Cloud Storage

by Samuel Astbury

An unhinged British backpacker meets
'Michi': a desperate, underemployed
Japanese 'Freeter', on the communal
couch of a dilapidated Osaka hostel. The pair
form a close bond while exploring the regular
haunts of Japan's 'lost generation,' but while
drifting through the slums of
Ho Chi Minh City, the Englishman is drugged
by a sinister betel nut peddler on the banks of
the putrid Thi Nghe canal. Finding himself
stranded in an unidentifiable Megacity saturated
with multinational brands, ice-white tablet
computers and über-trendy Asian design
students, he must fight his way through the
city's vast Junkspace shopping mall as chaos
descends.

161 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 20, 2013

About the author

Samuel Astbury is a writer and chronic malingerer from Manchester, England. He has written some books. He is also on YouTube, where he goes by the handle "Retro Muel," and enjoys talking about distinctly lowbrow pop culture.

Reviews

[J. Schlenker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over and Above

A few pages in I was ready to give this book five stars. It was and is word nirvana. I have found myself after reading it just opening it up randomly to get a high.

It wasn’t just a string of adjectives and excellent descriptions, but an orderly thesaurus of plot written in a compilation of styles much like that of Hugh Howey, Stephen King, and Kate Atkinson. At least that is my summation.

It ran the full pendulum, from the seediest despair of life to the planes of higher existence, as in Buddhist monks contemplating the void.

This book is both for the reader and a tool for inspirational writing.

[Mike Robbins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Samuel Astbury’s Cloud Storage might just be my book of the year.

It opens in the northern English city of Manchester. The narrator, a man in his early 20s, wanders the city by night and day. He passes row upon row of familiar chain stores: Costa Coffee, Tesco Metro. There is a stream-of consciousness style. Masses of Chinese students in this dank piss mill town. Gigantic white headphones bobbing up and down. ...Four gastro pubs. Eight gastro pubs. ... A wave from a pink limo stuffed with morbidly obese hen-doers.

The English riots of August 2011 break out around him. He decides to work as a volunteer for three months in Vietnam. He goes via Hong Kong and then Thailand, where he joins the backpackers on Ko Phi Phi. Now it’s a pill-popping nightmare, a horrific cavalcade of ladyboys and bar-girls and fast food drowning in fat and herds of sunburned sweaty young Westerners dancing mindlessly on the beach, zonked out on Es and Red Bull and booze. 20,000 gurning crab meat clubbers. A calamitous sea of boiled gyrating devils. ...Septic. Flaccid. Peeling. Obese. ...Seated Buddha necklace tracing the orange peel neck of a Brixton Capacity & Scheduling Manager. He craves food, Western food, and goes to an old lady’s fast-food stall for a burger. I stood and watched it fuse with the film of fly carcasses and coagulated fat. I had forgotten my name again. The old lady offers him her granddaughter for the night.

He moves on. Whitney, an American girl he meets in Osaka, says to him: With the internet, we won‘t have to do any of that stupid shit for much longer. It’s like… We’re slowly getting there, we’re slowly becoming one…glorious whole. Are we? Is that what Astbury is saying, or questioning, or dreading? No time to ask; after a dystopian look at Japan, with some clubbing thrown in, he’s off again, to Shanghai, with Michi, a strange young Japanese misfit the narrator has met in a hostel. More clubbing and drugs and booze and then they are off to Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, where there is more alcohol and drugs and clubbing and instead of the volunteer programme he’s come to join, he makes money with Michi by taking earnest tourists on tours of the slums.

By this stage I was completely captivated by Astbury’s prose style and by his descriptive ability, which is heroic. Then the story took a strange turn. A series of accidents brings the narrator by riverboat to a weird lost world; a city of glistening ice-white headphones and iPads and Burger Kings full of smart Asian consumers who treat him politely but refuse eye contact and will not engage. He finds he is trapped; he can check out but he can never leave. It is a sort of hole in time, rather like The Village in Patrick McGoohan’s 1960s mystery series, The Prisoner. How this ends is a further surprise.

What on earth is Astbury up to? He never really tells us. There are what might be clues. Whitney’s statement about us all becoming one; the faux Buddhists on the beach; the sinister homogeneity of Burger Kings and ice-white iThings, climaxing with the consumer city that the narrator can’t leave. The climax (which I won’t reveal) suggests that Astbury does have something he wants to say, about globalisation and an oppressive, homogenous culture, and where it might end. Yet it could also be that Astbury means nothing at all; that he has simply stuck a USB stick in his brain and done an enormous data dump.

If this bizarrely brilliant book meets with the success it deserves, there will one day be discussion pages on which people debate its meaning ad nauseam, just as they do for Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Rings and, indeed, The Prisoner. It doesn’t matter. Good books ask you questions. Books as good as this make you ask your own.

The author kindly supplied an e-Book for review.

[P. Zoro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cloud Storage is the story of a British backpacker going through several Asian countries in pursuit of an elusive goal, as elusive as his name. It is a powerful story told in first person that gives a glimpse of the narrator’s personality now and then. He flees from emotional involvement, looks back at the burnt bridges between him and home with longing, although it appears he left of his own will to volunteer, and sort of drifts aimlessly until he meets Michi way into the story. Then his incoherent musings begin to distill into some form of story centered around the two’s interactions and adventures though the style does not change.

