Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel was my December follower book of the month. So, many people thought it good enough that I should read it in 2024 but what did I end of thinking about it? Well, if you watch my quick video review of it, you can see I didn’t think too much about it.
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Sea of Tranquility‘s story follows multiple characters, including a 20th-century exile, a 22nd-century author, and a time traveller investigating an anomaly that links them all. It’s got some underlying messages of simulation theory and time travel and even some existential crises questions but none of which are ever really explored enough to gain interest.
Sea of Tranquility plot – 3.75/5
There are some really interesting attempts to show time travel in Sea of Tranquility covering different time periods as well as one character who’s jumping across the different time periods to add a different aspect.
As briefly touched on above though, none of these individual storylines or moments are deep enough or interesting enough for you to really get interested. The book is actually really short coming in at around 250ish pages in the version I read with the audiobook coming in at just over 5 hours. Therefore, trying to have multiple storylines and different aspects in such a short amount of time is understandably difficult. I have seen a couple of other reviews suggesting the book left them wanting more.
One thing I can appreciate here however is Mandel’s writing. There’s no doubt she’s incredibly talented and I can definitely see others with a little more patience than me enjoying this.
If time travel is your sort of bag and you’re more here for the discussions of simulation theory or shor, individual stories, then you may find something more enjoyable here than I did.
Sea of Tranquility characters – 3.75/5
Another element of Sea of Tranquility that’s hampered by the fact that the story is so short are the characters themselves. A combination of the lack of actual pages and the fact that we’re trying to jump around different plots means we ever get enough time to get to know the characters.
Looking back at the book, there is only really one character i quite strongly remember and he was the only one with a real memorable personality.
I’ve read short books before or books that featured characters for a short period and there’s a lot of ways you can inject some personality into characters – you can give them a strong sense of humour or make them actively dislikable. If the book’s this short, it makes sense to give the people in a personality that’s a little over the top.
Sea of Tranquility final rating – 3.75/5
I was really excited to read Sea of Tranquility as it sounded right up my street and I’d heard a lot of positive thing about it. However, something about it just didn’t click with me. Its shortness hampers both its ability to tell a fulfilling story and also to embed some memorable characters. This results in a book that has some potential but could have done with being about twice as long to give it a chance to fully flesh out its ideas. Though underwhelming overall to me, I can still respect the writing here and those with more patience might find something more to enjoy here.
