The Cloud Atlas: A Novel

During the final year of World War II, Japanese forces launched around 9,000 balloons containing bombs over the Pacific Ocean to North America. Thanks to a successful media blackout, the general public was unaware of the threat, and the Japanese gave up the project.

Louis Belk is a teenager who, on the way to join the seminary, stops to enlist in the US Army Air Corps and is assigned to become a bomb demolition expert. While in San Francisco for training, he first encounters one of the balloons, but before he realizes what it is, he is transferred to Anchorage, Alaska. It is here that he and his commanding officer, Gurley, must try to predict where the balloons will land next. There are reports that future waves of balloons may carry more than just bombs: biological warfare may be next.

Liam Callanan's "The Cloud Atlas" is narrated by Father Belk at the bedside of his dying friend, a shaman named Ronnie, sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s. Ostensibly, it is a story about Belk's service during World War II, his assignment to Alaska, and his work with the top-secret balloon bombs. However, it is more than just the tale of a life gone by. These years were key in shaping Louis' life; it was while in Anchorage that he met Lily, a shaman with a secret of her own. And it was during the war that Louis learned about shamanism and the animal spirits that roam through Alaska.

Initially, I wasn't thrilled with the book. The topic of the balloons interested me, but reading through Belk's ramblings didn't make a lot of sense at first. But the more I kept reading, the more the story began to weave its spell. I found myself excited to get home and read more of the book, to find out what would happen next. How did the war end for everyone? What happened to Lily, to Gurley, to Louis himself? "The Cloud Atlas" is certainly a tale of one man's experience in the far northwest corner of the earth, but it is also a story of love, of life, of the yearning for completion, for knowledge of another human being, of respect for each other.

The book, like so many I've tried to read, is extremely well written. It takes the reader to Alaska, the Alaska of the 1940's, torn by war but still inescapably a frozen wasteland. I wasn't at all lost, even when it switched back and forth from past to present. I was only a bit let down by the end. I didn't really understand, or if I did, was saddened that I felt no closure. The author penned a great read, embued it with all kinds of great detail, only to leave me standing at the end saying, huh?

I can still recommend it as it is beautifully written.

I read this because I thought it was the book the movie was based on. Imagine my confusion when it was NOTHING like the movie. In fact I only just today, more than a year later, realized the mistake. That is what prompted me to write my review, because without that mistake I would have never read this book. It can be slow moving at times but there is some wonderful texture woven in that I found to be just magical. I truly enjoyed it, and would read it again.

I saw this book at the library and thought the title rang a bell; probably a confusion with the other Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. What a beautiful, touching book! It is one of those too-rare novels that succeeds in creating a world I don't know and probably never will: small-town Alaska. It's not the Alaska of polar bears and igloos, or the Alaska of high mountain adventure, it's a very believable place, populated with interesting and unusual characters: the town drunk who is also a shaman, an aging priest who was once a bomb disposal expert, a beautiful half-Yup'ik woman who seems to have mysterious powers. The ideas of Christian and Yup'ik spirituality weave together, and the question of what is real and what is imaginary or faked floats through the story the way the balloons float across the barren landscape.

A wonderful first novel. Here's hoping Liam Callanan gives us another story as good as this one.

This moving book takes place in majestic Alaska. Louis Belk is assigned to Alaska after completing his bomb recovery training. Not just ordinary bombs, these are "loaded" air balloons floating in from Japan. Almost as problamatic as the balloons is Louis's commanding officer, a tyranical lunatic who is set on being the one to crack the secrets of the balloon bombs.

This book is very well written, and exciting enough to keep you reading well into the night. The characters are interesting. Although I gave the book five stars because it is so readable and hard to put down; I did find a few flaws with it. Most notable is that the characters and their motives aren't always fully explained. But despite that, this book is still an excellent read. It reminded me of The Kite Runner; if you liked that book, you'll probably like this one too.

We all long for something. Often, though, it is something hard to define, almost intangible, and just out of reach. Like a cloud.

Liam Callanan's debut novel is a pitch-perfect portrayal of that longing and how it comes to dominate the life of a man, in this case, the life of Louis Belk, a one time bomb disposal soldier in World War II turned priest. Deployed to Alaska, one of the more bizarre outposts during the war, Belk is assigned to serve under a crazed officer on the hunt for the elusive Japanese balloon bombs. Along the way, he becomes tangled up in a love triangle with the officer and Lily, a half-Yupik woman of mystery, with strange secrets of her own. The story unfolds through the window of the friendship between the now-priest Belk and a Yupik shaman who is on his deathbed, their years of coexistance as rival holy men in a small Alaska town having made them close. Belk confesses his mistakes and regrets in hope of finding redemption from the spirit world, whether that of the Church he serves or of the Yupik life of the tundra.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and cannot praise it highly enough. It is never once boring or sensational; each word feels perfectly chosen. Callanan deftly weaves the characters in the present with their past selves without ever dropping a thematic point. The characters are real even if the situations they are in are fantastical. In substance if not in style, I am reminded of Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. Both deal with the mystical in the framework of the plain everyday. In an age when many books written by men about men are either thrillers, murder mysteries, or voyeuristic porn, Callanan has succeeded in creating a classic work of literature. It is a joy to read such a finely crafted, insightful, and heartfelt work. I look forward to reading more from him.

