Dark Matter by Blake Crouch | SPOILER-FREE

DARK MATTER
by Blake Crouch

Random House
July 26, 2016

From Goodreads:

Jason Dessen awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”

In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

From the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy, Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human—a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we’ll go to claim the lives we dream of.

Dark Matter is the thinking reader’s science-fiction. Some might think all sci-fi is for readers who think a lot. How else can you keep sense of quantum realms, pocket universes, and nano particles? That’s a whole other conversation, and it’s not what I’m talking about anyway.

There’s a somewhat philosophical question that this book throws at you. One that made me really think and question things about myself. But before we get into that, let’s talk a bit more about the book at face value.

The story is pretty great. I’m surprised this one isn’t already a movie or mini-series, because it really should be. It’s smart, and unique. A few of the people that recommended it to me kept talking about all the twists and turns and that they didn’t see a single one of them coming. I have to be honest, I saw most of them coming, though I think that had to do more with having watched way too many episodes of Doctor Who, than any lack on the book’s part.

That being said, there was still some stuff that surprised me. So I think I can confidently say that no matter your experience with sci-fi, this one will provide you with at least a few surprises.

And don’t be afraid of that dreaded sci-fi label I slapped on this one. I heard a great line once, calling a book “sci-fi for people that hate sci-fi.” I think this one qualifies.

By that, I mean there aren’t spaceships. The story doesn’t take place among the blackness of space. Of course there is some sciencey stuff in it. It is called Dark Matter; a substance that is really only understood by astrophysicists. Despite all that, there’s nothing that going to send you looking for a text book just to understand what’s happening.

There’s at least one person reading this right now who’s yelling at the computer screen, “What about the philosophical question?! That’s the only reason I kept reading this crappy review!”

First of all, that’s hurtful.

Secondly, okay. Here it is:

To me, the book seemed to ask, “If you could go back and change the big decisions in your life, would you do it?”

At the core of that question in another: “Are you happy with your life?”

We all have things that happened in the past that we think, “If I could go back in time…” But would you really? If you’re happy with where you are in life right now, than can you really regret any decisions or events of the past? Each one of them contributed to your current situation in their own way. Change one and who knows where you’d be? Or who you would be?

Well, that got a little deep!

To sum up, Dark Matter is a fun read that poses some potentially deep questions. Just like good “science fiction” should.

Fun fact about this post: I heard, “Sci-fi for people that hate sci-fi,” connected to Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen.