If I had a nickel for every book I’ve read this year that boomerangs out in time, before returning back to where it started, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but weird it happened twice.

For what is, in my impression, a fairly unique timeline, it has been fun to read twice this year. The first I read was Greenwood by Michael Christie. In Greenwood, we start in the future and step back through four generations of Greenwoods, before returning back to the great-great-granddaughter we start with. What I loved is that Cloud Atlas is that while the timeline is the same, everything else is so different: we start in the past and go to the far distant future, and have to seek the common thread that reveals itself in each story-- the idea that characters in each time are reborn from the ones previous, and we are witnessing the reincarnations of an existence through time. 

I’ve seen this book referred to as confusing, but I didn’t -- maybe it's because I read Greenwood recently, but maybe not. I think like Greenwood, it takes a bit to really get into the book, but once I was in, I was hooked. My favourite parts were the far-distant future sci-fi stories, but each part is interesting in its own way. On pure entertainment value, this is a great book to read. But while the author says the book is about the universality of human nature, I kind of missed it. I can certainly see the parts that can be read that way, but I think for myself, the drastic change in character, scene, and plot maybe obscured it. I was too interested in how the worlds worked to pay that much attention to the characters (but that’s because I’m a sucker for world-building). Greenwood, on the other hand, had much more in common in timeframe to timeframe, so I personally found the messages in that book easier to pick out. 

I’m certainly glad I read it, and I even watched the movie! The Rotten Tomatoes score isn't the best, but not awful, and I personally really liked it. A lot changed, particularly with the futurist Korean scenes, but enjoyable, for just a fun film to watch.