Sea of Tranquility

Details:

• author: Emily St. John Mandel
  
• full title: Sea of Tranquility
  
• narrators: John Lee, Dylan Moore, Arthur Morey, Kirsten Potter
  
• genre: sci-fi, time travel
  
• topics: #timetravel, #earth, #moon
  
• publisher: Random House Audio
  
• publish date: 05.04.2022
  
• timing: 5:47:00
  
  

My Rating of the Audiobook:

• content: 💙💙💙💙
• narration: 💙💙💙💙.5

 

Goodreads

Quotes:

“I’ve been thinking a great deal about time and motion lately, about being a still point in the ceaseless rush.”

"I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world."

Excerpt from the Book:

Edwin's ancestors include William the Conqueror. When Edwin's grandfather dies, his father will become an earl, and Edwin went to two of the best schools in the country. But there was never much future for him back in England. There are very few professions that a gentleman can take up, and none of them are of interest to Edwin. The family estate is destined to go to his oldest brother, Gilbert, so he stands to inherit nothing. (The middle brother, Niall, is in Australia already.) Edwin might have clung to England a little longer, but he holds secretly radical views which emerged unexpectedly at a dinner party, thus speeding up his fate.

My Thoughts:

A bit of a slow start. I needed some time to accustom to this story, which is assembled from several in different timelines. But when you reach the end, or even if you read it twice, everything connects perfectly. Not all things are explained. You can draw your own conclusions from some parts, and some become somewhat obvious.

I loved the time travel theme, in past and future, on other worlds, and on our Earth. I assume recent covid pandemics inspired some parts, but this is not the main story. Overall, I'm not a fan of books that cover any pandemics. But the author here has naturally woven different pandemics into the overall story.

There are a few more great quotes along the reading, but I don’t want to write them here because they can be spoilers. This was my first novel by Emily St. John Mandel, but I will read some others.

About the Author:

Emily St. John Mandel was born and raised on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. She studied contemporary dance at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York.

She is the author of five novels, including The Glass Hotel (spring 2020) and Station Eleven (2014.) Station Eleven was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, won the Morning News Tournament of Books, and has been translated into 34 languages. She lives in NYC with her husband and daughter.