The descriptions are beautiful with the writing bordering on poetic and the narrator has an interesting insight into different cultures and places, but the book is a difficult read. The narrator pours out thoughts and flashbacks as they come to his mind and distinguishing them becomes difficult. I was never sure where he was at any point in time. Maybe this is consistent with his character. From a literary point of view, it is a beautiful work of art. For those who want to be entertainment you may want to forget about entertainment and engage your intellectual gear in this intense narration.

[J.C. Wing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cloud Storage opens up with a piece titled Pool. As a reader, I felt as if I’d been dunked beneath the artificial Chinese lake much as the man Samuel Astbury writes about who will then be buried in a cheap polyester suit. There is no warm up or easing into this stream of consciousness style tale. There are no chapters but new subtitles along the way, and I read it all in one sitting as I wasn’t sure at which point to put it down. There really isn’t a pause at which I felt comfortable bookmarking the place for later perusal. It felt like Cloud Storage was a story that needed to be eaten in one large gulp.

It is a feast, however the meal is one that left my stomach aching. Astbury is incredibly descriptive, but it took me a while to stop fighting the ‘untraditional’ style of the prose. The title is a perfect name for all the images that Astbury flashes into the brain as one reads. This is a story one hears and feels as well as sees in the mind’s eye, however I found myself lost several times along the way. It’s gritty and troubling and, while the writing style was hard for me, I did appreciate the poetic quality of it. It is dark and unusual, but still brilliant in ways that are difficult to describe. Any tale that pokes and prods as it unfolds, then continues to do so once the words have been consumed is one that has been successful in affecting the reader. Consider this reader affected.

[Heather Hayden · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Unhinged" doesn't do the narrator justice

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Whenever I go into a book with the knowledge that I will be writing a review at the end, I do my best to focus on the story, the good and the bad of the plot and the characters and the narrative that supports both. Some books I enjoy, some books I finish without ever quite connecting with the characters, some books I set down at the end and think "What?"

Cloud Storage falls into the last category. I think the primary issue for me is the narrative style--I know plenty of people enjoy such a rambling, semi-coherent narrative, and considering who the narrator is the style does make a lot of sense for the story. However, I spent most of the book struggling with how sentences were strung together--fragments, lots of adjectives, disjointed sections.

As the book went on, I slowly began to get a sense of the underlying plot. I think that this story is less about coherence and more about the narrator himself--the other characters that come and go are less people than symbols of ideas, memories, images viewed through the strange looking glass caused by whatever cocktail the narrator had downed at the time. However, one thread appeared and began to become consistent--Michi, a strange, clingy man who the narrator meets again and again as the story unfolds. And though the meetings seem by chance, they ultimately lead to the final conclusion.

In my own conclusion, Cloud Storage isn't a story that suits my tastes. However, others might find it quite the trip (I mean that in both senses of the word.) Although my personal rating of this story is three stars, it definitely has a raw appeal to it that can fascinate those who enjoy this sort of story.

[Brenda Cheers · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Cloud Storage”, a novel told in the first person, is a startling work by a writer of obvious talent.
The main character is a sensitive and impressionable twenty-three year old Englishman who, while travelling through Asia, becomes disturbed by the evidence of poverty and tragedy he encounters. Fuelled by drugs and alcohol, his narrative becomes increasingly incoherent.
He meets a Japanese man, Michi, and these two begin traveling together. Michi becomes hard to escape from and as the story progresses we learn his troubled back-story.
The later part of the story reads like a dream sequence or a computer game. It certainly appears to be a comment on the technology-driven, consumer oriented society we live in.
I wondered if the riot scene near the end was connected to the one in Manchester at the beginning.
While I consider this novel to be the work of an emerging genius, it is not without flaws. I felt it needed another round of editing – lengthy pages of description meant I skimmed whole passages.
There were also paragraphs of truncated sentences throughout the novel that I found annoying, for example: “No regard for the future. Not mortgage. No long term plans. Drive the bus. Further. There is nothing more. Engaged in perpetual now. There was no beginning. There will be no end…”
The characters were well-drawn, the narrative voice was strong, dialogue was excellent and I found the use of language quite wonderful. I could see, smell and taste the settings (except in the strange city toward the end) and I found the story overall to be interesting.
This was a great debut novel and I look forward to seeing further work by Samuel Astbury.

[Hock Tjoa · Rating 3 out of 5]

One trolls through this talented but highly idiosyncratic book for the occasional lucid phrase or passage like "I wanted to get a job airing out ancient Taoist library books." The thought of a "Thai Rastafarian smoking opium and dancing the macarena" is likewise amusing.

But the macarena and the serotonin, in whatever dose, seem out of place with the more pervasive rape drugs, the "foul Patpong escapades" and the "death porn." Perhaps all this reflects the levels of hell that the writer imagines and conveys, mostly in an arcane staccato fashion..