The novel is set in Alaska during World War II. The Japanese are making bombs, attaching them to balloons, and sending them over the Pacific Ocean. This actually happened, I hear. One of them landed here in Oregon. The story is about a young soldier assigned to the bomb disposal unit, his crazy commanding officer who is intimately attached to a mysterious woman who looks Japanese, but is actually part Russian and part Yupic (a people native to Alaska). What I liked about this book was that it kept the reader guessing. Was this woman really using magic? Why did the narrator later become a priest? Was Captain Gurley going to finally shoot someone? And who was that boy?

It was a very good read, and I was very pleased my wife got it for me.

I think I will remember this book for a long time. It is beautifully written, sometimes the writing makes me yell out loud, and I just love it. I stopped reading at one point because it seemed to go on and on with too much Alaska, and I'm so glad I picked it up again. It's weird and quirky and it's hard to really like the main characters, especially the male ones, but I have to give it four and a half stars because I can't think of any book more deserving.

Did you know that during WW2, the Japanese built tens of thoudands of ingenious hot-air balloon bombs and launched them over the Pacific? and that many hundreds of these bombs actually landed on US soil, some as far east as Montana? Take this little- known fact, throw in the wilds of Alaska, a young bomb disposal soldier and his ultra-crazy CO and the Yup'ik Eskimo woman they both love, and you get one fabulous story.

Belk is an aging priest whose shaman friend Ronnie is dying. He tries to keep Ronnie alive by telling him about the defining era of his life. Belk was a teenaged bomb defuser in Alaska during WWII, in love with the same half-Eskimo prostitute, Lily, as his outrageously insane commanding officer Gurley. The bombs in question were unmanned and being floated to North America from Japan by balloons. The incendiaries could kill or maim anyone who came near them, but they hadn't been hugely destructive. Then talk of germ warfare emerged, with the prospect of balloons carrying canisters of plague-infected fleas or rats. Everything builds to a final voyage by Belk, Gurley, and Lily, ostensibly to locate Lily's former lover and Japanese spy, Saburo. I was interested to know what was going to happen, but I didn't really care what happened. We know that Belk is going to survive the voyage, but Lily and Gurley are another matter. Lily is conflicted about her feelings for Gurley, and I was conflicted about my feelings for Gurley. He's out of control one minute, and then he's doing something admirable and courageous the next, but he's basically trying to redeem himself in the eyes of the military and of Lily. His two audiences are somewhat at odds, rendering him somewhat conflicted as well.

I found this book by searching on topics related to the Japanese balloon attacks in World War II. Being a reader swayed toward non-fiction I thought it may be good to read a fact-based fiction novel as this is advertised. Unfortunately the story wrapped around the facts is complicated and boring.

Despite the plot issues, the writing itself can be very good at times. It was enjoyable to read the well written descriptions of the Japanese balloons like; "If you've ever been that man on the ground, you know there is something about the silence of a balloon in flight that consumes you, that renders everything around it silent, as if the balloon's magic included not only flight but the ability to swallow sound." The portraits of Great Alaska are also exceptional and seem to come from a man who has lived through an Alaskan cycle of all day light and all day dark. Unfortunately the uncomfortable cobbling of an awkward asexual love story with the unreachable world of native spirituality is really confusing. Much of the time I found myself wondering if Belk (the main character) was dreaming or living the sequence being described and could not stitch together the actual story the author wanted me to see. I understand that mysticism leaves unanswered questions, but in the end the reader wants to know the story. You can't help but want to scream at Belk to take control of his life and his emotions by jumping Lily and killing his Col. Kurz (Gurley). You also want to tell off the author for the length and complexity of Belk's torture, but your really not sure how much he endured and how much he dreamed.

Near the end of the book I found myself hoping for more descriptions of the curious balloons as I trudged through the mud of the love story. In reality I just wanted the story to end so I knew the ending. I'd read more by this author if he promised to concentrate his story on a more simple thread and leveraged his descriptive ability to enhance the story rather than surround it.

