Sea of Tranquility - Kestrels Nest: BookWyrm Edition

Martin Rundkvist reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Low-key time-travel scifi

4 stars

Content warning Discussing core plot point

I'm OK with the time travel paradoxes -- those are inevitable. But to me it's a pretty bad plot weakness here that the Time Institute notices, and manages to find documentation of, a glitch in the matrix that just looks to three observers like a migraine symptom or a petit mal epileptic fit. People's brains and senses make up all sorts of weird shit all the time, and nobody takes it as evidence of anything particularly significant.

Eric Wagoner 📚 reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Touching and Hopeful

4 stars

An easy read, and the crossovers with her other books were interesting. I enjoyed this one quite a bit.

Balbec reviewed La mer de la tranquillité by Emily St. John Mandel

La mer de la tranquillité

4 stars

On prend grand plaisir à voyager avec Emily St. John Mandel. D'abord avec ce qui pourrait sembler, au premier regard, des nouvelles qui se situent à différentes époques du passé et du futur ; puis, dans un second temps, à avancer dans un récit qui fait le lien entre toutes. Les lignes de temps se croisent et s'emmêlent avec délicatesse. Le récit est rondement bien mêlé, et bien que j'aie trouvé la prose un peu trop sommaire dans les premières pages, j'ai également perçu une amélioration du style au fur et à mesure de la narration.

Ajbarbieri@bookwyrm.social reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Quick to read and gripping

5 stars

Was easy to read - that's what I needed at this time, and enjoyed the characters and plot. A great author.

mouse reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Lovely

5 stars

I found this touching and hopeful, I liked how poignantly the characters were drawn, and the themes of kindness and the vicissitudes of life.

My main complaint was that I think the simulation theory stuff was basically an unnecessary macguffin and didn't add to the themes (at least as far as they interested me).

David H reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

A hopeful pandemic novel

4 stars

I liked the story of isolated humans trying to find meaning in their lives, all tangled together and touched by the miraculous. It left me feeling hopeful and reassured.

PanaX@bookwyrm.social reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Review of 'Sea of Tranquility' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Nice short book. Nothing groundbreaking but adequately conveyed it's purpose.

Erica Molesworth reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

meh

2 stars

a little overrated

joachim@lire.boitam.eu reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Enjoyable, even once you've guessed how it’ll all go down

4 stars

I liked it because it was well written and short. Longer would have been boring, shorter would have cut too much. I wonder how the author's experience during the pandemic influenced the Last Book Tour Before the End of the World chapter (at least one discussion in the book was real—but from 2015). I liked this book very much, but I liked Station Eleven better, hence the 4 stars.

Derek Caelin reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Incredible

5 stars

This book washed over me. I loved the story and the way it made me feel about family, about time. The way the different stories knit together, the moments of realization that the author flawlessly sets up and executes... all of it. Lovely.

Rainer reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Rich in wonder and relatability

5 stars

Content warning Contains slight spoilers after 1st paragraph

Emily St. John Mandel is such an incredibly talented author and this book is richly written. The characters are intriguing and the plot will kind of blow your mind, put it back together, and then blow it again.

When Emily St. John Mandel wrote her first book about pandemics (Station Eleven), very few of us had ever lived through one. Now, we all have the experience of COVID lockdowns, being confined to career/education-by-Zoom, not seeing another human in person for weeks on end, not hugging family members for months on end...this book is highly informed by those experiences, and this author is the exact write person to write us through that shared experience (even if this pandemic is set a few hundred years in the future).

I am an Emily St. John Mandel fanboi for life.

bbbhltz reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Absolutely Meta

5 stars

Fantastic to a point I did not expect. Very meta, and covers aspects that took me by surprise. I rarely read the descriptions of books written by authors that I have read before, and here it totally paid off. If you have read the previous two works by this author, you will like where this book takes you.