Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

26 reviews

novella42's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0


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maelikesbooks's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

I donā€™t usually like time travel stories, but this was a perfect one.Ā 

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pearlisarobot's review against another edition

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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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lmy612's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious 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

5.0

I would give this book 10/5 if I could. Itā€™s so beautifully written that ā€œperfectā€ is the best way to describe it. This is science fiction that is so deeply based on reality that it is 100% believable. This could be our future. This might *need* to be our future. It was a little confusing at the start, because we spend only a little time with each character, but by the half way point I was enthralled. I loved how all the characters tied in together and the ending was *chefā€™s kiss*.Ā 

I will definitely be reading more of Emily St John Mandel.Ā 

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novi's review

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emotional mysterious sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot

4.0

if you like reading about time travel, you should read this book.

honestly i started reading this because i really like the first part of this book, which was of edwin, a pragmatic and woke guy from 1912. it was cozy. but this book is not cozy.

one of the things that i don't like from science fiction genre is the futuristic and desert-y settings. this book has it, that atmosphere was really thick in the year of 2203. it was so monotonous but after that it's fine. actually the part after that was where the actual plot was finally clear and i couldn't stop reading from that point.

there are twists and turns in this book, because the timeline of this book is literally not linear. some of the twists gave me goosebumps. i would say that to made those twists, there are some plot holes, and there are things that i still don't understand or not explained in this book.

but all in all it's a book about time travel that explores how that affect humans' lives, and "are we living in a simulation?". Some parts of the book got depressing (war, pandemic, imprisonment), which is not my favorite, but it's a literary so it's kind of a given, and this is a short book, so those moments didn't lasts very long, at least.

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norwegianforestreader's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-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

5.0


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quihi's review

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challenging hopeful mysterious reflective fast-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0


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auudrey's review against another edition

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

4.25


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miller8d's review

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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 Iā€™ve ever read as an adult whose writing is effortlessly legibleā€” I donā€™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 ā€œOh, well, that must be foreshadowing somethingā€). I had a complicated
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 ā€œOh, come onā€ 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, Iā€™ve realized Iā€™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 heroā€™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 charactersā€” refreshing to read a sci-fi/fictional/apocalyptic piece that doesnā€™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 seaā€” at the time, I was 100% sure sheā€™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 weā€™ll never know because Gaspery never knows.
I loved this book.Ā 
Note: I pictured Gaspery as Jacob Wysocki from College Humor.

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axel_p's review

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

3.0

ok

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