next. Each is told in an entirely different narrative voice from the others, and Mitchell does an admirable job of writing them all credibly.

I enjoyed some of the threads more than others, but the effect of the whole was quite good. I was very happy that there wasn't any kind of goofy sci-fi connection between the characters, because that would have ruined what turns out to be a really interesting meditation on time, the written word, and to a lesser extent race.