Who Would Like This Book:
Emily St. John Mandel's 'Sea of Tranquility' is a sweeping, elegantly crafted time travel novel that bridges centuries, pandemics, and even lunar colonies, yet manages to feel deeply personal and intimate. Her writing is spare yet evocative, immersing you in everything from the wilds of 1912 Canada to a moon city of the 25th century. The story nimbly weaves mystery, metaphysical questions, and nods to recent events in a manner that's engaging without being heavy-handed. If you loved 'Station Eleven,' enjoy stories about humanity's place in time, or appreciate literary, speculative sci-fi that makes you ponder big questions, this book will likely captivate you.
Who May Not Like This Book:
Some readers found 'Sea of Tranquility' underwhelming, pointing to thin or flat characterization, a plot that moves too quickly, or world-building that's more hinted at than fleshed out. If you prefer hard sci-fi with lots of technical detail, or need plotlines and characters to be deeply developed over hundreds of pages, this book's brevity and style may leave you wanting. Others felt certain plotlines were rushed or that the interconnected storylines didn’t quite click until too late in the novel.
About:
The Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel is a unique blend of science fiction, time travel, and post-apocalyptic themes. The novel spans centuries and explores the consequences of altering timelines, the mysteries of time travel, and the interconnectedness of characters across different time periods. Mandel's writing style is described as intricate and focused, with a narrative structure that weaves together different story arcs leading to a meaningful conclusion. The book delves into philosophical questions, such as the validity of Simulation Theory, the ethical implications of time travel, and the constant battle between bureaucracy and humanity.
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From The Publisher:
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER
The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.
"One of [Mandel's] finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet." - The New York Times
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal-an experience that shocks him to his core.
Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.
When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.
A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.
Ratings (188)
Incredible (43) | |
Loved It (65) | |
Liked It (50) | |
It Was OK (17) | |
Did Not Like (11) | |
Hated It (2) |
Reader Stats (402):
Read It (194) | |
Currently Reading (1) | |
Want To Read (166) | |
Did Not Finish (5) | |
Not Interested (36) |
8 comment(s)
Tedious! I kept reading even when each smaller story wasn't interesting on the chance that it could be building to something interesting. Nope...DNF at 51% because that is when all the snippets started to come together and I found that I didn't care about any of the characters or ideas.
Nice short book. Nothing groundbreaking but adequately conveyed it's purpose.
Interesting concept; lackluster execution. A scientist, an acknowledge genius whose field is
applied
time travel, decides life is a simulation based on: a letter from four hundred years ago; a video from three hundred years ago; a paragraph in a fiction novel from two hundred years ago; and a software glitch. That's it. That's her proof.
The only reason I kept reading was because I like Mandel's narrative voice. The last little reveal at the end was interesting but not exactly satisfying. Overall: meh.
A tiny glimpse of something. Nothing more.
Honestly, meh. I think it needed to be more developed for me to love it. I didn’t hate it - but it felt rushed for something with so much weaving.
This book is very okay with moments that are truly great and it’s those moments that make it worth reading.
John Scalzi said "look how clever I am with the reverse lampshade"
Emily St. John Mandel said "hold my beer"
Maybe more like 3.5. Read because a lot of people compared it to Cloud Cuckoo Land, which I greatly enjoyed. This one didn't grip me the same way, but there were some fun ideas, and it was nice to be able to listen to the whole thing during a single day at work. I also enjoyed the multiple narrators in the audiobook.
What can you read after
Sea of Tranquility?
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