I picked up Sea of Tranquility the other day, mostly because Emily St. John Mandel's other books had gotten such good press, and what a mistake – I should've picked up one of those instead of the latest.
Sea is so, so bad, despite all of the reviews describing it as having beautiful prose. This is the part that makes me think I'm crazy – the prose are…fine? I would describe them as "workmanlike", "not something I even notice", etc. Beautiful though? Like, what? Where?
The other issues I have might be me issues, being:
- Despite having sections that take place hundreds of years in the past to hundreds of years in the future, everyone talks exactly the same way. There's a part where a character, who's from a 21st century moon colony, makes a "Well, that escalated quickly" joke. So apparently character a century from now will still be cribbing from Anchorman.
- The future sections are basically Futurama's retro-future, but played unironically. Basically people can pop over to the moon in a 6 hour jaunt no problem, time travel exists, holograms are ubiquitous and space colonies are a regular thing, but people still at like it's the 1990s. One of these characters from the future is on a book tour, other characters have piles of physical books and a character's mom works at a moon-post office. The worldbuilding isn't even half-baked – it's more like a pile of ingredients shoved into a pot and left next to a broken stove in the hopes that the stove-vibes will cook them into a cake.
- Olive, the author self-insert is so, so bad. She's from the moon and is mostly there to experience a 22nd century pandemic, mostly so the author can work through her pandemic-related lockdown angst. I haven't seen a self-insert this self-indulgent since Stephen King wrote himself into The Dark Tower books as a god.
I could go on, but that would be spoilers.
Am I crazy? And, if not, please validate this opinion. I feel like this book is getting all the praise, but it just seems like lazy Cloud Atlas.
by MinimumNo2772