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A review by mateoj
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-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
3.5
I have what i call "an English major's obsession with quantum physics", meaning that I absolutely adore narratives about things like time travel (or fucky time in general, like time loops) and, yes, the multiverse/parallel universes, but I am not a hard science person by any stretch of the imagination. Dark Matter is great in that regard—Crouch even says in one of the interviews that was in the back of my ebook copy that the science is accessible to a layperson because he himself is a layperson, and that much is true. the multiverse concept is given due justice here, especially the themes of identity and selfhood, but... the book in itself is not that good.
the thing about this story is that it hinges on the narrator/protagonist being just some guy; of course, you could write a multiverse story about someone wildly successful, but that's not the story Dark Matter is telling. unfortunately, he's just a little too much Just Some Guy. you root for him because he is the narrator, but i found his narration/internal monologue deeply irritating (this may have been compounded by the fact that i kept picturing him as my writing professor). the women in the story, even Jason's wife, didn't feel like actual people, just props to hold the story up; Jason's love for his wife and son is the driving force behind his actions, but who ARE they? all we get is how he feels about them, which is emotional but doesn't quite flesh them out enough. there was also Amanda, who did nothing but save Jason's life a couple times and leave. she didn't have to have a bigger role, but some depth to the role she did serve would have been nice.
add to that some aspects of the plot that were genuinely laughable—the chatroom? really?-— and Dark Matter became, to me, some great ideas stitched together with a mediocre cast of characters and a mediocre plot.
the thing about this story is that it hinges on the narrator/protagonist being just some guy; of course, you could write a multiverse story about someone wildly successful, but that's not the story Dark Matter is telling. unfortunately, he's just a little too much Just Some Guy. you root for him because he is the narrator, but i found his narration/internal monologue deeply irritating (this may have been compounded by the fact that i kept picturing him as my writing professor). the women in the story, even Jason's wife, didn't feel like actual people, just props to hold the story up; Jason's love for his wife and son is the driving force behind his actions, but who ARE they? all we get is how he feels about them, which is emotional but doesn't quite flesh them out enough. there was also
add to that some aspects of the plot that were genuinely laughable—
Content Warnings
Graphic: Kidnapping, Sexual content, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Blood, Gun violence, Death, and Violence
Moderate: Confinement, Kidnapping, Alcohol, and Sexual content
Minor: Abortion and Stalking