I'm a little late reading this book but I absolutely LOVED it and I only regret I didn't start it sooner. This has become one of my favourite books and I know I will pick it up to read over and over throughout the years!

This book is so good. Like inject it into my veins I can think of nothing else good.

It’s difficult to describe the plot. There’s a man in 1912, an author living on the moon, a throwback to Vincent from The Glass Hotel. There’s secrets and violins and a pandemic, and amongst it all Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, investigating an anomaly in time.

The writing is beautiful, the chapters are short and concise, but the book is full of many worlds, many lives, so many threads of story. I’m amazed so much is packed into one not overly long book, but nothing feels rushed or cramped or cut out.

I just need everyone to read this. I need to shout about it from the rooftops. I want to read it all over again immediately, but also forget everything about it and dive in head first again.

This will a very hard book to top.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

'Time we left...'

A deft, and deceptively intricate, novel, which plots multiple, but linked, timelines. Ultimately, it appears, we are more-than-likely living in a simulation. But does it matter? How does it benefit us to know?

I'm afraid I gave up on this half way through it was just too slow and labouring it just felt like a chore to read

A mind blowing mystery with so many timelines and storylines to unpack. Full of cleverly placed Easter eggs, yet another example of why Emily St John Mandel is such a skilled writer.

A fantastic read but not one I necessarily loved.

Full review to come.

Completely on me for choosing this as my introduction to St. John Mandel, but perhaps better appreciated when you are already familiar with her work

I love the world Emily St. John Mandel has created in her books. I love stories about time travel so this follow-up to Station Eleven was the perfect read for me.

The book opens in 1012 in Canada where, one day, a young British immigrant, Edwin St John St Andrew, undergoes a paranormal experience Later, the scene shifts and we are at a concert in New York where a composer is playing an old piece of video that seems to show a version of what Edwin experienced in the forest. Cue mystery and dual, interwoven storylines. My favourite.

Sea of Tranquility is a stunning about about morality, humanity, mortality and existence. It's quietly compelling and utterly gripping. Emily St. John Mandel's storytelling is as exquisite as always.

This skilful and timely sequel to both Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel (even though the two are apparently unconnected) begs for repeat reading and to its precursors. One(s) to enjoy again and again.

Sea of Tranquility is a beautiful story about time travel with compelling characters, an intriguing plot, and a fast-paced to keep readers hooked. Emily St. John Mandel is quickly becoming a must-read author. Highly recommended!

Unfortunately I found that this one wasn't for me. Although I normally love time travel books, I found this one just a little bit too disjointed and disconnected and as a result I couldn't get into the story. The pace is also very slow. Emily St John Mandel likes to spend time with her characters, building up a backstory and gradually building on their emotions and relationships to create a bigger picture. It's subtle storytelling at its best, and very well crafted, but I just couldn't get invested.

Definitely a case of personal taste clashing, as I really can see why Emily St John Mandel is such a well loved author, but i just couldnt enjoy this.

I was apprehensive going into this as I wasn't the biggest fan of Station Eleven, but you can imagine my surprise when I found out it features time travel!
It took a little while for me to get into the story. It follows quite a few different characters in different time periods, and I struggled with the earlier POV. Once we got to the more futuristic settings, and time travel was introduced then I was completely hooked. Once everything came together, I honestly would've given the book 5 stars, but I wish that I have been so engaged right from the start.

I really recommend this one - especially if you're a big fan of the time travel trope like I am!

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Emily St. John Mandel takes time travel, a pandemic, a moon colony, a violin played in an airship terminal, and throws in the question, if reality is what it seems.
All of that combines to form a stunning pladoyer for humanity's will to live.

Starting from 1912 Canada and reaching to the new moon colonies this story of connected lives stretches through a pandemic. However, there is one constant, a seemingly out of place stranger. Who is this person that arrives and disappears just as quickly and why is he asking about a strange episode of music and sound?

