Salon.com Books | "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell

And this partial review, too. But I don't have a Salon account. Maybe you do.

Salon.com Books | "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell: "'Cloud Atlas' by David Mitchell
From 19th century seafaring yarn to nuclear-power muckraking to a cloned servant in the cyberpunk future, this dazzling series of interlocked narratives is one of the summer's biggest books.
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By Laura Miller

Sept. 2, 2004 | David Mitchell is a spookily protean writer. His favored technique -- he used it in his first novel, 'Ghostwritten' -- is to build a long narrative out of shorter ones, stories told in vastly different voices and styles, then cinch the whole patchwork together with some supernal device that reveals their underlying connections. In 'Ghostwritten,' he couldn't manage to pull off that final, unifying gesture, but his third novel, 'Cloud Atlas,' is far more convincing, a genuine and thoroughly entertaining literary puzzle. "