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A review by samarakroeger
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.25
this started off so promising and ended up being a huge disappointment. the first two stories/chapters were really intriguing (and each had enough ideas there to have been fleshed out into a longer narrative). then it became a little boring and obvious, and then it got very repetitive. the stories progressively got more lackluster as the book went on (a common problem with short story/essay collections, although How High We Go in the Dark is attempting to be a novel in stories).
for some reason I thought this was written by a queer woman? obviously I was wrong; almost all of the characters we follow are (lackluster) men, and almost every single one of them is obsessed with some bland excuse for a woman. apparently queer people have no place in the apocalypse. I would understand the heteronormative worldbuilding if we followed only one or two characters — but we had to listen to FOURTEEN different perspectives. I am not a multiple-perspectives-told-in-first-person fan (with one notable exception — Our Wives Under the Sea, which has two perspectives), and this totally fell into the trap of “all the characters are written with the same voice” which is just bad and confusing. I did like that it followed mostly Japanese and Japanese-American characters, though.
Nagamatsu also tried to cram all the tropes and possible elements found in speculative fiction and post-apocalyptic works in to the mediocre worldbuilding. his influences are glaringly obvious. this doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but starting with the talking pig, he kinda lost me on that front. either I want to see rock-solid, detailed worldbuilding or I want to see a subtle, quietly unfolding dystopian landscape to the likes of Ishiguro or Ling Ma. safe to say that this was neither; I was not that curious. it felt pretty sloppy, on the whole.
I think if you’ve never read any speculative fiction, dystopias, or post-apocalyptic stories, you might like this and think it was clever. however, if you generally like this sort of thing, the whole time you’ll be reminded of how this one pales in comparison. now I think I finally need to get around to reading Emily St. John Mandel.
the absolute best thing that the publishers did for this book was having a full cast of talented audiobook narrators. the different voices helped separate the perspectives and sections much better than the written version ever could, seeing as they are all written almost identically. the monotony of the themes will still not be lost on you, however.
for some reason I thought this was written by a queer woman? obviously I was wrong; almost all of the characters we follow are (lackluster) men, and almost every single one of them is obsessed with some bland excuse for a woman. apparently queer people have no place in the apocalypse. I would understand the heteronormative worldbuilding if we followed only one or two characters — but we had to listen to FOURTEEN different perspectives. I am not a multiple-perspectives-told-in-first-person fan (with one notable exception — Our Wives Under the Sea, which has two perspectives), and this totally fell into the trap of “all the characters are written with the same voice” which is just bad and confusing. I did like that it followed mostly Japanese and Japanese-American characters, though.
Nagamatsu also tried to cram all the tropes and possible elements found in speculative fiction and post-apocalyptic works in to the mediocre worldbuilding. his influences are glaringly obvious. this doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but starting with the talking pig, he kinda lost me on that front. either I want to see rock-solid, detailed worldbuilding or I want to see a subtle, quietly unfolding dystopian landscape to the likes of Ishiguro or Ling Ma. safe to say that this was neither; I was not that curious. it felt pretty sloppy, on the whole.
I think if you’ve never read any speculative fiction, dystopias, or post-apocalyptic stories, you might like this and think it was clever. however, if you generally like this sort of thing, the whole time you’ll be reminded of how this one pales in comparison. now I think I finally need to get around to reading Emily St. John Mandel.
the absolute best thing that the publishers did for this book was having a full cast of talented audiobook narrators. the different voices helped separate the perspectives and sections much better than the written version ever could, seeing as they are all written almost identically. the monotony of the themes will still not be lost on you, however.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Death of parent, Terminal illness, Child death, and Death