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Emily St. John Mandel: Sea of Tranquility (Hardcover, 2022, Knopf) 4 stars

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled …

Review of 'Sea of Tranquility' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

"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 the millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it's ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world."

I don't normally use long quotes like that, but it felt especially poignant today, now, this year. Things are bad, but they will always be bad, have always been bad, in different but similar ways.

This was an incredibly enjoyable time travel book. I won't summarize the plot since I think a lot of the joy is figuring this one out for yourself, but in general, a future man tries to stop a future thing from happening.

It's got a bit of a slow start where you wonder where things are going, but once things pick up, they really pick up. It's a short book (comparatively speaking) anyway, so when things start moving rapidly, it's incredibly satisfying coming to realizations and seeing where things are going. I especially loved all the references to Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, and I think there was some fourth wall breaking at one point which was funny to me.

An easy add to my favorites this year. If you liked her previous books, definitely pick this up.