Thus: "Cactus bar. Snoop Dogg, cocaine, inertia and Extra-strength Red Bull. Working class Englishmen motionless on a heavy dance floor." Then the rants, e.g.: "The long term expat...are malignant organisms: dead in the road...mild to moderate mental health problems...Irish traveler tattoo artists, Cockney tax-evaders, Swiss-trained Chinese optometrists...always on the run."

"All I ever wanted," the MC says perhaps in a spasm of clarity, "was a modest Wikipedia entry" (though one could argue whether Liz Taylor's eyes ever showed vulnerability). But fear of castration (?koro) and Michi's struggles with what seems like autism overwhelms everything else. To the MC, muck and shit feel like home; there is also the night-clubbing, though perhaps that feels similar.

There is entirely too much piss and vomit in this novel; is that the 21st century equivalent of "sound and fury signifying nothing"? The author can write but readers deserve to be indulged our need for meaning and understanding. Such writing talent, I think, needs to find a worthy story /plot /subject.

[S.L. Shelton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Odd, strange, disturbing, unsettling; these are the first words that come to mind. The disjointed and shockingly tragic path that was laid out from the very beginning, along with the middle finger salute to traditional writing styles left me struggling in the beginning. However, the story kept my interest throughout, nearly forcing me to read it in one sitting. It is dramatic, dark, vulgar and yet not. And despite the dirty, gritty, vice ridden subject matter, there was barely a whisper of violence or sex, making this an obvious journey rather than some banal ploy to shock and titillate. Very well done.

I'm not a fan of the style, (perhaps due to my age). But I do recognize it for the talent required to produce a descending character, reflected perfectly in that style (perhaps due to my age). I am left feeling exactly what the author set out to leave me feeling and that is no small feat.

I gave this story 4 stars, but after sitting with it in my head for a couple of weeks (yes it lingers in your mind that long after reading), I decided it was worthy of more. Astbury does an amazing thing here; he rips you out of your comfort zone and crams you into the most god awful places reality could imagine for a young lost soul, and then dares you to put the book down. I didn't put it down. Astbury wins. 5 Stars.

[Erik Rivenes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cloud Storage is an appropriate title for Sam Astbury’s book. Bits of information and imagery, delivered in a data-like fashion, siege your brain in this interesting, but sometimes confusing work. The book takes place on a journey through the dark-side of the Far East. The fantastic tales of drugs, sex, nightclubs and Seven-Elevens come with a minimal plot, but they still manage to stay interesting, despite the lack of (at least initially) cohesion or build-up. Many of the main character’s encounters are incredibly striking, and it is what kept me moving through the story.
The language in Astbury’s work, was for me, a double-edged sword. While at times exquisite, there were often entire passages, in Joe Friday Dragnet delivery, that made no sense to me at all. Because I’m American I didn’t get many of the references made, and there was often no context to deduce the meaning of a word or phrase. The book could also use a good edit, as there were some misspelled words and punctuation errors.
Despite these issues, however, I was enamored with the author’s introduction of Michi, and once he entered the book, things really picked up and started making sense for me. The author has some absolutely brilliant moments, and a raw, but obvious literary talent that with some honing could make him a literary force.

[Mike Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This guy can write. I like his style very much, quick paced with quite descriptive word choices and phrases, poetic at times, images connected to images, visually creating a kaleidoscopic picture in the reader’s mind. I was fascinated throughout. The protagonist is a very interesting character, maybe a bit unhinged and irreverent, but very observant, introspective, insightful, and adventurous. He is part philosopher, dreamer, and drifter. The book is rather like an Asian version of ON THE ROAD: the lost generation content with not finding themselves, interesting people drifting through the fog of intriguing situations and exotic locations.

I have been to Japan and Thailand, numerous times, and the scents and vibrations of those frenetic countries were very well captured here. At times, I could feel myself back in Asia.

The laid-back world drifter will entertain you immensely as he and his sidekick drift through life. It is a very creatively written book, and I am glad that I read it because I really enjoyed it.

[C.D. Loza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cloud Storage reads like Trainspotting and A Clockwork Orange. It's dizzying and the words pop out taking you right in the middle of the action. The descriptions can get long and, eventually, muddled. Having been to the cities described in the novel (although in the more tourist-y areas and not in the underbellies), I can say that the description is pretty realistic--gritty and harsh and entirely riveting. I've read many books that have unsettled me and Cloud Storage belongs in that category. It took me awhile to finish it, because I had to put it down and walk away from it while I process what had just happened. And then I picked it up again and disturb myself, until I get to the end.

[Tocotin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can’t say I understood everything that was going on – there were drugs involved and they clearly distorted the already fragmented, quite interesting in places, narration and the story – but underneath all this, there was a young white guy exploring them faraway dirty Oriental lands, complete with Asian girls and the obligatory Japanese otaku dude who spoke “good English”.

I enjoyed the part where he was going to teach English in some backwater Vietnamese – or was it Thai? – town.

It goes mostly like this: “Two weeks in Hong Kong before flying to Bangkok on October 13th. ’Mr Sam’s’ hostel in Causeway Bay. Paper. Neon. Dirty cement. Parasols. Bamboo and steel. Salt. Sweat. Chlorine. Heat and lichen and seafood. I was 22 years old.”

