Cloud Atlas- David Mitchell

Cloud Atlas is not a dumb book. It has internalized the tropes of various genres and does a great job of miming each genre, from the paperback thriller to the science fiction novelette and the post apocalyptic fantasy.The novel is constantly engaging and sweeps up the reader with each shift in tone.You can almost feel it when the author shifts gears to a new genre.However, the juggling of genres and their interlinking, while being mildly interesting and competently executed, is only superficially clever. The book does not aim to, nor does it acheve the sublime brilliance of a true literary masterpiece. To em the only path breaking thing about the novel was the genre bending narrative, which many others have done better than the author. Again, the individual stories themselves are nothing remarkable. Like, I said, the idea seems to be to use the standard genre tropes and expect the whole to to lift the mundane sumof parts to the level of brilliance. But, it never quite seems to take off
Ultimately, although the book is not a bad read, it remains just that, when it could have been so much more