@Unbroken Atlas Shrugged?
I’ve only read the book of Cloud Atlas. In the book, the different stories are nested like Russian dolls. You read the beginning of each in order, and then the end of each in the opposite order. In the ending chapters, there are clever connections between each story. The author said in an interview that the movie had more of a “pointillist” structure, where you see a few minutes of each scene, just enough to move the plot forward.
I really like the premise of casting a small group of actors and having them appear again and again in the different stories. The execution is pretty baffling in some cases. Hugo Weaving looks very strange in some cases. In the book, the story seems to be about the journey of one soul through different reincarnations.
Some of the stories were better than others. The journey through the south Pacific was probably my favorite, because of the unusual setting and the tense plotline. Future Korea was the most fun to read, but it had a lot of recycled ideas from other movies/novels, like Logan’s Run, Soylent Green, and 1984.
I liked Cloud Atlas in the sense that I had fun reading it. But I enjoyed The Years of Rice and Salt so much more. It follows a group of souls through many different lifetimes, starting with the middle ages and ending in the near future. The premise is that most of western Europe was wiped out in the black plague, and how history develops from there. China, India, the Middle East become the main world powers.
The characters are quirky and endearing; you get to know them well and they have strong personalities. That’s something that I felt was missing from “Cloud Atlas.” “Rice and Salt” is mostly about their everyday lives, which are fascinating because of the alternate history angle and the unusual times and places the author writes about. Through their lives, you see sweeping changes in history. There’s a running theme of whether humanity can move past pointless cruelty and rise to its true potential. It’s one of my favorite books.