[Meriel Brooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, but not an easy read. I read it twice.
The author’s description of an unhinged Backpacker says it all. You are the unhinged backpacker as you read it. You absorb the sights and the smells of the Far East through the strange, vivid writing.
Not much of a story line. He decides to work as a volunteer for three months in Vietnam, but never makes it. His backpacker journey and his strange friendship with Michi, a lost generation Japanese boy, is the story we follow. There is no real purpose in this journey, so sit back and live in it, experience it. Sometimes, you may not know where you are, and by the end you may not know if you are sane.

[Marco Peel · Rating 3 out of 5]

tripping through purgatory

Cloud Storage follows a young british backpacker, whose name he himself seems to forget, in his wanderings along the bars, brothels and open gutters of the Far East. Along the way he meets Michi, a young Japanese lost-generation misfit, who follows him around like a barnacle and keeps popping up in the most unexpected places. Fueled on plastic junk food, iffy drugs and cheap alcohol, they eventually lose all sense of time and place.

Raw sights, smells and sounds fly off the pages in what must be some of the most descriptive prose I’ve ever read. Stroboscopic phrases flash up and disappear before they even form sentences, in an incessant, rambling, throbbing staccato. Like the protagonist, the reader is relentlessly force-fed like a foie-gras goose until he or she no longer has a clue as to what’s what, where, who or why. This is ADHD on Red Bull. The mother of all binge-drinking drug-addled hangovers. A complete sensory overload that leaves one gasping for breath, shutting eyes and ears with balled fists to scream: STOP!

Boy Samuel Astbury can write, but it is not an easy read. Or necessarily worth the effort. I’m not sure if the main characters can be called sensitive, senseless or simply numb. They remain painfully hollow. Pointless observers. A damning indictment to a culture of going nowhere for no reason to find nothing for no-one.

[Gloria Piper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cloud Storage deals with computers and memory, nightclubs and horrors and escapism.
It is told in first person.

The book begins with a flashback to an incident in China that involved the main character. Was it a crime? We don’t know until we return to it at the novel’s end.

Presently we are in England. The transition is so fast we don’t know where we are at first. In China? In England? Over several pages, we are introduced to the main character, an Englishman. He strikes us as a restless misfit, a polluted soul. He has a certain attitude toward Asians, and we wonder why.

Then we are with him when he was 22 years old, set on touring East Asia and hitting all the hot spots. Another word for “hot spots” would be hell.

The author uses narrative in showing instead of telling, so the prose is poetic. There are no standard scenes. Sometimes the showing yanks the reader into the setting with power and clarity. We’re there with the Englishman. We know what he’s experiencing. Sometimes, though, the words are either too powerful for their target or miss it, and we are confused. What is figurative? What is literal? So it takes some rereading to get inside the author’s style. We follow him as if in a journal where not everything is explained because it’s personal. He’s not sitting somewhere, telling this story to a friend.

The author uses poetic language that blasts us with images. Sometimes I am lost in the descriptions taken from computer or high tech lingo. Sentence fragments are as numerous as complete sentences. Some are in the present tense, some in the past. Capitalization seems to follow no rules. Nevertheless, typos are few. For that, I am grateful.

The Englishman’s first impressions in his travels hit us in sentence fragments stripped to single words that explode like flash bulbs. The picture they reveal is not pretty. Drugs, drinks, sex, poverty, filth, vomit, along with video games and smart phones.

Yet some characters are content to live on the fringes of hell where a job, no matter how dangerous, equals salvation, or a lack of a job equals freedom from a responsibility that doesn’t fulfill. Is this what the young Englishman seeks in his travels? Escape from responsibility? He is tempted.

The characters he meets are passing acquaintances. An occasional one stands out, but we are on the outside, looking in. We may understand the individual’s plight or feel empathy, but we are not involved.

Occasionally Astbury leaps us into the present or future, and we stumble over such asides. And I’m wondering where we are going with the story. In retrospect, these asides in the Englishman’s life represent the effect of his travels and how he views people. “Real” people are those who uncork themselves to expose a cockroach of the spirit. And these are the people he prefers. Somewhere along the way, as he flips into different times, one sees that he wants to teach “real” people to manage their cockroaches.

Much of the main character’s touring seems to be setting the stage for when he meets Michi, near the middle of the novel. And its here that we learn the Englishman’s name, or nickname. Acquaintances come and go, but Michi and he keep meeting and they share adventures. And we come to recognize the Englishman’s compassion. Here is story rather than simply atmosphere. And it’s this that partly drives the novel toward crises and a dramatic conclusion.

Here is a dark novel, told in poetic language that is beautiful in its handling, but the words are ugly. If you enjoy dark novels, come and get it. As for me? Huh-uh.

[Rubin Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cloud Storage by Samuel Astbury
Unhinged in Asia

The novel, Cloud Storage by Samuel Astbury, is a slow moving trip through various night clubs, slums, and shopping malls in Asia. Nicotine, alcohol, and various street drugs make it unclear as to the reliability of our narrator, whose name eludes me.

