“Contains spoilers” is toggled off for this review, however, the main premise of this book (which I will discuss here) isn’t fully revealed until quite a ways in. This review doesn’t spoil anything the blurb of my copy doesn’t, but if you want to keep the first mystery intact, I’d stop at this paragraph. I went in pretty blind and would recommend doing the same.

So, normally I’m not a fan of the time-travel trope, and honestly, my opinion remains unchanged. But calling Sea of Tranquillity a time-travel story does the same disservice as calling Station Eleven a post-apocalypse story. Time-travel is used as a philosophical tool to explore what this book is really about; humanity, living in the age of technology, and what it means to be real. If you’re prone to existentialism, there’s a lot to like here. While the question posed is somewhat grim, this story is, at its core, a hopeful one.

Mandel’s prose is first class. The book reads like a movie — I finished it in two days, which is an anomaly for me. No sentence feels wasted or overblown with flowery language. There are some lines that really hit, that are so perfect for what they’re conveying, but otherwise the story flows on with an airtight wit, uninterrupted by author-imposed words of wisdom.

However, if you’re drawn to character-driven stories, this might not be the book for you. There’s nothing particularly bad about them, they’re realistic enough, but we’re not given entry to the full depth of any of them — even though you feel that it’s there. What sticks with me are the lessons these characters learn and the experiences they have, not the actual people. It feels intentional that we’re only given relatively small glimpses of their lives. When I read Mandel’s writing I’m struck with the notion that all of life matters, the small moments and the big. We don’t need the whole landscape to appreciate the painting.

Sea of Tranquillity is a really solid piece of literature of which I’m undoubtedly among the targeted audience. The story repeatedly caters to observations and ideas I’ve already had, so I was bound to love it. That being said, it stops just shy of that “I need to stare at a wall for a while”-feeling that I lust after in reading.