If you were ever read to as a child, you'll recall the thrill of the cliffhanger. That unresolved moment of suspense has always worked to bring the reader back to the story.
David Mitchell brings this and many other bits of story telling magic to his latest novel "Cloud Atlas." It's a story that leaps effortlessly from the topmost yard of a mizzen mast in Polynesia to the sweaty bedroom chamber of two lovers in Belgium and on into the futuristic trial of a robot in Korea. Mitchell calls it a ladder of tribes; a coliseum of confrontation.
