For all his gifts as a writer on display in The Bone Clocks (rich character-building; decade-spanning narrative with serious momentum; intricate, lovely writing), David Mitchell turns out to be just barely adequate, borderline on uninspired at times, when it comes to fantasy. The long penultimate chapter, which finally goes into full-blown fantasy, feels a bit deflating after the tantalizing and evocative glimpses of its hidden premise for the majority of the book. He strains a bit to convey the rules, wonders, and dangers when it's time to go into that world fully, and it doesn't quite come alive easily for him. Thankfully by that point we are immersed in quite a number of characters in their rich, humane tales (a weird, tediously fact-dumping section about Iraq War asides), both alive and dead, and even on opposite sides of good and evil, that we are still invested in the outcome.

And Mitchell grounds that fantasy well and brings it home splendidly with the graceful final chapter, where he projects the future of our inevitably post-apocalyptic world in all its savageness and persisting humanity. Amidst that environment, he shows both the ripple effects of the preceding chapter, and how, for all its out-of-this-world elements, even that fantasy interlude can turn out to be more and more of a (life-changing) footnote in the face of world constantly changing and time marching on. 4/5