John Mauro's Reviews > Sea of Tranquility
Sea of Tranquility
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One of my most anticipated new releases of the year, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, turned out to be a watered-down rewrite of Cloud Atlas. If I were David Mitchell, I don't know whether I'd feel flattered or just profoundly ripped off.
Sea of Tranquility has exactly the same narrative structure as Cloud Atlas, consisting of interconnected stories that occur across different timelines, starting in the past and spanning into the future. Like Cloud Atlas, the opening storyline centers on a seafaring scholar traveling to the New World, whose "street smarts" pale in comparison to his "book smarts." Like Cloud Atlas, the next storylines involve a composer, an author, and a projection into a sci-fi future. Like Cloud Atlas, each storyline is interrupted partway through to begin the next nested story, and then all the stories wrap up in the second half of the book. The main difference is that the nested stories in Sea of Tranquility are only four layers deep, rather than six layers deep in Cloud Atlas.
Emily St. John Mandel's writing is beautiful, as usual. However, she uses exactly the same writing style for all storylines covering three hundred years of history. The same 2020 writing style is applied to the historical account from 1912 and to the futuristic stories taking place in 2203 and 2401. She doesn't even attempt to alter her writing style to reflect these time differences. This is in sharp contrast to David Mitchell, who dramatically adjusted his writing style to reflect each different time period. This included making a projection of how he thought the English language would evolve in the near and far futures. Mitchell accomplished this task brilliantly, although it certainly made Cloud Atlas more difficult to read than Sea of Tranquility. In this way, the writing in Sea of Tranquility is simultaneously beautiful and lazy. I wish Emily St. John Mandel would have tried harder to capture the differences in writing style that one would expect over a span of 300 years.
Like David Mitchell, Emily St. John Mandel is attempting to build an interconnected universe of characters spanning across books. However, the execution is quite clunky in Sea of Tranquility. The 2020 timeline overlaps with her previous novel, The Glass Hotel, and unfortunately the characters in the 2020 timeline of Sea of Tranquility spend about half of their dialogue recapping key plot points from The Glass Hotel. Also, the interconnections among the nested stories of Sea of Tranquility are made using a rather unconvincing time travel plot device, in contrast to the more subtle connections that David Mitchell provides in Cloud Atlas.
I really wanted to love this book. I gave five stars to The Glass Hotel, which was brilliant in its subtle use of magical realism. Emily St. John Mandel's previous post-apocalyptic novel, Station Eleven, was also vastly superior to Sea of Tranquility. I preordered Sea of Tranquiltiy months in advance, in eager anticipation of its release date. This was such a letdown. I would have been far better off just rereading Cloud Atlas.
Sea of Tranquility has exactly the same narrative structure as Cloud Atlas, consisting of interconnected stories that occur across different timelines, starting in the past and spanning into the future. Like Cloud Atlas, the opening storyline centers on a seafaring scholar traveling to the New World, whose "street smarts" pale in comparison to his "book smarts." Like Cloud Atlas, the next storylines involve a composer, an author, and a projection into a sci-fi future. Like Cloud Atlas, each storyline is interrupted partway through to begin the next nested story, and then all the stories wrap up in the second half of the book. The main difference is that the nested stories in Sea of Tranquility are only four layers deep, rather than six layers deep in Cloud Atlas.
Emily St. John Mandel's writing is beautiful, as usual. However, she uses exactly the same writing style for all storylines covering three hundred years of history. The same 2020 writing style is applied to the historical account from 1912 and to the futuristic stories taking place in 2203 and 2401. She doesn't even attempt to alter her writing style to reflect these time differences. This is in sharp contrast to David Mitchell, who dramatically adjusted his writing style to reflect each different time period. This included making a projection of how he thought the English language would evolve in the near and far futures. Mitchell accomplished this task brilliantly, although it certainly made Cloud Atlas more difficult to read than Sea of Tranquility. In this way, the writing in Sea of Tranquility is simultaneously beautiful and lazy. I wish Emily St. John Mandel would have tried harder to capture the differences in writing style that one would expect over a span of 300 years.
Like David Mitchell, Emily St. John Mandel is attempting to build an interconnected universe of characters spanning across books. However, the execution is quite clunky in Sea of Tranquility. The 2020 timeline overlaps with her previous novel, The Glass Hotel, and unfortunately the characters in the 2020 timeline of Sea of Tranquility spend about half of their dialogue recapping key plot points from The Glass Hotel. Also, the interconnections among the nested stories of Sea of Tranquility are made using a rather unconvincing time travel plot device, in contrast to the more subtle connections that David Mitchell provides in Cloud Atlas.
