This book, sadly, took me forever to get into it. I had high hopes, as I think Helen Czerski is an outstanding science communicator, and the topic—the ocean—is one that I find fascinating.

The main challenge is that the book did not really seem to know what it wanted to be. In the end, it wound up being a survey of various aspects of the ocean without necessarily functioning as a cohesive work. This is in stark contrast to how the book appears to be from the beginning: the ocean as a system that feeds the earth’s many processes.

That the ocean is a system is something that is really important, and it’s central to all life on earth. The idea here is that most sunlight received on earth gets absorbed by the seas, where it becomes heat. Between tides (from the moon) and temperature, energy is translated into currents, waves, and so on, which then feeds into the earth’s climatic cycles. There are also separate chapters on light/sound in the sea, marine creatures, and more. Individually, the topics are really interesting and I learned a fair amount.

The weakness is that the chapters feel disconnected. Had they come together around the larger argument, the book would have been so much stronger.