There are actually six different stories in Cloud Altas - each set in a different era - with six different sets of main characters. Each story loosely relates to the others on one level or another, and in some cases characters will appear in more than one story, but otherwise they are individual tales - each with their own stylistic flair.
The novel Cloud Atlas is laid out in such a fashion as to repeatedly leave readers with one cliff-hanger after another. This is accomplished by splitting the book down the middle so-to-speak, with the fist halves of the stories in the first half of the book and their conclusions in the second half. In the middle of the novel, sits Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After (chapter 6), which is the only tale in the group that is not split in half, and reads like a normal story.
The chapter progression looks something like this:
Chapter 1: The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing (part 1)
- Chapter 2: Letters from Zedelghem (part 1)
- Chapter 3: Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery (part 1)
- Chapter 4: The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish (part 1)
- Chapter 5: An Orison of Sonmi-451 (part 1)
- Chapter 7: An Orison of Sonmi-451 (part 2)
- Chapter 8: The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish (part 2)
- Chapter 4: The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish (part 1)
- Chapter 9: Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery (part 2)
- Chapter 3: Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery (part 1)
- Chapter 10: Letters from Zedelghem (part 2)
- Chapter 2: Letters from Zedelghem (part 1)
Chapter 11: The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing (part 2)
While Cloud Atlas is unique in that it weaves it's tale through six separate but loosely related narratives, Mitchell's previous works, Ghostwritten and number9dream rely similarly on a kaleidoscopic plot structure which showcases the author's personal writing style.