LOVED IT LOVED IT LOVED IT LOVED IT LOVED IT Mitchell has an amazing ability to change his style of prose with each character shift and make you truly believe in that character. He also seems to be able to write lines that make you stop in amazement at the beauty you've just read with such frequency, it must make other authors weep. I would and I do recommend to everyone.

If I were asked to shelve this book in a library I would find it very difficult to categorise. It ranges across genres combining elements of: a realist life story of Holly Sykes, visiting her at significant moments in her life; a fantasy novel involving a battle between good and evil in the form of Horologists and Anchorites and a dystopia charting the consequences of our disregard for the damage our modern society is inflicting on the Earth. The book is written in the present tense set in five different times with differing first person narrators charting Holly’s life. She narrates the first and the last; the story begins with her first teenage love and cheating boyfriend and the final section has her as a grandmother with responsibility for the next generation. Both voices Mitchell captures perfectly, showing the extremity of love, first love to open the book and the unselfish depth of love of a grandparent for family. The other sections are narrated by an Oxford undergraduate whom Holly has an affair with, a jaded author with sly digs here at Mitchell’s contemporaries (I liked the title of Hershey’s acclaimed novel ‘Desiccated Embryos’), and a ‘returnee’ who wages war on the vampiric Anchorites. It would take me more than one reading to understand properly how these all hang together but truthfully, I don’t really care. Mitchell writes so dazzlingly at times that he keeps you hanging on every word. There is a wonderful passage when the returnee summarises what has taken place in the last fifty years to a character who has been ‘asleep’ for that time, and a beautiful, poignant description of the Dusk showing the movement of souls after death. I can’t sum it up neatly but I loved it.

Absolutely loved it. Great depth and awesome story.

I'd already massively enjoyed Cloud Atlas but The Bone Clocks cements David Mitchell as one of my favourite modern authors. He creates intricate, compelling and exciting stories and writes so well that it's an absolute pleasure to read. His characters are fantastic too - the section with Crispin Hershey as narrator in particular had me laughing out loud multiple times. If you're yet to discover David Mitchell's writing, treat yourself to this one; you'll not be disappointed!

Am a huge fan of Cloud Atlas and was worried it wouldn't be as impressive but I should have known better, a real modern classic and one that keeps you absorbed and thrilled.