Nens's Reviews > Sea of Tranquility

🙄
At least it was entertaining enough to read through, hence two stars.

This book tries to be too many things at once and barely manages to do anything good. I saw plot twists coming from far away. Too many themes, all at once. Also, confusingly pandemic heavy, even though it barely makes sense for it to be? It doesn't necessarily add to the story.

Authour's choice/style of writing: confusing, no, baffling. All but using anything but "all but".

C'mon guys. This isn't sci-fi worth settling for.

Spoilers from the end of the book:

(view spoiler)[At the very end, which is currently very fresh to me, Gaspery says:

What someone—anyone!—at the Time Institute really should have caught, given how intelligent everyone was supposed to be over there, was that I was the anomaly. No, that’s not fair. I triggered the anomaly. How did no one catch that I was interviewing myself? Because thanks to the documentation Zoey had created, on paper my name was Alan Sami and I’d been born and spent my life on a farm outside of Oklahoma City.

But I mean... Zoey KNEW. Didn't she? She fucking made his new identity. And I guess you could say "Oh, but at that time she didn't work at the Time Institute" and I'd say shut up, all the things she was researching already happened, so she should've known. And I mean. She apparently did. She knew. Gaspery saying "anyone should have caught" it, when his kickass sister knew and saved his stupid ass.

Also, for a guy that's going back in time just to mess with and save some random-ass British half-nobility and his mom's fave author, he could've easily saved his wife. Like, okay, aneurysms are usually not detected until it's too late, but the year is 2190 and I'm sure that medicine progressed enough to operate on it (we have these operations today, they're dangerous tho, so hypothetically they won't be as much in the future), so he could've saved his wife too? Because he knew she'll die before him??? But he didn't??????? Why the change of heart all of a sudden. Why would he suddenly choose to respect timeline and act accordingly to preserve it???? Stupid-ass man.

(Side note: this isn't the only inconsistency in the book, whole Gaspery J. Roberts is one big question mark, like he's soooo good in observing people, but then you get parts where he says something like "I never noticed that about her" or "I never asked my friend about this" and... I don't know if this is supposed to be a subtle unreliable narrator, but from the rest of the book Gaspery didn't seem like it. So I just think this is author's slip-up, just 2020 pandemic sci-fi mumbo-jumbo that got published in the light of old glory and lack of flu-ridden books.)

And another thing I wanted to mention is - if the Gaspery is causing the anomaly, if him being there to watch Edwin and teen Vincent is what caused them to slip to 2195 or whenever Gaspery and the violinist had the interview, wouldn't there then be another for Edwin in 1918 and for Vincent/Mirella/everyone at the party in 2007? I don't get it.
(hide spoiler)]

That's all I have to say. If author decided to stick to one or two themes, I think this book would be the bomb. Pandemics don't add much to it (I'd argue they don't add anything but I realize that this was just the author's way of coping through 2020, BUT this should've been just the pandemic/apocalyptic book then), time travel just happens, nothing is properly explained and/or explored, and above all: if it doesn't happen to Gaspery, it doesn't matter. The book is already short, but it could've been cut in half if all the non-Gaspery parts were thrown out - and the thing is, I'd like those non-Gaspery parts more.