Through the twists and turns of the Alaskan tundra-I honestly didn't know where this book was leading me until the last moment. It was a brilliant story about love, war, and the bargains we make with ourselves and others to survive life's tragedies and travails. I found it an especially poignant and engaging work but what distinguishes it as literature and not just another Oprah's book club selection (no offense) is that the it truly resonates and stays with you. The character development is subtle and well crafted. While I didn't appreciate the varied tempo of the plot while reading it, in retrospect, it adds an additional depth and timbre to the book I had missed at first read. I picked up the book on a lark at an airport but am now planning on hosting a book club in an effort to glean new insights and further explore the many layers of this debut novel. But I would have to say that the most moving aspect of this book is the enduring message of pragmatic optimism it espouses which is so hard to find in modern literature. In the interweaving of so many tragic stories and lives broken by war and circumstance, the author magically communicates a message of hope and peace which is a precious treasure in times such as these. I am dying to discuss this book at length with friends and would highly recommend it to anyone.

I take issue with the dominant-culture Euro-head description of The Cloud Atlas being part "fantasy." To any traditional indigenous person, what goes on in The Cloud Atlas vis a vis the "shamans" is simply and naturally what IS.

But about the book itself: Characters are mostly drawn in living color, and what a way to discover an oddity of WWII that was covered up with the cooperation of the media for the war's duration. Right there you have a topic for an entire class period or book-group session.

There are action scenes, mostly fights, a bit awkwardly rendered, and a sprinkling of high-pitched melodrama inside the love story.

But primarily The Cloud Atlas concerns the collision of not two, but several worlds on a war front we scarcely consider when that conflict comes to mind.

Strands diverge and come together and the ending is perfect-pitch.

But for pity's sake, the store, have your reviewers learn something about the culture they're writing about. In fact anyone who really reads this novel should get, by implication, that no character considers any of the spirit-action "fantastic".

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I was initially attracted by the subject of balloon bombs and the Alaskan setting. The author's excellent research would have made this book worthwhile for just those two items; however, the plot and the characters are what made this such a treat to read. Callanan has done a masterful job weaving a rich tapestry of human emotion, religion, and mysticism against a fascinating historical background. I hope I do not have to wait too long for his next novel.

Cloud Atlast is the story of a WWII Bomb Disposal agent who is sent to Alaska in the wake of Japanese hot air balloon-bombs making their way across the Atlantic at the end of the war. While there he falls in love with a native Alaskan fortune teller and has various underming experiences with his sadistic commanding officer. The story is told in a series of flashbacks that mostly deal with his developing psuedo-feelings for the girl, and his increasingly intense experiences looking for these bombs and dealing with his seargant.

The book is a misfire because it is meant to be a character piece where the different elements, (i.e. the absurdity of war, unexpressed love, beautifull nature etc.) add up to an greater and complete whole. Unfortunately I felt the book fell flat and never reached its potential. The main character was well developed but turned out to be boring, and uninspired. His submissiveness and naitivity got old after awhile as I never felt that he really grew from his experiences. Also his narritive was uneven as his penchant for melodrama resulted in way too many "life changing" experiences which in effect just diluted the important moments towards the end of the book. In addition the atmosphere of the book didn't work for me as I never felt any emotional ties to any of the characters.

There are some scenes where the book really works and is laugh out loud funny. These are mostly Catch 22 meets Apocalypse Now types of encounters and usually involve the mail character and his insane/absurd seargent.

Bottom Line: In the end this book was a let down and frequently boring. I never emotionally connected with the characters and I really can't recommend it.

Who's magic is more powerful? A Priest's or a Shaman's? The love of a woman or the secrets held from a distant past? Friendship or duty? In retrospect Louis tries to sort it all out. Perhaps the greatest magic of all lies in forgiveness.... or is it confession. See if you can sort it out.

I read this novel several years ago and have been haunted by it ever since. It is a beautifully lyrical morality play, chronically the maturation and corruption of an 'innocent'. Drawing allusions from Christian, Hindu and native American myths (the balloon man as 'angel', trickster, magicians and healers, redeeming prostitute, etc.), the author has woven a magical tale. One has to look only a bit deeper than the surface story to learn and marvel at this book. Not to be missed...

It cannot speak to this book, but a ton of reviews mention the six interconnecting stories that begin in the past, go into the future, and go back again--and a Tom Hanks movie to boot . If that sounds intriguing, that's Cloud Atlas (sans "The"), by David Mitchell. And it's stunning. Go read that book.

This book is about a priest sitting by his dying friend, who happens to be a Shaman. Much of the book is set in Alaska during World War II. The main character is about a young man who was disposed of balloon bombs during the war. It turns out this really did happen, though I had never heard about this fascinating part of our history. It is hard to explain the book really and it isn't the type that I usually read. I was afraid I'd be turned off by the war setting because that really isn't my thing but I LOOOVVVEEDD this book. It is moving, dramatic, and was one of the best books I've read in a while. To me, this book deserves 5 stars.

