Powerful, unflinching and deeply spiritual

The Cloud Atlas is wonderful, deeply moving and surprising at many turns. I have never read anything quite like this novel. World War II Alaska, it’s native shaman, a priest out of place, but increasingly in touch with native spirituality and of course the amazing conceit of the balloons renders a story that will move and enlighten you.

I wonder how many people bought this book only to find out later on that it's not David Mitchell's book.

A needlessly drawn out storyline

In my system 3 stars is a lot.
I think this book objectively deserves 4, but for me personally the experience was slightly marred by the somewhat-overdone level of drama in the final act (towards the last chapter). It's a matter of taste but for me it kind of became less emotionally convincing for a moment.
Overall it's a great novel though. Dreamy, eerie, beautiful, poetic, and above all, original+unexpected. I loved the atmosphere and I enjoyed reading it.

A (mystical?) thriller where Japanese culture meets the Alaskan native culture, shamanism, alternative WWII weaponry and spies; the psychology of weird male friendships in the backdrop of the unfamiliar tundra landscape+lifestyle? Yes please.

2.5 stars

This is a novel about beautiful and deadly bomb-carrying balloons that Japan launched towards the west coast of US and Canada in the last year of WWII.

And the story progresses like a balloon - slowly, prettily, eerily. Almost like a dream.

There are main and secondary heroes here, sure. But the main hero of the story? Alaska. Its land, its people, its strange sense of being the end of the world, every other place being "Outside."

The war, too. The mess and the madness and exhilaration of it, especially when you are young and in love.

PS. Yes, I also started reading this having mistaken it for the other Cloud Atlas. Glad I did.

Very interesting story about a young soldier and his strange experiences in Alaska. Very different which made it such a good read.

Love Liam Callanan's books!

I've apparently read the wrong book -- my cello teacher had mentioned "Cloud Atlas" (in hindsight, not "THE Cloud Atlas") to me as a book he was interested in, but he didn't know the author's name off the top of his head. I thought this was the book, but I was wrong. :)

Still, I read this book anyway because the subject matter seemed interesting. As it turned out, it much less historical fiction than it is...well, I'm not sure what to call it. A literary art piece? I suppose those with a different sensibility may really enjoy it, but I do not and did not. Although the author appears to have really done his research on the technical subject matter (Japanese fire balloons used during WWII), the human-centric plot felt very loose and meandering. The characters were, to me, neither sympathetic nor particularly interesting. In the end, I found myself asking "What was the point [of this book]?" and I could not find an answer.

I really enjoyed this book. There is a sense of mystery and metaphysical atmosphere in the setting, which is WWII Alaska. It's temporally enigmatic, since the story is told as a series of flashbacks interwoven with a present-day story. It is told through the point of view of an old Catholic priest who has an unlikely friendship with an Aleut shaman. He spends most of his time remembering a brief moment of history in which he was a naive young soldier doing bomb disposal.
What unfolds is a love story. A love story that depends on the spiritual and temporal as much as it does on the landscape of Alaska itself, and on the war. The characters were exquisitely rendered, acting as true to form as real people, and flawed - there were no heroes. Except maybe time.
The plot moves slowly and character development takes center stage for most of the novel. In some sense, this contributes to the realism and subtlety, but it's definitely not a story about adventure and action heroes.

I loved it. I don't really understand some of the mysticism and what happened at the end but I'm quite impressed with this story. The background setting was a total surprise to me. I had no idea that bombs were landing in North America in WW2 via gas filled balloons from Japan. I can't imagine a media blackout like that nowadays.

At least an A- for this novel. Story of an old priest and his Eskimo shaman friend/nemesis. And of the old priest as a teenage soldier during WWII in Alaska tracking down Japanese balloon bombs that floated from Japan across the Pacific to explode in over a dozen western states. And his attempt at surviving his crazed capitan. This is very much a spiritual quest between native religion and the white man's Christianity. And then there is Lily's story....