Tag Archives: science fiction

Book Review: Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter

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Next month, Blake Crouch’s new science fiction thriller Dark Matter will be released.   Crouch is known for his “Wayward Pines” trilogy, currently adapted as a Fox TV series.  Dark Matter is a stand-alone novel which draws on a fairly common thread in science fiction — quantum physics and the multiverse.

What if you could in effect go back in time and change a decision that you made 15 years ago?   What if you could live an entirely different life based on the choice you didn’t make?  What if everything you cherished was taken away in an instant?  Would you fight to get it back?   Blake Crouch’s new book uses science fiction to explore just such questions, drawing on the premise of multiple universes, and even Schroedinger’s Cat, on a fast-paced romp.

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This is a book designed to be read in one or two sittings.  For me I started it, and found myself almost half-way through it before I realized it. When I returned to it, I just kept reading, well past my normal bedtime, to finish it.   Every once in a while you find the book you don’t want to put down.   Dark Matter is just that book.

That said, once you figure out what is going on, there is still some physics to grapple with, and you need to be paying attention.  But that is true of almost every book that uses this type of plot device. Is the book truly original?  Probably not.  Does it make it any less enjoyable?  Definitely not.   And compared with the ending of the Wayward Pines trilogy, which left me frustrated, and so mad, that I wanted to throw my kindle across the room, this book resolves itself nicely.

I received a pre-release copy of this book from Netgalley.com. 

 

 

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