Back in the day, I traveled through Asia, staying in cheap hotels and managing with just a backpack for more than six months. Although it was many years ago, this novel seems to cover the same ground. The smells and views are captured. The night clubs, the girls, and the alcohol are still there. The drugs in this story seem different. The mental illnesses of the travelers and the locals also seem more pronounced in this writing.

In this novel, a small but poignant story is told. I had to work at finding the story (more copy editing is needed). After the first reading, I took a few days off and then tried it again. The story made more sense the second time through but it was still a challenge. The non-verb noun riffs employed by the author as word paintings don't provide a vivid picture or move the story. I suspect that they serve as reminders if you've already experienced the scene(s).

In the beginning, the author writes the following:
"My Mother made me promise that I would find other westerners before going anywhere dangerous, and when he came to see me off at the airport my brother presented me with a digital watch, a compass, and a silver St. Christopher necklace."
It struck me that most mothers would say, "Be safe." The second part of the sentence led me to expect that something would be done with these objects. Maybe the necklace protected him from danger during his travels? To be fair, the British traveler does use the watch but the compass seems nowhere to be found even when the traveler needs it most.

I liked learning about koro and hikikomori. The narrator's misadventures did not hold my attention as they didn't seem real or important. It was hard to attach any significance to his choice of beer, or cigarettes, or if he had made an impression on a working girl. The following start of a chapter is an example: "I was due to meet Michi at Scott & Binh's restaurant to give him the handover for the following day. Hamburger, White Russians, Bob Marley and Nirvana Unplugged. We drank and talked about silly things, and I urinated four times."

Ultimately, the narrator's descriptions of dirty dingy sores of cities blurred with what was perhaps drug-induced distasteful experiences. It's not clear if he ever finds anything, or if he was looking for anything, or if what he saw was real or made any kind of lasting impression.

[Bruce Perrin · Rating 3 out of 5]

For those reading this review in order to decide whether to get a copy of this book, let me suggest the following. Go to any site that provides a preview of the text (e.g., Amazon, Goodreads) and read the first 5 to 10 pages. I suggest this because depending on the type of reader you are, you may love the author’s writing style…or you won’t.

The book is the tale of a somewhat deranged and drug-addled British backpacker who befriends a member of the so-called Japanese Lost Generation, Michi. If you are not familiar with the Lost Generation, they are an estimated 340,000 Japanese men between the ages of 35 and 44, who initially failed to obtain a job in Japan’s lifetime employment system during an economic downturn in 1990s. As a result, they have been marginalized by a life of unemployment or underemployment. Michi also suffered from a condition known as Hikikomori, a type of extreme social withdrawal. He had spent months, perhaps years locked in his room in his parent’s home, before first trying to work and then joining the main character in a trek through Southeast Asia.

If you are thinking these sound like complex socioeconomic and psychological issues, I would agree. But Cloud Storage is not an academic exploration of these issues. It is not even a coherent exploration, because the storyteller has his own problems. The author’s synopsis says the main character is ‘deranged’, but with all the references to ecstasy and serotonin, the discontinuities in time and thought, and the references to degraded computer graphics in the descriptions of settings, drug use is obviously also a source of distortion.

This all brings me back to my first point – you will probably love the way this book is written or hate it. That is because the way the author tries to bring all these factors into play is by creating text that is more flashes and feelings, rather than tight, descriptive prose. Written in his style, my review would read something like the following: Complex topics. Pain behind my temples. Smell of day old socks. Tapping my thoughts on the keyboard until gravity failed me…

So, after I stopped trying to read and understand each sentence in this book and just started letting the images and feelings flood over me, I enjoyed the story more. As a psychologist, I also found the content quite compelling. Finally, I have great admiration for the author, because a book on these topics and written in this style is an ambitious undertaking. But in the end, the flashes of settings and mood were too repetitive and too mentally taxing to fully immerse me in the story. Complex topics. Pain behind my temples. Time to end.

[Lisa Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wouldn’t have imagined I would like this type of book. It is as different from what I usually read and what I write as night and day, and yet I loved it. Three pages in, I found I was in a strange but familiar place. Then I realized I was in my own head, seeing every nuance, everything in technicolour, and everything at warp speed. Sensory overload.

I can imagine the writing style could be disconcerting to some. It is how I would love to write if I didn’t care what people think, if I hadn’t become someone so driven to follow rules. But the writing style is what I so love about this book. It doesn’t follow convention. Convention is nowhere to be found. It wouldn’t have been nearly as effective if it had. Frenetic thoughts, fears, desires – they were palpable. You feel what he felt. You see what he saw.

The backpacker’s experiences in South East Asia leap off the pages and both frighten and exhilarate. Now, I can imagine what it would have been like to have jumped off a cliff and landed on my head in a wholly unfamiliar and dangerous place. When I used to look back at that carefree, no-responsibility time of my life, I often thought about what I missed not having an experience like that – to have stepped so far out of your comfort zone as to fully question who you are. To be honest, I am not sure how I feel about that now.

