I have no idea if the movie version of Cloud Atlas will be any good, but it was worth making just so we could get that excellent trailer. In fact, they probably shouldn't even release the movie. Just use the trailer to promote the book. It worked on me because once I saw that thing I couldn't get this read fast enough. 
 An American notary crosses the Pacific and encounters many unsavory characters in the mid-1800s. In 1931 a young man fleeing his creditors cons his way into the home of a respected composer. A female journalists tries to expose a dangerous conspiracy involving a nuclear reactor back in 1975. In the early 21st century an aging publisher finds himself in hot water after his biggest professional success. The near future has an Asian society based on corporations using genetically modified fabricants as slave labor, and the far future finds a young man in Hawaii living a primitive tribal lifestyle playing tour guide to a woman from a place that still has technology. 
 These are the six stories that David Mitchell links together. They're nested one within another and also mirrored in the first and second half of the book. If that's all that he accomplished here, then it'd just be a really clever way to structure a novel, but it's the way that Mitchell hit six completely different tones yet uses the same themes in each that the book really shines. 
 I'm beyond impressed with the way he made each story feel like it's own separate tale. If someone had told me that this was a book written by six different authors, I would have believed it, and each is intriguing in it's own right. Themes of slavery and people being controlled in one way or another along with depictions of misused or corrupted power come up again and again, but whether it feels like serious dystopian sci-fi or a beach read thriller, Mitchell makes it all hang together until it really does feel like one epic tale. And the thoughts at the conclusion lead to one of the greatest ending lines I've ever read. 
 I don't even think I need to see the movie now.