I loved the jumps in time and the descriptions of each time period; the way the characters were linked slowly revealing itself was gripping and as the end of the novel explained all the questions I had and I was not disappointed. With the pandemic fear running through timelines although the novel was at times alien it also felt very familiar. 5 stars.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review

https://lynns-books.com/2022/05/30/sea-of-tranquility-by-emily-st-john-mandel/
5 of 5 stars
My Five Word TL:DR Review: This book equals mind blown

Words actually fail me right now – which isn’t the best start to a review is it? I am in complete awe of this author and can’t even begin to outline how impressive this book is. On the face of it this is a standalone story that fundamentally connects the lives of four people who share an experience through a strange anomaly, a glitch in the system if you will, that in the future will be scrutinised and investigated by a time travel agency. Dig a little deeper and this novel actually brings together elements from the author’s previous works (definitely The Glass Hotel and also I think Station Eleven) in the most eye popping feat. If that wasn’t enough, one of the characters is an author herself, of a post apocalyptic book that has become a bestseller. There are so many little twists and turns in this book all finished off with a mouth dropping conclusion that is simply brilliant.

If that doesn’t intrigue you enough to delve into this author’s work then consider also that her writing is absolutely beautiful and I could easily have had a whole stack of quotes at this point but for the fact that I’m so lazy at keeping notes, especially when I’m deep in the throes of a book I’m loving.

So, I know I’m going to make a complete muddle of trying to describe the plot but here goes. We basically meet four individuals from different times and places. A young man who in 1912 finds himself exiled from his family who travels to Canada to start a new life. A teenage girl from the year 1994 who is walking through a forest taking a video, a short film that picks up a strange anomaly. Her film will be used 26 years later to accompany a musical score that her brother composes. In the year 2203 we follow an author on an extended book tour, separated from her husband and young child and missing home. Jump forward again to 2401 where an employee of the Time Institute is given a case to investigate – a case that will tie all these threads together.

Firstly, time travel books can be very hit or miss for me but when they work well, as is the case here, I find them thought provoking in the extreme. With this particular story it feels like the potential to become tangled (did you read my synopsis of the plot?) is highly possible. However, the author’s writing chops prevents that from becoming the case. Each narrative seems to flow without either beginning or end. I know that sounds crazy but it’s one of the thoughts I distinctly remember having whilst I was reading. It’s magical, one minute you’re reading a person’s narrative and thoughts and then you’ve moved to another player and there’s no confusion or muddy waters, just a really elegant transition that is so smooth that each player seems to simply blend into the background or come back into focus as the story dictates, like a camera panning round and zooming in or out to capture a person or moment. And the story doesn’t necessarily flow in chronological order but jumps backwards and forwards in time, but, again, I would stress that I never experienced any confusion.

Secondly, the author has written of a fictional author who has published a successful post apocalyptic novel that becomes even more poignant when the time in which she lives falls victim to a vicious pandemic. Layers within layers within layers.

The settings jump about. We travel not only on earth but on planets that have been colonised, some more successfully than others. Planets where huge domes provide faux skies, clouds and rain and others where the technology has failed and the skies are permanently dark.

I don’t think I can add too much more. I liked the characters. I loved the inclusion of little elements taken from previous stories. I thought the plot was skillfully managed and the threads all came together in an extremely satisfying way. I think the only thing I can say further at this point is I feel like a reread is in order.

I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending this book, Station Eleven or The Glass Hotel although I would stress that each novel can be read as a standalone.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

Emily St. John Mandel is one of my favourite authors, and this story doesn't disappoint.

This is a mystery story, a story of interplanetary travel, time travel, a story of an anomaly in time; all so well written, with beautifully described scenery and atmosphere.

There are many intriguing characters, male and female, all with their own airs of mystery as they try to reconcile themselves with a changing and dangerous universe, and how they can survive within it.

Highly recommended.

Liked this a lot more than Station Eleven. Different time lines and different characters, very well interwoven.

A quick read, but one that you read slowly to savour.

One of my most anticipated releases for 2022 did not quite live up to expectations. Mandel's effortless prose is not enough to sustain a very ambitious project.
The sci-fi element is not remotely consistent or convincing and the auto-fiction element comes across as self-indulgent and unnecessary. Still somewhat enjoyable but disappointing nonetheless.

A transporting, penetrating novel infused with the freshness, quirkiness and urgency that characterise Canadian author Emily St John Mandel's work. Like her preceding novels, it features loose ends slowly and wonderfully woven together in a suspenseful read. An early 20th-century remittance man exiled to Canada by his family for his radical views, a musician and videomaker and his sister, whose husband has fled to Dubai after setting up a giant Ponzi scheme, a 23rd century writer from the Moon colonies on tour on planet Earth during a pandemic, who clearly serves as an alter-ego for the author, an old violinist playing in the airport, and a 25th -century man of the fringes of society who seizes the opportunity to become time traveller to investigate an obscure phenomenon.

