Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

18 reviews

auudrey's review against another edition

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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Content Warnings

Moderate: Pandemic/Epidemic and Colonisation

Minor: Alcohol and Confinement

miller8d's review

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

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

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.

scifi_rat's review

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

corncake's review

emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

This was beautiful. It takes a minute to get into, but I’m so glad I stuck around for the ride. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Suicide, War, Gun violence, Alcohol, Death, and Sexism

trips's review

inspiring reflective slow-paced

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

4.0

 This book is difficult to rate. Its a perfectly lovely book, with overall nice pacing with good discussion on extremely relevant societal issues. Its not incredibly exciting, but it doesn't need to be to tell the story its weaving.
Its the oddest sci-fi I've ever read simply because its very obviously sci-fi while feeling like a literary fiction novel. And I really enjoyed it for that.

But at the same time...isn't this just Cloud Atlas? Well, its a lot shorter, and more relevant to our post 2020 lives, so perhaps its more palatable.
I also don't think the last 5% of the book is truly necessary, once the 'reveal' happens, I was thinking "Ok, we get it, lets wrap it up,"...but I have a feeling I'm in the minority with that opinion!

In any case, its a book I could recommend to both my older aunt and closer friends, a book we can all take something away from. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death of parent

Minor: Alcohol

literarylion's review

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense 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? It's complicated

4.5

Pros:

• St. John Mandel is all-around good at what she does. 
• Well-crafted and executed impeccably. No unsatisfying loose ends. 
• Perfect pacing and length, unique concept. 
• The character development is unreal. Even minor characters felt lived-in. 

Cons:

• I'd like to see her expand into a different genre. She's excellent in her element, but her past three books have been very similar to each other (not to say that I found them tedious or derivative)
• I don't think that this story needed to be 
  tied to The Glass Hotel
  . I can see how it might be satisfying to make that connection but it could easily stand alone. 
• Maybe I've been reading too many pandemic-focused books, but the details of the 
  SARS 5 pandemic
  felt a bit tired--maybe too similar to COVID-19

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Violence, Death, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Alcohol, Colonisation, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, and Gun violence

emhunsber's review

adventurous lighthearted mysterious relaxing medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Grief, Death of parent, Colonisation, Murder, and Suicide

Minor: Mental illness, Terminal illness, Alcohol, Child death, Forced institutionalization, Car accident, Colonisation, and Gun violence

ellenwilberg's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious reflective slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Death, Gun violence, Alcohol, and Grief