The Bone Clocks and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet are both greatly entertaining novels as well (and tangentially related to both, the shorter novel Slad

The Bone Clocks and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet are both greatly entertaining novels as well (and tangentially related to both, the shorter novel Slade House). Personally I found these more enjoyable than Cloud Atlas, which is good and a must-read nonetheless, but relies a lot on its narrative structure for its effect (this is not a negative, but the Matryoshka doll structure of the book does define it rather strongly).