zarock 's review for:

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

DID NOT FINISH: 60%

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The story started out with an interesting premise, but the execution just did not work for me at all.

A few problems I have with the book:
1. It takes the MC a painfully long time to realize what is going on. Which I suppose is realistic, but the wait between when I the reader knew what was happening and when the MC accepted it was agonizing, as I had to keep reading about the foolish things they did in the meantime.
2. The antagonist's plan seems strangely terrible.

For having spent such a long time to carefully plan out replacing the MC, Jason 2 didn't seem to have given any thought to what would happen when he sends the MC back to his world. It feels like he absolutely should have realized that the mild-mannered physics professor wouldn't have been able to pretend to be the ruthless genius that Jason 2 was, and that this would cause catastrophic problems for the MC with Jason 2's psychotic coworkers. But if he wanted the MC dead, it would have been easier to just shoot him, so presumably he wanted to give the MC a life worth living. Meanwhile, it obviously leaves open the possibility of them figuring out Jason 2's research and coming back for revenge, like it seems like the MC does, which seems like a needless loose end if you're trying to be ruthless. I just don't get what Jason 2 was thinking here, and it really bothers me.

3. For having travel between alternate realities being such a core part of the premise, it largely seems to waste the opportunities that presents.

We have a lot of realities where we get no explanation of how that reality came to be, from the blizzard Chicago, to the plague Chicago, to the Chicago with the weirdly high building. Then we have a bunch of realities that are almost but not quite the MC's reality, which made sense logically, but weren't very interesting, and we still don't hear what caused them to diverge. Instead of actually being about how different choices could have resulted in different worlds, and exploring the pros and cons of said worlds, the multiverse was used more to show how a lack of identity and belonging can lead to deteriorating mental health.

4. The book is just too dark