Cloud Atlas

This book came close to 5 stars, but i couldn't quite bring myself to do it. Then on the last page Mitchell blew past a cardinal that I can't really forgive him for. He started preaching at me. Probably the main theme of the book is the constancy of humans trying to dominate other humans. More succinctly it was an exploration of Nietzsche's “will to power”. This was shown from story to story with the nested novella's, but usually with one exception (ie, one person in each story who stood up against, or became enlightened enough to move past the will to power). All of this was fairly easily picked up throughout the book (in fact it wasn't that subtle at all), but at the very last page he literally spells this out for the reader. The last lines of the book are something to the effect of “everything you can do in this life is nothing but a drop in the ocean, but then what is an ocean but a multitude of drops?” This was in reference to Adam Eweing's impending life as an abolishionist in pre-civil war USA. Not only was the last line full of cheese, but any reader who could make all the way through the book would have known what Mitchell was driving at, and to have him state it so blatantly ruined the effect of the rest of the book, and substantially cheapened the experience over all.

In summary. Good book, clever ideas and use of various voices. The sermon at the end ruined the message it was trying to preach.