Melanie's Reviews > Sea of Tranquility

“Pandemics don't approach like wars, with the distant thud of artillery growing louder every day and flashes of bombs on the horizon. They arrive in retrospect, essentially. It's disorienting. The pandemic is far away and then it's all around you with seemingly no intermediate step.”

i was a little apprehensive going into this story, because Station Eleven is one of my favorite books of all time, but i really didn’t enjoy The Glass Hotel. i was really on the fence about starting this, but i am so happy that i did because i ended up really loving, and being so very moved, by this story. Also, apparently i am really starting 2024 off with reading all the scifi books involving time and love.

sea of tranquility is a story that starts in 1912 and ends in 2401. we get to read from four characters throughout this timeline: edwin (1912), mirella (2020), olive (2203), gaspery-jacques (2401). and slowly (and oh so beautifully) see how they all connect because of a maple tree and a violin.

i feel like i really don’t want to say anything more about the plot, but i promise you these four people are woven together in a really lovely way. we get to see plagues and heartbreak and loss, but we also get to see love and hope and devotion. to me, this book was all about the connections we make, the ripples we all leave in the universe, and how even when humanity looks and feels so hopeless at times, more humans ultimately want to do good and want to help one another. And seeing this story unfold over 500 years was just a really heartfelt reminder that maybe 2024 melanie needed.

trigger + content warnings: colonization, vomit, suicide mentions, talk of a lot of loss of loved ones (partners, parents, siblings, friends), grief, gun violence, incarceration, brief prison setting, blood, and a lot of talk of pandemics and plagues and illness (this book heavily talks about pandemics in a way that i think could be very triggering. I’m not sure i was ready for that in 2024, but i just kept reading, but i do want to warn friends that this book feels very heavy a lot so please use caution!)

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♡ Station Eleven ★★★★★
♡ The Glass Hotel ★★