Welcome to my Sea of Tranquillity review! This book has been on my radar for quite some time, and I’m happy to be finally reviewing it. Let’s dive in!
Quick Synopsis
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. It is both poignant and impressive, with stories that weave together in imaginative ways.
About Sea of Tranquility
Title: Sea of Tranquility
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Rating: 3 Stars
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: Paperback
Publisher: PanMacmillan SA
Date Published: December 2nd 2021
Goodreads Description: 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 bestselling 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 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.
I received a review copy from PanMacmillan SA. All opinions are my own.
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Sea of Tranquility Review
It took me some time to write this Sea of Tranquility review, mostly because I didn’t know how to rate this book. I decided to park this book at a very neutral 3 stars. I don’t think it’s particularly bad, but neither do I think it’s mind-blowingly good. This book reads a lot like non-fiction. Hell maybe in 500 years it will be considered non-fiction. It does a lot of telling, especially where the characters are concerned. We’re told they’re in love, we’re told he’s bored, we’re told they care about each other.
And because the characters are so flat, it feels like reading a textbook about their lives. Now I will say that the premise definitely kept me hooked. I wanted to find out what was happening, I wanted to understand. And now that I do understand, I feel very mild about it. As far as time travel stories go, it’s pretty basic. I’ve read this particular ending before. I’m a big fan of the imagination that went into this book. It could have been more fleshed out were it a hundred pages longer.
It’s a solid book. The mystery kept me hooked and I enjoyed it. I might even read Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel at some point (though I do recommend reading them before you pick up Sea of Tranquility). Overall, not bad. If you want sci-fi that feels like non-fiction, give this a go.
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The premise sounds so strange! The mystery intrigue me but at the same time, the writing style doesn’t sound like something I’d enjoy.