Published by Crown on 26 Jul 2016
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Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.
It starts with a man in a mask kidnapping him at gunpoint, for reasons Jason can’t begin to fathom—what would anyone want with an ordinary physics professor?—and grows even more terrifying from there, as Jason’s abductor injects him with some unknown drug and watches while he loses consciousness.
When Jason awakes, he’s in a lab, strapped to a gurney—and a man he’s never seen before is cheerily telling him “welcome back!”
Jason soon learns that in this world he’s woken up to, his house is not his house. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born.
And someone is hunting him.
I picked up this book after loving Recursion--also by Blake Crouch--so much. I had seen many people talk about anticipating Recursion (the newer release of the two) because they enjoyed Dark Matter so much. Some of these readers were underwhelmed by Recursion, saying it was just more of the same of Dark Matter. Now having read both, I can definitely see the huge similarities between them. So if you do decide you want to read both of these books, I would recommend giving yourself some time in between before starting the next one.
And now, if you have no idea what I'm talking about because you haven't read Recursion and you haven't seen my review of it, I'll get on with my review of Dark Matter and try to keep my comparisons to Recursion minimal!
It's terrifying when you consider that every thought we have, every choice we could possibly make, branches into a new world.
The concept that Crouch plays around with in this novel is the multiverse. Think almost Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. I was expecting a sci-fi thriller, and this was (very fast-paced too), but it also read very heavily like a romance, which was surprising. There are certainly those mind-bending moments characteristic of the best sci-fi, but a lot of the story is also simply about Jason getting back to his family, and particularly to his wife Daniela. Romance is a bit of a hit-or-miss for me, but I was really invested in Jason and Daniela finding their way back to each other!
We're all just wandering through the tundra of our existence, assigning value to worthlessness, when all that we love and hate, all we believe in and fight for and kill for and die for is as meaningless as images projected onto Plexiglas.
Blake Crouch is officially an auto-read author for me! I'd like to check out his Wayward Pines series next!
