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 …
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.
A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.
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Discussing core plot point
I'm OK with the time travel paradoxes -- those are inevitable. But to me it's a pretty bad plot weakness here that the Time Institute notices, and manages to find documentation of, a glitch in the matrix that just looks to three observers like a migraine symptom or a petit mal epileptic fit. People's brains and senses make up all sorts of weird shit all the time, and nobody takes it as evidence of anything particularly significant.
There's a passage in the book where one of the characters complain that another characters portrayal of growing up on the moon is exaggerated and not reflective of her own experience, this is how I feel of the author's take on the pandemic.
There's a passage in the book where one of the characters complain that another characters portrayal of growing up on the moon is exaggerated and not reflective of her own experience, this is how I feel of the author's take on the pandemic.
I found this touching and hopeful, I liked how poignantly the characters were drawn, and the themes of kindness and the vicissitudes of life.
My main complaint was that I think the simulation theory stuff was basically an unnecessary macguffin and didn't add to the themes (at least as far as they interested me).
I found this touching and hopeful, I liked how poignantly the characters were drawn, and the themes of kindness and the vicissitudes of life.
My main complaint was that I think the simulation theory stuff was basically an unnecessary macguffin and didn't add to the themes (at least as far as they interested me).
Not too long, not to short. Her writing is tight and I wasn't bored for even a second. She weaves together the different storylines perfectly and by the end, it's a marvelous piece of speculative fiction that hangs with you for days after you're finished. I loved it.
Not too long, not to short. Her writing is tight and I wasn't bored for even a second. She weaves together the different storylines perfectly and by the end, it's a marvelous piece of speculative fiction that hangs with you for days after you're finished. I loved it.
I liked the story of isolated humans trying to find meaning in their lives, all tangled together and touched by the miraculous. It left me feeling hopeful and reassured.
A breezy, fun(ish, given some of the subject matter) read. The resolution of the book hinges, somewhat, on a twist that is revealed near the end, and I must confess that I was finding the book far more satisfying up to the point that the twist was revealed. It just felt a bit too “plotty” to me in a book that otherwise revels in nice details.
Fantastic to a point I did not expect. Very meta, and covers aspects that took me by surprise. I rarely read the descriptions of books written by authors that I have read before, and here it totally paid off. If you have read the previous two works by this author, you will like where this book takes you.
