Reviews tagging 'Forced institutionalization'

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

25 reviews

pearlisarobot's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Classism, Sexism, Xenophobia, Gun violence, Confinement, Alcohol, Forced institutionalization, and Pandemic/Epidemic

jpw's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Contact meets Piranesi in this fascinating puzzle box of speculative science fiction. It's a joy to watch the layers revealed as it unfolds across different eras

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: War, Death, Forced institutionalization, Gun violence, and Injury/Injury detail

heather_harrison's review against another edition

mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Recommend if you want: 
* Slow burn plot
* Interconnected characters 
* Time travel 
* Processing the pandemic experience 
* Meta science fiction 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Forced institutionalization, War, Death, and Abandonment

maddiearthur's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional mysterious reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic, Colonisation, Death, Mental illness, and Suicide

Minor: Forced institutionalization

summerb's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Pandemic/Epidemic and Colonisation

Minor: Chronic illness, Excrement, Alcohol, Animal cruelty, Gaslighting, Genocide, Forced institutionalization, Gun violence, Infidelity, Sexual harassment, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Vomit, Bullying, Cancer, Drug use, Mental illness, Murder, Death, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Suicide

casssiopeia's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Forced institutionalization

miller8d's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Emily St. John Mandel is the only author I’ve ever read as an adult whose writing is effortlessly legible— I don’t have to drag myself through the continuation of the logic, the story, the names and details. She is an incredible world-builder and crafts her books in a way that kindly takes all pressure off the reader to painstakingly translate the story as they go, and she does it without losing the substance nor the sophisticated chaos of the story. She includes unnecessary yet enriching details everywhere so that you never quite catch on to the endings (unlike so many stories that make me think “Oh, well, that must be foreshadowing something”). I had a complicated

Spoiler

feeling of disappointment at the ending of the story: I was pulled to finish this book in two days because I was so excited to learn the explanation for the anomaly, and when I turned the final page, I said “Oh, come on” out loud because I did not feel like I got one at all in the moment. I found the twist exciting and sweet and logical but emotionally frustrating at first. But since I completed the book twenty minutes ago, I’ve realized I’m not actually disappointed because that is actually the most natural and truthful ending there ever could have been, and it rings true to the entire story, to the nature of time and space and boring explanations for exciting anomalies. It shines light on the entire hero’s journey and disarms us with a lonely sense of naked responsibility over the choices we make and especially over the universally lackluster inevitability of the logical consequences of the choices we make. I also really love how Mandel softly infused a strong clarity of anti-colonization and anti-cop sanity throughout the actions and beliefs of the lovable characters— refreshing to read a sci-fi/fictional/apocalyptic piece that doesn’t bury the lead of what evils are obviously leading us toward the darkness (colonization and cops, etc.), and refreshing to read any fictional book that pursues a leftist narrative through world-building and plot points, instead of just veering recklessly into harmful tokenization, superimposed racial dynamics written by a white author, and so on. I also just realized I liked the red herring of Vincent falling off into the sea— at the time, I was 100% sure she’d been teleported by the anomaly and that we must meet her later on. Fun to think that perhaps she did teleport somehow but that we’ll never know because Gaspery never knows.

I loved this book. 
Note: I pictured Gaspery as Jacob Wysocki from College Humor.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic, Injury/Injury detail, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Forced institutionalization, Death, Mental illness, War, Suicide, and Violence

Moderate: Abandonment, Confinement, Deportation, Panic attacks/disorders, Classism, Colonisation, Death of parent, Grief, Gun violence, Police brutality, and Body horror

Minor: Alcohol, Cursing, Vomit, Addiction, Alcoholism, Blood, and Car accident

I’m quite a sensitive person and even I’d say that despite the content warnings for this book, it is not an upsetting read (at least for me). The mentions of upsetting topics are justified and unsurprising in the context of the book, and very rarely is any upsetting detail given for the sake of indulgent displeasure. The bits that did upset me were

Spoiler

the bit about someone losing both their two partners tragically to sudden death, and the gnarly set of detailed memories toward the end of the book about a veteran’s battlefield trauma.

annaofjesup's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Confinement, Stalking, Grief, Colonisation, Forced institutionalization, Gun violence, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Gaslighting

Minor: Death of parent and Suicide

Derealization, pandemic, COVID

scifi_rat's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Plot: 3.5★
Prose: 3.5★
Pace: 4★
Concept/Execution: 4.75★/3.75★
Characters: 3★
Worldbuilding: 4★
Ending: 4★

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Misogyny, Violence, Grief, and Medical content

Minor: Gun violence, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Suicide, Murder, Sexism, Stalking, War, Colonisation, Panic attacks/disorders, and Forced institutionalization

danaaliyalevinson's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

I had a lot of people telling me to go into this book as blind as possible and I’m glad I did. It’s a short little novel about the nature of existence, the human place in the world and the universe, and the ways we touch each other’s lives sometimes without even realizing. Now take all these themes and throw it into a book about a depressed and lost time traveler searching for purpose and connection and you’ve really got something super interesting. I really loved this book. Honestly, my only quibble with it comes down to my personal taste for character forward literature. So I admittedly kept finding myself wishing it were longer so that I could spend more time with the interior lives of the characters. But on the whole, a really lovely little novel that I’m going to remember for some time.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Forced institutionalization, Murder, Death, Medical content, and Grief

Minor: War