Astbury drew me into the backpacker’s world so deeply, I felt myself trying to figure out what I would do every step of the way. But it isn’t all action. The interactions between the English backpacker and the Japanese “Freeter” he meets are quite layered. They both brought out the mother in me and I wanted to save them and “bring them home.” I had a hard time with the ending, but it was the only ending that made sense. Life is like that.

“Silence is genuine.” “We are a race of compulsive verbalisers.” Spoken like a true introvert, and he is correct…at least in my humble opinion. There is little dialogue in this book, unless you count the dialogue in his head, but that is what makes it so potent, and in a word, brilliant. I’ll even forgive the reference to the Canadian “Mountain police.” It is (Royal Canadian) Mounted Police, as in historically on a horse. Sorry, as a Canadian I couldn’t resist.

[Eli Hinze · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really, truly wanted to like this book as I hate to give indie authors poor reviews, but there wasn’t much I could do here. Cloud Storage wasn’t terrible, but it could have been much better. Still, I applaud Astbury for completing his debut work. That’s a big step!

The plot is indecipherably scrambled for the first half of the novel, though it eventually starts making more sense. Even then, I’m still not entirely sure what the central plot or drive of the book was. (When I say it started making sense, I mean I actually knew where people were going and why, which I don’t think is too much to ask for.)

The writing is what gives this story most of its potential. Were it tightened and cleaned up, it could be magnificent. Not “oh yeah, that’s pretty nice stuff”, I mean writing that makes you cry. It could be that wonderful. Its only weakness is that it often goes from “amazing” to “too much”. If you pack every little thing with description and chaos, nothing will stand out. It numbs the reader. Also, there’s a lot of omitted words and punctuation, though I won’t hold that against him. Editors are insanely expensive, so for a debut indie author they’re rarely an option.

The characters are okay. They don’t have much substance, and have one dose too much of angst.

I’d also like to talk about sexism for a second, though I’m reluctant to. A woman can critique someone’s grammar, plot, etc. and generally people will respectfully listen, but as soon as she brings up sexism everyone’s up in arms about how she’s a bitchy feminazi. One thing I noticed whilst reading was that there is hardly one young female character in the book who’s not a stripper, prostitute, or who the MC doesn’t at least try to bang. Nearly every woman is sexualized, which gets very old and is very objectifying. There are also sexist comments referring to women that don’t complain about sexual harassment because “they know their place.” . . . What the hell?

In conclusion, Cloud Storage‘s writing is a diamond in the rough paired with a largely confused plot and so-so characters. 2 out of 5.

[Jade Onyx · Rating 4 out of 5]

We see life through the eyes of a British man traveling through pockets of Asia, meeting all walks of life. The story is told in first person and plunges the reader right into the gritty details of life in the off-beaten path. The story is seductive in the sense that the reader gets sucked in right away from the first page to the last.

The pace and structure of the story is consistent and not jarring to the reader. We meet many characters, some chilling to meet even in print. The format of the story is akin to multiple diary entries or a journal that the man keeps of his travels and the people he meets. Told in first person, one can really hear the protagonist's voice, but you have to wonder how much of it is truly communicated. For example, one passage states: "Words are lies. Silence is genuine. Truth comes from the belly. We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want."

Although not much dialogue existed at the beginning of the story, more dialogue appeared near the middle and one could hear other minor characters speak. Some pieces of dialogue were clearly chosen to stand on their own and spoke volumes without further dialogue. For example, when Michi pulls off his accent as South Korean instead of Japanese, the protagonist asks a girl in Shanghai what she thought of the Japanese and she replies, "Haha...yes, all Japanese should die...Hahaha."

Settings were quickly drawn up, some sketchy pictures here and there. Dark themes appeared and could be more fleshed out. The protagonist had some interesting insights into the human condition, some of which were quite haunting.

Although I stayed with the story to get to the very end of it, I would not want to read this book again because of some of the themes that came up in the book.

[T.L. Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boy, where do I start?
OK, firstly, I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Right; boring bit done.

Wow! Just reading this book I feel a little trippy!?
It's a very odd thing; I just read an entire book without finding out the main character's name. This should annoy me greatly, but it doesn't.

Nor do I hate the writing style. It is indeed a bit 'brain vomit'; just many thoughts strewn down in some semblance of order onto the book's pages. It's very unusual, but actually nicely done.

This book flips over the world, exposing it's soft underbelly and gutting it open.

The novel starts in Manchester, and feels very Trainspotting-esque.
The whole book could be called 'Trainspotting on Tour' to be honest.

The main character travels to Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Hong Kong...all over that area of the world, but it gets a little confusing as to exactly where he is at some points.

He finds the subculture in every destination. It's like the author rips away the gilded curtain which is there to shield your average tourist. Tourists only get to see what the country wants you to see. This guy though tears down that veil and shows you the sick and sordid world that really exists; drugs, prostitution, violence, urine, vomit, the lot. There's also a good dollop of paranoia.

Some bits I wasn't sure whether the character was describing what he was seeing or just what he was imagining to be there.

I was expecting Michi to turn out to be some form of character created out of 'main character's' psychosis. He just keeps turning up in the most unusual places!
And he may well yet turn out to be, as I suspect this is lining up for a sequel.

It's dark, it's confusing, but I actually really like it!

