Reviews with content warning for Forced institutionalization - Dark Matter

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Reviews tagging 'Forced institutionalization'

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

37 reviews

lkmayatte's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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now_booking's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

This is my second book by this author and it was again mind-bending and confusing and yet absolutely wonderful.

Even though I don’t read much sci-if, I was completely mind blown by this complex eminently human story of love and trying to find your way home when you are irrevocably lost. In this humanity, it was very similar to Recursion in being a sort of love story and an epic journey as much as it is about science.

The premise is that Jason is living a happy if somewhat “basic” and unspectacular life with his wife and son. While he and his artist wife, Daniela, might not have fulfilled the promise of spectacular careers in physics and art, having sacrificed that for building their family. They are more or less happy, until Jason is kidnapped and thrown into a multiverse and has to battle the dangers of infinite possibilities as well as all the different facets of himself to see if there’s any way to get the stars to align and find his way back home.

For me, I adored every aspect of this. Jason as a character was compellingly human. Perhaps a bit too perfect, but a great, well-developed character to carry the story. The multiverse provides ample opportunity to challenge and stretch Jason and give us a sense of what he’s made of. And through that, we insert ourselves into the story and begin to think of what we would do and how we would react if we were in his shoes. This was sad, exciting, traumatic, adventurous, fun and I cannot recommend this enough.

If there are weaknesses, I think it’s in lots of loose ends. I also wondered how come Amanda’s place in the multiverse was never explored. Logistically-speaking, what are the implications for the characters in the way the book ends. It’s hard to explain what I mean without spoiling the book but I feel after the level of detail with which the sci-fi premise was put forth, the resolution was a little too abstract. That said, I did enjoy this and highly highly recommend even for non-sci-if fans. It’s absolutely brilliant. After I read Recursion, this was recommended to me a lot, and it has not disappointed.

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kaadee's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I feel like this book is what the Midnight Library tried so hard to do.
A philosophical book about how we have many facets and lives. It was enjoyable, so enjoyable I finished it in a day. There are many problems I have though

First off, the writing style. I’m not usually one to dog on a writing style (because I mean I’m not a published author so what say do I really have?) But specifically this writing style gets very annoying after a while. It’s kinda like this.
He runs.
He hides.
He cries.

I mean, I enjoy different sentences lengths but there were too many short sentence that took up a majority of the book.

My second problem is the cube. I mean, we barely know anything about it. What about the Jason who built the cube’s world? I feel like we get no explanation except for Amanda, which we learn basically nothing about. I mean, what happens to the cube after this? Will the cube be around forever? If Jason2 dies does that mean his reality dies with him? How is the cube still around? I feel like personally I just have a ton of unanswered questions about how the world works.

My third problem is Amanda. I really enjoyed her character, I mean what we got from it. We don’t really get any explanation to who she is except she was Jason2’s therapist. I mean from the story they seemed like lovers or something along those lines. Half way through she just ups and leaves???? I mean HELLO?? What happened to her? Is she ok? Is she happy? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS??

My fourth problem is the ending. I enjoyed it but I felt like something was missing. I feel like the story is unfinished (and maybe that’s for a reason) but I feel like this story could have REALLY benefited from an epilogue. What happens to them after they open a new door? Are they happy? The author put me through a whirlwind of emotions just to give me NOTHING 👏👏👏👏

There’s tons of things I like about the story though. I really enjoy Jason’s character and how much he strives for his family’s happiness, even willing to sacrifice himself. I enjoyed Amanda, I enjoyed Dani and Charlie.
I really liked the multiple Jason’s trying to kill him and especially the ending where they all look at him go into the cube. I thought the plot was really interesting I just wish it had a bit more in terms of good ending and explanation.
Otherwise it’s really good!

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lindseyrenee's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Incredible

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s__'s review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

Pleasantly surprised! Was not expecting to like this book after it turned out to be a Sci-Fi thriller. It’s better of classified as Sci-Fi with the sub-genre as thriller, instead of vice versa. It’s for the readers who love anything remotely similar to Inception or The Matrix.

The main question the protagonist (Jason) has about who kidnapped him (& why) can easily be predicted by chapter 4 at most. However, what made this story great was the second half of the book. As Jason figures out a way to get back to the life he knew, the author leaves a bit of uncertainty to keep the reader guessing if that will really happen. The fast-pace of the second-half really saved this book from being drawn out and at times the scientific facts were not that easy to grasp, but....

considering the topic is quantum physics that’s expected

. I do think the ending could have been made better if.....

there was more uncertainty left, and it wasn’t exactly sure if they (“original” Jason and his family) got their happy ending. I thought the author would end it with one of the multiverse Jason’s finding one of the ampoules that “original” Jason had left behind in the hotel when he was trying to escape from a multiverse Jason. Indicating that the multiverse Jason could have followed “original” Jason and a had 1/♾ chance of ending up in the same world.

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bibliophilemama's review against another edition

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adventurous dark reflective tense fast-paced

3.0

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whitelaceandstrange's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This book honestly just felt like a mind bender. it's a good book but is definitely over hyped.

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