Hardcover, 272 pages
English language
Published May 4, 2022 by Knopf.
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 bestselling 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 Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American …
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 bestselling 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 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.
Was easy to read - that's what I needed at this time, and enjoyed the characters and plot. A great author.
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).
Really nice plot around time and family and friends relationships. The story evolves well and the last part and conclusion are just fantastic and pleasing. I'd love to see this on a movie, to be honest.
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.
Nice short book. Nothing groundbreaking but adequately conveyed it's purpose.
a little overrated
I liked it because it was well written and short. Longer would have been boring, shorter would have cut too much. I wonder how the author's experience during the pandemic influenced the Last Book Tour Before the End of the World chapter (at least one discussion in the book was real—but from 2015). I liked this book very much, but I liked Station Eleven better, hence the 4 stars.
This book washed over me. I loved the story and the way it made me feel about family, about time. The way the different stories knit together, the moments of realization that the author flawlessly sets up and executes... all of it. Lovely.
A pandemic novel, a time travel novel, and a central character who is a beleaguered author who can't decide if they are writing a novel or a novella... phew, honestly the writing was pretty good for me to give it 3 stars.
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.