[Sonal Panse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay. Review in one line - 'Cloud Storage' is a marvelous, poetic work about misfits living and struggling in a modern, over-connected world.

Someone mentioned that this book reminded them of 'On The Road'. It didn't make that jump for me. I didn't like 'On The Road'. I found it pretentious and rambling. Get over yourself, I kept thinking all the while. This book didn't rouse my impatience. Reading 'Cloud Storage', I felt, in parts, depressed and exhilarated.

I've encountered people like the unnamed narrator and his friend Michi, people who've slipped through the cracks so to speak, and people like Whitney, who appear to think that the solution to their problems is a journey away, preferably to a third-world country where life is 'real', and people like the slum tourists, who seem to think that visiting other people's misfortune in this manner is going to give them some great insight into life.

It isn't a crowd that appeals to me. If I wasn't kind of cynical, they would make me despair for the future of humankind. As it was, the descriptions of the ugliness and hopelessness of Asian slum/city lives are so perfectly conveyed and so psychologically jarring, I had to put aside the book and go out into the garden to breath for a while.

I might have again thought 'Get over yourselves', except the writing is just so good. It is jaded and sarcastic and sensitive and funny and irreverent. It is honest.

Samuel Astbury is an impressive writer.

There are some spelling, punctuation, and formatting errors, but not enough to detract from the story.

Highly recommended.

I received a free copy for an honest, non-reciprocal review.

[T.S. O'Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book for a fair review. I'll say one thing for the plot—it grabbed my attention from the start. It's a fast-paced, easy read with short chapters containing staccato-like sentences. The author writes in the first person stream of consciousness, edgy prose—much of the world he describes. It works, and I like it. I was half way through the book before I realized it. The protagonist takes a volunteer job in Saigon but decides on taking a vacation in route. He describes a journey through Thailand in the aftermath of the tsunami; I was there at the same time, but the trip he describes takes usually strange Thai encounters to a whole different level. He travels around, gets fucked up, in all sorts of ways and has bizarre encounters with strange people; Lady Boys, drunken and drugged out expatriates trying to find paradise in cheap bars with bought women. I've been there, seen them--it's not pretty. The protagonist visits the tunnels of Cu Chi, as did I when I visited the Nam. He moves around the different islands and tourist traps—seeking something, but not sure what. Eventually, he makes it to Japan and befriends a Japanese outsider named Michi and some ex-pats in Kyoto; guys who all seems desperate for friendships with other foreign students—it reminds me the drunk war vets who take you hostage when you visit the VFW for their cheap beer. This book is part Bright Lights, Big City and part Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, with some On the Road by Jack Kerouac thrown in for good measure. It's a pretty good read, and I'm very hard to please.

[Tracey Madeley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about a back packer in Vietnam, probably travelling before or after university. For me the main problem with this book is its lack of plot. A back packer wandering around seeing the sites is fine, but what is the purpose? He may have been a graduate on the road seeking a better, simpler life, but this does not translate beyond the first few chapters. It is only when he meets Michi about half way through do we get any interest or purpose. He looks after him, he forms a contrast to the main character.

There is a feeling of authenticity about this book, as if the writer has travelled, or at least researched living in Asia. The poor Vietnamese women portrayed as masseurs and prostitutes are a little cliché. It would have been nice to see some social justice commentary about exploitation. There is a hint of this later on when the writer describes the clothes and attitude of middle class Asian residents, suggesting a deep division between rich and poor. An incident in the internet café also suggests an explosion and possible looting towards the end of the book.

The book is very modern in its reference to technology and its use of language. The short sharp sentences are usually found in crime fiction, although Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut does have a similar style. For me the lack of depth in description makes it difficult to visualise some of the events and as a result makes them less memorable.

I recognise the writing as a particular modernist style, but it needs a stronger premise and storyline to hold it together.

[Ted Farrar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review of Cloud Storage by Sam Astbury
Incoherently lucid and terribly brilliant

Just finished Cloud Storage by Sam Astbury, and I’m at a bit of a loss what to say about it. His style is unique, staccato and disconnected like an impressionist’s brush strokes, and often left me struggling to catch up. Is the guy bipolar, or does he simply possess an amazing talent for taking a country and its people, chewing them up and vomiting the result all over one’s nice preconceptions? The result is drug- and alcohol-induced culture shock of a monumental order. The story to some extent is secondary (and to be honest I admit I lost the plot many times, but that’s probably just me) to the sheer, manic boldness of his descriptive prose that tears you from your safe anchorage and sweeps you along. Perhaps it is too rich to carry a story of any complexity? For myself, having to rush the last third of the book to get this review out in time, I realise I barely skimmed the surface. This is a shame because there is a story of depth and value there crying for attention and it deserves more than a casual reading. But then, that’s what’s so good about books – you can read them again. So by all means give it a read and glut yourself on the prose, then let your stomach settle and read it again, for the story.

I’ve given Cloud Storage four stars. The style is unique, but it’s a challenge. They probably said the same about Picasso.

