Sea of Tranquility

Sea of Tranquility
Emily St. John Mandel (2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I listened to this book earlier this year and reserved it to read later on. I thought it had problems when I was listening to it, but I thought I just missed stuff while I was walking.

Not so much.

My plan is to leave a review a four-star review on Good Reads that says, "I really wanted to like this story more. I also wanted to rate it less, but I wasn't sure that that would be fair."

My contention is that the first three parts of the book aren't necessary and that the reader could start at Part 4 and read the book as a novella and have the same or better experience. You could then go back and read the first three parts as an appendix with more information.

Basically, nothing in the first three parts actually matters. We get stories about people that mean nothing to the story until they encounter the anomaly, but they're stories don't have endings. Everything we encounter with them is like a human interest segment five minutes before the end of a newscast. Had they been actually short stories that tied into the anomaly, maybe I'd've felt differently.

As it is, when we get a character that hangs around a while, it seems odd and the older characters seem more quaint.

As for the story, time travel exists in the future, and the danger is present that someone will do something to change the past. Also, there is an anomaly that has been observed leading some researchers to wonder if our very existence is a simulation. (side note: by sheer coincidence, this is the second book in a row I read where characters don't know if everything is a simulation, after Selene.)

However, it seems that the anomaly created itself because everything that happens because of the time traveler (introduced midway through the book) has already happened. Nothing he does that changes history actually changes history -- his changes have already been documented -- with one exception that gets him into trouble, which we already knew was coming.

In summary: it was good, but the first parts weren't important. It would've been a good novella.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.