“Pandemics don’t approach like wars, with the distant thud of…”

I'm currently behind on reviews, so don't be surprised if the recent reviews are a bit sparse.

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.

Sea of Tranquility

by Emily St. John Mandel · published 2022 · read 2023-02-08

★★☆☆☆

Inoffensive to a fault. Read for book club. Feels odd in several ways: feels slice-of-life even when it's not; doesn't feel sci-fi even when it isn't. The characters are cool but I won't remember them. The author stand-in is awkward. The tie-in with the other novel … not sure, but I'm not a fan. Also, everything is really bloody obvious. You always try to find out who the time traveller is, where he's meeting himself unwittingly, etc. Annoyingly predictable in that regard. Well-written, I suppose. Also it's like there are only 10 people in this world and they keep running into each other. Book club had a fan theory: Since this world is canonically taking place in a simulation, maybe the fact that there are only 10 people is just … a fact, to preserve CPU.