I am an absolutely massive David Mitchell fan, and for some reason that put me off reading The Bone Clocks for literal years, not because I didn’t want to, but because for some reason the time never felt ‘right’. It took me a moment of realisation to get over that and just grab it to read om my commute.

And of course, it was amazing!

Like we have come to expect from David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks is a genre-hopping (mostly) urban fantasy book with several layers of mystery.

Part of what makes this book so great is that it starts slowly, with the supernatural merely a suggestion. As the story develops and the characters and point of view shift, that weird scene at the end of the previous story slowly fades into the background – and both the reader and the character themselves start questioning the main character’s sanity.

But as Mitchell dips in and out of the supernatural and the fantasy elements become more real, the reader realises this is not just a literary story with some magical elements but a full-blown urban fantasy.

I can’t add much more detail without risking spoiling the story, but it soon devolves into an occult war with a butter soft magic system but really cool jargon.

Remember though, this is still David Mitchell. So despite all the genre-fiction going on in the background, most of the story is more about the characters than the plot, which only takes centre stage in a couple of chapters.

And, again, as we expect from Mitchell, the characters are diverse and their stories varied, from a rebellious teenage girl to a war correspondent, from a posh student to a has-been writer. And, of course, as we expect from Mitchell, their stories are expertly interlinked.

And that isn’t even all yet.

To top it all off, the final section of the book presents an (almost) stand-alone post-apocalyptic story that is so good that I almost wonder whether it could not have been material for a book on its own – the world-building is superb, especially for how short the section actually is.

Overall, I am absolutely kicking myself for not reading The Bone Clocks when it was originally released. It is one of the best books I have read in years, and if it is not on your list you are definitely missing out.