The author relies on well-known Back to The Future and Matrix plots with the hero challenging the machine in order to create something fresh and exciting, giving a sweeping look at our civilisation and touching on colonisation and empire, late capitalism, war, climate change and pandemics. The time traveller gives us the perspective one might get from old postcards, a look on our civilization tinged with a harrowing sense of inevitability, as we get to know the characters’ aspirations but also the tragic ways in which their lives will end. Most of them are exiled, and a sense of loss and nostalgia permeates the novel. So does, as in Station Eleven, the presence of art with its redeeming power. A timely, pacy, well plotted short novel from one of the most exciting contemporary authors.

I am grateful to Netgalley and the publisher for a review copy.

Mention of suicide, terminal illness, grief, traum, ptsd, being incarcerated for a crime you didn’t commit

A young man on his way to find a new life for himself in the wild world of Canada experiences something weird in the wilderness, something so unfathomable that he questions his own sanity.
Decades later, an author is on a trip to promote one of her books when she happens to witness the same weird thing – where is the connection?

Time travel book. I’d recommend to not do what I did, and read this in as short a trime frame as possible. You see, I read the main chunk of this in one go, but then waited a whole week for the finishing pages when it all came together, and I am very sure that this would have been even more fun had it not waited.
It’s the time travel thing, where you have multiple plot strands set in different epochs that will eventually all come together, and where it is easier to keep on top of it if you have it in one big portion.

I liked the references to The Glass Hotel. You don’t have to have read the former novel to understand this one, it’s more that we meet characters that were relevant there. There is nothing you would miss by starting by this one, but the nod into the right direction was fun.

If any other person had written this, it would not be called literary fiction but sci fi. The story felt like an A, or maybe a V: We have a straight line of plot, then the pivot point at which we get the same thing again but from another perspective.
As anyone who played text based role playing games knows, this can be utterly annoying, but in this case, the author focuses on all the things we did not get the first time, and the recollections get increasingly shorter, until we only have a short passage to show: Yes, this also happened. Is has to happen because we know it has happened, but this character only appears here now, at the end of his journey.

After being kind of indifferent to the Glass Hotel, this was amazing. Will continue to read everything by the author I can get my hands on.

The arc was provided by the publisher.

My mind is blown after reading this!

Sea of Tranquility spans centuries, starting in Canada in 1912 with British exile Edwin, 2020 with Mirella wanting to connect with her old friend Vincent, 2203 where author Olive is doing a book tour on Earth on the brink of a deadly pandemic and 2401 on the moon colonies. These timelines have certain strange things in common: violins, a forest, an airship station. As the book develops, we discover how these events are possibly linked, unravelling and reconnecting the strands

If this is the first Emily St. John Mandel book you are considering picking up, I would hold off! Read Station Eleven first and then The Glass Hotel. You could in theory read Sea of Tranquility on it's own, but I really think the links between the first two books and SoT really add to the reading experience of SoT. Mandel often has characters and events crop up in her other books, sometimes as massive parts of the book, sometimes in reference. And part of the reason I enjoyed this one so much was because of that. But it's not the only reason!

The prose is exquisite, the way ESJM writes is stunning. In the opening chapters, Edwin has travelled from England to Canada and winds up in Victoria, where there is a big ex-pat community 'The trouble with Victoria, in Edwin's eyes, is that it's too much like England without actually being England. It's a far-distant simulation of England, a watercolour superimposed unconvincingly on the landscape'. Olive's chapters were particularly resonating, with ESJM stating that it was auto-fiction: a dystopian sci-fi author, who wrote a best selling book about a pandemic finds themselves on the brink of a pandemic in real life. Reading those chapters struck a fear in me, a return to March 2020 which at times seems so much longer than 2 years ago. I have no doubt that some of those paragraphs will haunt me the way certain parts of Station Eleven (which I read in 2015) still haunts me to this day

It's not just the prose I loved, but also the plot. The book is definitely sci-fi (if the colonies on the Moon didn't give that away!), but it's pretty accessible if you shy away from hard sci-fi. Some parts will melt your brain a bit, even writing this review I'm thinking of points and being blown away by it all again! By the end of the book, I was literally gasping out loud as things tied together. A thought provoking, beautifully written novel, I cannot wait to see what Emily St. John Mandel will do next!