Great performance of my favourite book!

I can't understand the reviews saying the performances were breathy and hard to understand - were we listening to the same recording?? I didn't notice any issues like that at all, all very clear and well interpreted. A couple of characters didn't quite have the voice they have in my head (Neal Brose and Marco, mainly) but they were still believable as their characters and made for a brilliant audiobook.

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3 people found this helpful

Left feeling that I missed the point.

Not the best david Mitchell book. Typical of his style. Bouncing around different stories that are tangentially linked. For some reason this one fell short for me.

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1 person found this helpful

David Mitchell and the producers have done it again!

As with David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, this story is made up of lots of different narratives, each one in a unique voice.. and so the producers of the audiobook have used different performers for each section.. and just like Cloud Atlas this little touch does wonders, literally giving each character their own voice!
The novel is brilliantly written, has a bit of everything in it.. loved every story equally. Can’t recommend enough

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2 people found this helpful

Great book let down by some of the performances

My first David Mitchell. This is a series of shorter stories, each a stand alone but linked to the others by coincidences and chance. There are elements of mysticism and fantasy in places too. It is obvious that Mitchell can really write, his skills are breathtaking. For me it is let down by some of the performances, the accents are borderline terrible and you can hear the reader breathing at times. In terms of the stories the one set Ireland really dragged for me, it felt self indulgent and with stereotypes for characters. Overall though I really enjoyed this and will be reading / listening to more from David Mitchell.

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I hear a bike pump

London was my favourite. But now I’m left with more questions.
His books must end up as standard school texts. Sorry kids!

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Love David. Love his series of books.

His series of books are a masterpiece of literary enjoyment. Every time I re read I find something I missed first time round.

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1 person found this helpful

Meh

I agree with some of the other reviewers comments on the performance- for example the Irish story, the New Zealand accent is terrible and the London story, marco starts off like he’s just finished a run and needs an inhaler- but this is just a small part of the book.
The stories carry you along, but I feel like there was no conclusion to any.
All in all an enjoyable listen, but it didn’t take my breath away, it was quite forgettable

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Poor Performance great story

I love this book and delighted to have the unabridged version on Audible. The production however is cheap! Breathy, noisy performances with some downright awful accents.
My advice is re-record this book with the voice artists from the first book.

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7 people found this helpful

Slow burn but well worth it

This is a fantastic first novel from David Mitchell. Like a lot of people probably I started with Cloud Atlas and have been picking up others here and there, and it's really impressive to see how well some of the ideas I knew from his later novels in this debut. I like that each main character had their own narrator, but some performances and stories are better than others. This story is a slow burn and things don't really come together until very late, but the journey is worth it if you enjoyed Cloud Atlas, or generally enjoy short story compilations or stories that feature different weaving narratives.

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1 person found this helpful

Did I miss something

Thought the ending was very disappointing. There were some really good parts to this book and the writer is talented but it needed something more at the end.

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