Like many others here I was aiming for the David Mitchell book but I am happy to have stumbled across this gem. The narrative style is charming with the reversion between the elderly narrator and the young protagonist creates an interesting rhythm to the text. The mysterious Japanese balloons and the mythology of the Yup'ik people are woven together rather beautifully to create a compelling story. An intelligent and conscientious novel. I will certainly be looking out for more of Callahan's work.

It's refreshing to read a first novel by an author who isn't trapped in his own insular world. This isn't yet another novel about a confused twentysomething trying to make it in the big city. It's a big, brainy, heartfelt novel, set during World War II, that is unashamedly exciting and fun to read. Big ups to Liam Callanan.

An absolutely masterful blending of history, fiction, and the fantastic. An amazing debut, with characters that are fully fleshed out, and narrative that transports the reader into a wonderful adventure with little/no need for suspension of disbelief. At times, Callanan's prose reminded me of Mark Helprin's "Winter's Tale" or "A Soldier of the Great War". Beautiful stuff.

Picked this up just because its subjects were both of interest -- WWII and Alaska. Thought I knew everything about the former and always wanted to visit the latter. Turns out this is an intriguing and thoroughly researched novel about a little known but shockingly successful Japanese effort to terrorize the US in late WWII with paper "balloon bombs" -- set in Alaska -- a genuine American frontier. Its got history, mysticism, adventure, interesting characters and Alaska - a hard to beat combination. Highly recommend it!

Very intriguing, rich in its history, and adept in its storytelling. It draws you in somewhat gradually, and then you find you're on page 200 and you haven't blinked. Would highly recommend for anyone who likes books.

I started reading this book thinking it was Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Michell's book, but was I wrong. Overall though, I thought it was a really great book. One of the best I've read in a long time. I would recommend it to anyone who was looking for a good book.

do yourself a favor and read this one. Everything about it: the setting, the characters, the language, the love and the tragedy are executed to perfection. I cannot wait to see what this author comes up with next because this is just a unique read. It makes you long for an adventure/experience such as that lived by the characters of the Cloud Atlas.

I though there was too much introspection and remorse in this. The story has interest, but I don't really think the author was able to make this as interesting as I would like. More action would have helped. Less mysticism as well. But, what do I know!

A book with a priest as the central character is not one I'd usually pick. But Cloud Atlas was wonderful -- a great story that keeps you on edge, characters that capture your imagination as their stories unfold, plus the environment of Alaska, spirituality, and secrets. And I ended up really liking the priest!

I read this book because it was recommended on NPR. The story itself is compelling and unpredictable. The beginning and the end move along quite well, but near the middle of the book the tale begins to ramble.

The things I disliked about the book were the corny dialogue and the stereotypical, mysterious "Asian Female". Overall I'd recommend the book but the author should probably get a new editor.

This is an interesting book... it's actually 6 differnt books, set in 6 different time periods with a thin line running through and combining each story. As you complete the first half of each of the first 6 stories, you return in reverse order to finish each story and pull them all together. A fantastic, imaginative read full of mystery, plot twists, and creativity. The exact opposite of the movie.

I bought this book thinking it was the 'other' Cloud Atlas: I read it anyway and found it hard to put down. It is like reading a strange train wreak in slow motion. I also like very much the effort the author went to get the historical authenticity and empty weird feel for wartime Anchorage.

I just want to say I hope lawsuits are continuing go be forthcoming on collusion to keep e-book prices so high.... I mean seriously, there's no production cost yet it costs the same for the paperback as it does for Kindle. NOT FUNNY.

If you did not see this film in a theater it is best seen on a large (70" or better?) TV with a nice snifter of brandy or, perhaps, a cup of your favorite tea or coffee. It is a visual treat and the creativity of the film makers is a wonder to behold. Not everyone will enjoy this film - it is non-liner and episodic and requires a willingness to suspend your disbelief and immerse yourself in the visual beauty of the scenes and the marvelous performances by the few actors who play a multitude of characters. The movie is a testament of film makers who made a film from a novel "that could not be made into a movie."

I thought the little-known fact of the Japanese Balloon bombing was very interesting, and I believe it alone could have supported the entire story line without all of the added mysticism, introspection etc. (Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction) Also the book contained way too many flashbacks (back stories). I was at times confused then bored by the 'First Person' presentation, however some scenes in the book captured my complete attention.

I bought this book hoping that it would be good, but my vocabulary was not as good as i thought. The author uses so many words that i dont know the meanings to, that i have to look up the defintion of each word to understand what each sentence means. I haven't gotten far enough because I loose my focus after looking up what each word means.

the store should fix this. David Mitchell's book is "Cloud Atlas" and Liam Callanan's book is called "The Cloud Atlas".

I'm giving the book 5 stars, though, because I assume all books are good unless they prove otherwise, and I haven't read it.