Sea of Tranquility PDF Free Download

Carolyn “This is a wonderful, perplexing novel of soaring imagination. It draws on speculative physics, metaphysics, and science fiction in an original, thought-provoking manner. What if what we consider our reality is actually a manufactured simulation? The controls carry a glitch (or file corruption) that bleeds or melds together moments from the past, present, and future for an instant over the centuries. The theory is with the advance of holograms and virtual reality; this is a technical possibility far in the future. Perhaps the sounds, smells, the people, and the world we see around us, and what we consider the reality of our lives is only a simulation.

In 1912, Edwin St. Andrew was exiled from his family’s estate in England and is now living as a remittance man in the wilderness of British Columbia. He is indolent and spends his time wandering in the forest. He is shocked to hear violin music played in an airship terminal, falls ill, and believes he has suffered hallucinations. He is questioned by a man impersonating a priest.

In 2020, a young girl filming old-growth trees experienced an anomaly, disrupting time and place.

Olive Llewellen lives on Moon Colony 2 in the year 2203. She is on a book tour scheduled to take her through the colonies and Earth to promote her pandemic novel, which has become a bestseller. This is the beginning of a deadly pandemic, soon to lead to lengthy lockdowns and death.

In the future, at about 2400, a hotel security guard, Gaspery, is finding his work boring. He has learned that his sister and a boyhood friend are employed in prominent positions at the Time Institute. He manages to get accepted there and has an assignment after lengthy training. Time travel has already been invented but is mainly outlawed. Problems have arisen from time travellers making mistakes, breaking the rules, and altering timelines. The Time Institute works at restoring these changes. Those charged are imprisoned or made to vanish.

Gaspery’s assignment is to go back in time to different years and places and interview the man playing the violin and three others who have experienced the anomalies. He must be impartial and resist any urges to better his subjects’ futures. Can he overcome his humanity? Can he solve what is causing the glitches or disruptions?

Many thanks to NetGalley, HarperCollins Canada, and Sarah Gregory for this splendid, memorable, mind-boggling book.”

linda galella “not nearly enough world building to support the changes over 500 years.

Maybe I’m at a disadvantage because this is the first book I’ve read by author, Emily St. John Mandel. There are characters in this book that are introduced in her earlier novels, altho’ this is a completely independent story, in theory.

Featured characters include an author famous for writing about the Pandemic who’s on tour during a pandemic, a teenager ostracized by his family for voicing his non-conforming opinions, a violinist, a hotel detective and a few ancillary folks.

For much of this short novel, it felt fragmented and like the time machine needed a tune up. The story arcs do come together by the end and there is some lovely writing but I found the ending rushed and wanted more character development. Even tho’ this book lists at 226 pages, there is a copious amount of white space and if condensed, it would paginate at 176 quite easily.

This sea was a little too tranquil for me with regards to characterizations and unique worlds & timelines. Aside from the posted dates at the section changes, there was very little that was futuristic with regard to technology, clothing, transportation, architecture…not nearly enough science in this fiction”