Title: Sea of Tranquility
Author: Emily St. John Mandel 
Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: April 2022
Format: Hardcover
Length: 259 pages

Read if you like: time travel, life in a pandemic, very human connections and relationships, musings on the purpose of life, navigating stressful and unprecedented situations, meticulously interwoven plot storylines

Rating: 

Sea of Tranquility is one of those books I remember seeing on a lot of best-of lists, but I never got around to picking it up. Maternity leave felt like the perfect time to knock it out and I’m glad I finally got to it now that it’s done.

The premise of this one felt both unique and timely, particularly given the pandemic-inspired setting, and while I saw some of the plot twists coming, I didn’t catch them all. I loved the slow build of suspense and the feeling of inevitability as you begin to barrel towards the conclusion, and I thoroughly enjoyed how surprised I felt as some of the final pieces clicked into place. 

This book was a pleasant surprise for me given that I came in without any expectations, and I enjoyed St. John Mandel’s writing style so much I could see myself picking up more of their books in the future.

The Book Synopsis: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel 

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.

The Review

This was a truly enjoyable and unique-feeling novel.

I loved the premise, with so many different characters throughout time, and both recognizable and wild settings. I also loved St. John Mandel’s style. The short, punchy chapters, with emotion that sneaks up on you slowly and burrows under your skin really worked for me and I found myself completely immersed each time I picked the book up. 

Even though the novel was short and the world building relatively brief, it unfolded at the perfect pace to feel understandable and compelling. I loved being flung through time and learning through the characters how the world was unfolding in each timeline.  

Speaking of the characters, they were all wonderfully constructed. My only gripe is that I wish that there could have been more time spent with some of them, namely Edwin and Mirella. I loved Gaspery and what he came to represent (which also took me completely by surprise), but some of the others were so utterly human in the way they were experiencing life that I could have read full novels on them. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this one. It was concise, impactful, and managed to thoroughly surprise me. It’s definitely one I’d recommend, particularly to those looking for something a little sci-fi light.