Time Loop

Sea of Tranquility

by Emily St. John Mandel

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

When I was two or three chapters into reading Sea of Tranquility, I was shocked by how much it reminded me of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Both books jump from time period to time period with different points of view in each section. Both books have recurring elements that appear in the different periods, hundreds of years apart.

In Cloud Atlas, a comet-shaped birthmark appears somewhere on the body of each narrator and serves as the thread that ties them together. Gradually the reader comes to realize that each of these different characters carries something from their predecessor. Depending on your personal beliefs, you could describe it as the character's "essence" or their "soul." The book is not explicit about this and leaves it to the reader to discover.

In Sea of Tranquility, a common element is a person whose unlikely name is Gaspery-Jacques Roberts. He shows up in each of the time periods, which are 1912, 2020, and 2203. Does he represent something spiritual as in Cloud Atlas? Nope. He's a time traveler who's been sent from the year 2401 to examine an anomaly in time. 

As in every time travel book that was ever written, the time traveler must take extraordinary pains to not corrupt the timeline lest disastrous consequences ensue. Not following this rule is criminally punishable in 2401. To no one's surprise, Gaspery corrupts the hell out of the timeline, including warning a character of her impending death. He winds up marooned in his past and finds out what caused the time anomaly he was sent to investigate.

This is an interesting book, and the descriptions of life in each of the time periods (especially the ones in the future) are delightful. Ultimately, Sea of Tranquility is a much more practical book than Cloud Atlas, which is more spiritual and dreamy. I rated Sea of Tranquility four stars because I feel that Cloud Atlas is a superior book.