First of all, I sheepishly admit this is my first Mitchell novel. From some reviews I get the sense that I should have read the entire canon to really appreciate this work, but I say "phooey" to that. Yes, I've had Cloud Atlas on my list for a long time, and yes, I was seduced by the new release instead. I'll get to it. 
 The Bone Clocks kept me reading. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. I loved Mitchell's prose and shifting voices. Even when I hated the characters as people. I was emotionally invested in passing updates of characters. 
 And yet, I couldn't help feeling the interesting stuff was happening off in the wings. At the same time, I knew this was probably a good thing. Look how much I was thinking about it. It kept me going, aching to put the pieces together.This was vindicated when we got to the "good" stuff and it felt so quick and slapdash. It was like, we are just going to info dump a bunch of exposition (and fancy other-world lingo that surely indicates there's a whole structure to this hidden world of which we are only getting a glimpse. Except it just ends up feeling like that's what we're trying to do) we could have been building up in the rest of the novel. I know the seeds were planted. And Mitchell did so much so expertly, which is why I wanted just a bit more. Also one of the plot points that seemed to be built up throughout ended somewhat anticlimactically. I didn't mind the length of the book, but I guess I expected the end to justify it more by tying threads more together than it did. 
 Then the last section was all kinds of didactic, and almost felt like it was from a completely different book. I was so excited to go back to Holly, and I liked the characters the section introduced us to. But it just felt kind of tacked on. 
 Still, the novel was great fun, and I was completely engaged throughout.