The Bone Clocks is definitely my favorite book so far into the young year of 2016. It may remain just that, or slowly slip down the list as I read more in the coming months. It's just hard to say at this point because even after finishing the book three days ago, I have yet to wrap my head around my full feelings for it. I think a lot of people may have a similar reaction to what is obviously an intelligently written novel by David Mitchell. This was my introduction into Mitchell's works. It has been considered by many as his best to date, so maybe it was a good first choice for me. The thing about Mitchell's works is that they are each (I'm not sure if this includes every novel he has written) related to one another by a string of sorts. He has referred to this as his "Uber-novel". My initial interest in Mitchell had been in reading Slade House. While looking at reviews of Slade House, I learned that a part of its world referred its predecessor The Bone Clocks. I could have started his earliest work, but it turns out that it doesn't really matter. Just as time is a spiral and a spider's web in The Bone Clocks, there is no need to read one book before the other. Things are only slightly related, but they are of the same world. One character that you come across in Cloud Atlas pops up in Ghostwritten, and so on. These occurrences have been coined "easter eggs". That's fiendishly clever writing. 
 All of that sums up what The Bone Clocks was to me. It is one big story that is divided into six, separate, but finely interrelated sections. By the middle of the book, it is apparent that one character exists in and ties the entire story together. Her name is Holly Sykes. When we first meet Holly, she is a young, somewhat lost teenager. She has a special ability to occasionally see and hear people who may or may not exist in this world. In subsequent sections we learn that they do exist, and Holly is not crazy. Holly is far and away the best character in The Bone Clocks. She is easily likable and very much human in this story. One thing I learned to appreciate in Mitchell's writing is how he introduces other leading characters who are on a whole sub-level to Holly. These characters do not have the immediate likability that she does, but as we leave Holly behind we are stuck with them. It is the inventiveness of Mitchell's writing, and the sublime storytelling that made the Bone Clocks so good throughout. Each character becomes quite appealing not because of who they are, but because of the plot. This plot changes dramatically with each of the six sections, but as time jumps forward by the decades the sections are weaved together into one whole. 
 The only problems I had with Bone Clocks come down to the final section of the book. The sixth section is a wrap-up of sorts, but to me it felt somewhat disconnected from the first five parts and anti-climatic to the plot. The first four sections meander, much like a maze in the book (you'll understand my use of maze here if you decide to read it), but they are a lead to the fifth section. Some of the biggest explosions occur in part five, so it feels like the finale before the end. 
 Anyway, I'm very much looking forward to finding those "easter eggs" as I reverse course to Mitchell's earlier novels.