BOOK REVIEW

Dark Matter - Blake Crouch

Frenetically paced sci-fi thriller that caused repeated spike pulses

Another spontaneous purchase, this time influenced by an uncharacteristic Instagram story recommendation from a business leader who generally clings strictly to the topics of personal money management. A swift glance at the premise – a physics professor is abducted and thrown into a parallel universe by an alternate version of himself – convinced me it was time to reconnect with fiction.

Dark Matter’s plot is grippingly dramatic, employing the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics while following the protagonist as he scrambles to comprehend his newfound distorted reality. It emerges that the parallel universe twin is, in his world, a renowned physics researcher who successfully harnessed the superposition theory to build a fully functioning multiverse portal. This twin then embarked on a mission to replace the protagonist, fuelled by envy for his idyllic family lifestyle. (Said twin had 15 years previously broken up with the protagonist’s now wife, in order to pursue his career ambitions.)

And thus the storyline is laid out from an early chapter: the protagonist, disoriented and panicked, must figure out how to navigate the portal, which opens into an infinite number of multiverses, in order to return to his own reality and somehow reclaim his wife and son from the imposter.

The action hits like a tidal wave and only rarely subsides, so what I particularly enjoyed was how often my imagination was activated. From the early stage abduction to numerous chase scenes and a dramatic finale as dozens of other multiverse versions of the protagonist appear, the book is packed with energy. I felt myself so drawn in that I’d picture myself reacting in a scene or participating in a verbal exchange. This is always indicative of an engrossing read. That said, I must mention that the characters can feel two-dimensional at critical moments, mostly due to the thin dialogue between them. There were points at which it could only be expected that a normal reaction to the mind-bending developments would include rabid questioning, not prima facie acceptance. Here I refer especially to characters in the other multiverses who the protagonist meets and explains his circumstances. The result was an unhelpfully obtuse element that could not have been the author’s intention.

- NP, March 2023