[Ed Morawski · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Cloud Storage' is an interesting kind of stream consciousness journal of a U.K. packpacker's travel through Asia. The prose and format are pretty unique, but it eventually begins to wear on you and the style over substance becomes borderline tiresome. Thankfully it's less than two hundred pages.

On the plus side it seems as though the author knows his subject material rather well and the details about each culture and country are amusing and fascinating. Having been to some of the areas I can attest to the fact they mostly ring true.

On a less positive note, grammatical errors are strewn throughout, (as difficult as they are to recognize given the jumbled narrative). The author also seems to have a real problem with gender pronouns, often using her and him interchangeably for what seems like the same character. I don't know if this was intended to portray some Asian men who masqueraded as women or just plain mistakes, but in either case it made some parts damn difficult to read and follow.

Anyway, the book was an interesting experiment, and the final part very amusing (if ridiculously far fetched) when our intrepid traveler is trapped in a country for weeks and doesn't know where he is despite all manner of modern conveniences because he can't seem to communicate with anyone. It was probably one of the most creative and unique nightmare sequences ever - and I almost felt sorry for him.

[Nicolas Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot to like about this novel, it's an almost dystopian toned road trip through the underbellies of several Asian countries, with such a neurotic tone that you almost feel the narrator is a reflection of the screwed up world he passes through. That tone is both the novel's strength, and downfall. In many places, it makes it difficult to follow what is actually happening, and is so intrusive that it completely overwhelms the story and setting. I'd have liked a tonal middle ground, with somewhat less of the stylistic fragments and surreality, and somewhat more pared back narrative, especially in crucial moments of the story. It's an interesting perspective, a good chunk less glamorous than many travel-focused books tend to be. I enjoyed it, despite having a difficult time working my way through the overwhelming narrative voice. It was certainly unique; if you are looking for a MC traveling through various types of human hell, blundering through ethical gray areas with ample use of drugs, being completely immersed in strange, often predatory, often victimized cultures, you'll enjoy it, if you can focus through the tone. I'd definitely give the sample a read, and make sure you're up for a whole book of it. The tone is very much a love it or hate it thing.

I received a copy for my honest review.

[Gabriela Popa · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Cloud Storage” is a book that doesn’t explain and doesn’t forgive --- but rather slices out this world with a sharp, unsympathetic knife.

The book follows the agonizing travels of a young Englishman in Thailand, Japan, China, Vietnam, as well as the main character’s misadventures with the schizophrenic Michi. Their daily life entails heavy drinking & drugs. Throughout the book there is a relentless desire to depict piss, vomit and phlegm - all symbols of poverty, wretchedness and sheer desolation.

I found the language interesting and the main characters well defined and preeminent. All in all, the book is alive. However, the author has chosen to use a descriptive, many times chaotic, stream of consciousness style (a “rush job”, as the author confesses) that in my opinion prevents the reader from fully engaging (...is that because perhaps it is more challenging to stay in the story and build successive layers of meaning for the audience, and it’s easier to revert to ubiquitous linear, truncated descriptions?)

Although the debut book, I think that “Cloud Storage” carries significance and weight. I see Mr. Astbury as a talented writer in search for the right style to tell his stories, and I wish him good luck.

[Cy Wyss · Rating 3 out of 5]

The narrator of Cloud Storage is a young English man traveling to exotic places like Vietnam, Thailand, and Japan. His trip is filled with poignant impressions although the prose reads like an extended dream-like state, much as the state the narrator is constantly in, whether natural or drink or drug induced. Wander the foreign streets and read a collision of impressions. The narrator listlessly travels from place to place hoping the next year he'll succeed at last. At what, though? He doesn't seem to work or have any goals, he is from the lost generation like so many of those he meets.

I found Cloud Storage a difficult read. It is a collection of beautiful impressions, but the plot wanders much as the narrator, through exotic locales and fugue experiences. He says at one point that he's been with many prostitutes but had sex with none. This seems a metaphor for the larger story as the narrator is largely disengaged from the world and more of a bystander than an actor. Cloud Storage is not a light afternoon read, rather be prepared for thick impressions and disjointed scenery. I suppose the book will be good for anyone interested in a type of stream-of-consciousness literature, but if you're looking for a straight narrative or linear storyline, move on.

[Liz Seach · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll be honest, if I had not read the book description, I don't believe I could have given you as a coherent a plot summary of Cloud Storage as the one it offers, even though I have read the entire book. And yet, this is not a bad thing. To read this book is to discover the answer to the question posed at the beginning, yes, but it is not really to follow a story. It is more to take a long trip from inside the mind of the narrator. Perhaps the best plot summary for this book is the quote from Basho near the end: "On a journey, ill;/my dream goes wandering/over withered fields."

This book is disturbing, yes. It is also mesmerizingly beautiful, almost more long poem than prose. Astbury has a gift for juxtaposition, for simile, for the details. These take over the work, at times overwhelmingly so. (In a good way.) To use the word surreal for all of this would be to pull out a crude, old-fashioned, analogarian word for something that has moved beyond that entirely. There is a word for what Cloud Storage is, or there will be. I'm just afraid I don't know it. It makes me self-conscious. I lack the sophistication to name it.

And yet, I'm glad I got to read the book.