I really wanted to love this book. I gave five stars to The Glass Hotel, which was brilliant in its subtle use of magical realism. Emily St. John Mandel's previous post-apocalyptic novel, Station Eleven, was also vastly superior to Sea of Tranquility. I preordered Sea of Tranquiltiy months in advance, in eager anticipation of its release date. This was such a letdown. I would have been far better off just rereading Cloud Atlas.
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Sotto
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Apr 06, 2022 04:50AM
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Thanks for your kind comment, Sotto! Hope all is well with you!
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Thanks a lot for your kind comment, Abyssdancer! One of the reasons I love Emily St. John Mandel's other books, in addition to her beautiful writing style, is the originality of the story. I felt like this was sorely missing here. I appreciate what she was trying to do, but it was just far too similar to Cloud Atlas and compared unfavorably to that previous novel. I hope you are enjoying your current read! All the best.
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Thank you, Sofia! Perhaps it was both a tribute and a rip-off. It certainly felt like more of the latter when I was reading it. One of the things I like about Emily St. John Mandel's books, in addition to her beautiful writing, is her originality. I thought this aspect was missing her, as the book was so derivative, unfortunately.
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Oh no, I have Cloud Cuckoo Land sitting on my bookshelf, just waiting to be read, and I'm really excited about that one too. I hope it won't be another letdown!
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Thank you, Julie! I'm glad you liked the review. The Glass Hotel is still one of my favorites. :-)
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Thanks for your kind comment about the review. Hope you have a great day, Melike! Best wishes.
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Thanks for your sharing your thoughtful comment, Sarah. I'm glad that you enjoyed this book despite its shortcomings compared to her previous work. I completely agree about the beautiful writing style. I had loved all of her previous books that I had read and was prepared to love this one as well, but it just fell short for me. Thanks again for your kind comment, and happy reading! Best wishes.
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Thanks for your kind comment, Mary! I'm glad you enjoyed this book. Hope you have a great day!
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Me too, but it also can't spoil the plot of the other books. I'm glad that I had already read The Glass Hotel before reading Sea of Tranquility. Otherwise, most of the key plot elements would have been spoiled. Thanks for your comment, Sofia!
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I hope to get to Cloud Cuckoo Land in the coming weeks. Thanks for your comment, Joy! Best wishes.
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Hi Paul, great question! I can't answer that with certainty, since I can't unread Cloud Atlas. But if I had no knowledge of Cloud Atlas, I imagine that I would like Sea of Tranquility quite a bit more. Probably four stars in that case. If one doesn't already know about Cloud Atlas, I think Sea of Tranquility would seem quite original in its layered structure across disparate timeframes, with a common thread running through all of the layers. However, objectively speaking, the question of originality has to consider that Cloud Atlas was published first and was a massively popular and well-known book for David Mitchell. I hope that at least partially answers your question, Paul. Hope you have a great day!
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Hi Camille, I spend the entire first half of the review detailing the striking similarities between Sea of Tranquility and Cloud Atlas. The difference that I pointed out is that David Mitchell adjusts his writing style for different time periods, whereas Emily St. John Mandel uses exactly the same writing style over a 500-year spand of time. The latter case is simply not realistic. People in Shakespearean times spoke and wrote very differently from people today. Likewise, the language in 2401 will have evolved quite a bit from the language we use today. I think David Mitchell did an excellent job capturing these differences, whereas Emily St. John Mandel didn't even make an attempt.
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Sea of Tranquility is trending at 4 or 5 stars while Cloud at less is trending at 2 or 3 stars. Cloud Atlas is a slog and Sea of Tranquility is smooth like butter.
This is not surprising because Madel is the better writer and is able to coherently pull off a story about interconnections across time and space.
Don't give up on reading this book just because someone you follow did not like it because you will be missing out.
![John Mauro](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1596918213p1/26741582.jpg)
Sea of Tranquility is trending at 4 or 5 stars while Cloud at less is tr..."
Sea of Tranquility is certainly a much shorter, easier read compared to Cloud Atlas. But Cloud Atlas is highly original and Sea of Tranquility is copying its structure. I'm glad you are enjoying Sea of Tranquility and don't want to take away that enjoyment. (For me, a large part of the enjoyment comes from originality.) Thanks for sharing your opinion. Happy reading.
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Agreed! The Cloud Atlas movie was excellent.
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Great review! :)
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Great review! :)"
Thanks for your kind comment, Lem◍nade! Fortunately I've found plenty of other great books this year, so overall 2022 has been an excellent reading year thus far. I hope you are enjoying your current read. Best wishes!
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