Book review: Dark Matter

Dark MatterDark Matter by Blake Crouch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am a sucker for multiverse stories.

And so are the other countless millions of versions of me. If they exist.
Dark Matter is at heart a simple story, about a man–in this case atomic scientist Jason Dessen–who reaches a crossroads in his life and has to choose between a great career or a great family. He chooses the family and 15 years later seems pretty content with the choice.

Then he gets abducted while returning from a pub one night and things start getting weird. He is injected with some kind of drug and wakes up in a lab he has no memory of, surrounded by people who say he has been gone for 14 months. He has accomplished fantastic things he can’t recall. He wonders if he is losing his mind.

From this starting point, Dark Matter merrily takes the reader on a breakneck journey across parallel worlds, some seemingly utopian, others the stuff of nightmares, as Dessen struggles to figure out what has happened to him and tries to reconnect with his wife and son.

The story effortlessly switches gears from intimate to weird and back again and although the mystery is naturally peeled away as the plot drives forward, author Blake Crouch keeps interest high by constantly ratcheting up the tension over what will happen next. With a multitude of worlds, the possibilities are literally endless.

I particularly like the exploration of the concept that once you choose a certain path, it can shape and change you in profound ways, not just in what you do or become, but fundamentally altering the person you are and the identity you assume.

There are car chases, too.

Some might balk a bit at Crouch’s prose–he is nearly channeling Hemingway here, with short, staccato sentences and single line paragraphs. But the economy of words emerges as a strength, sort of the equivalent of a well-made sketch that allows the viewer to easily fill in details.

As I said, I am a sucker for multiverse stories and Dark Matters scratched the itch for me in fine style. If you are at all interested in parallel universe fiction, Dark Matter is an easy recommendation.

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