Perhaps it is in the nature of thrillers to be a bit predictable. The protagonist is usually the hero and you know, no matter how bad things get, the hero will win in the end. Or if not win, at least make it out alive. And so it is with Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. No matter how weird or close to failure Jason Dessen gets, you know that it will all come right in the end. At some points this gets slightly tedious, at others I would have been angry if something surprising had happened. So the reader undertakes the good with the bad when embarking on these sorts of reading adventures.
Jason Dessen is a physicist who teaches at nearby Lakemount College in Chicago. He is married to Daniela who is a talented artist. They have a teenage son, Charlie. A happy life. But there have always been what if’s lingering in their minds. Daniela got pregnant early in the relationship and they decided to marry and dedicate themselves to being parents. This meant that Jason gave up a promising career as a physicist — he was on the brink of making a major discovery — and Daniela gave up he art career because both of these were so all-consuming for them it was career or child but not both.
This means that Jason’s college friend and now rival, eventually wins this big science award that everyone always thought Jason was destined for. There is a party for Ryan at a pub a few blocks from Jason’s house and Daniela encourages him to go because it would be the bygones thing to do. On the way back from the pub Jason is kidnapped at gunpoint, taken to an abandoned warehouse and wakes up in a Chicago that is completely different.
In this Chicago, Jason and Daniela chose career over child. Jason made his breakthrough discovery and won the coveted award. However, in this world, he is not married to Daniela who is now a famous artist. Everyone thinks he is the Jason that is supposed to be there and he tries to play like he is by pretending he is suffering from amnesia and shock from the results of his discovery and experiment. What did he do?
This is where it gets weird. The multiverse. The entire story is based on it and the premise that every time we make a decision it splits the multiverse resulting in a timeline that moves forward with all the different decisions made. So, for instance, you are driving to meet someone for a first date but you got the directions confused. At the intersection you turn left instead of right and by the time you figure out how to get to the restaurant your date has given up on you and left. At the intersection, another universe was formed in which you turned left, found the restaurant, had a great time (or not), fell in love (or not), got married (or didn’t) and on and on. Got it?
So Jason’s discovery was how to navigate between the multiverses. It involves a big black box, a serum, and some other stuff. Two people tried it before him and were never seen or heard from again. Jason is the first who went in and came back. Except the Jason who came back is not the same one who went in. It’s pretty obvious once we get the scoop on the black box that the Jason from that world, Jason2, is the one who kidnapped our hero Jason.
One of the people who work at the lab helps Jason escape and she goes with him. They have 48 bottles of serum and they each have to use one, so really Jason has only 24 chances to get back to the right universe. Except, because this is a novel about the multiverse, for every decision Jason makes new Jasons looking to get back to Daniela and Charlie are created. The end results in this thought by our original Jason:
My understanding of identity has been shattered — I am one facet of an infinitely faceted being called Jason Dessen who has made every possible choice and lived every imaginable life.
I can’t help thinking that we’re more than the sum total of our choices, that all the paths we might have taken factor somehow into the math of our identity.
So there’s a little quantum physics pop psychology for you!
What it all amounts to is an entertaining story. And given that Crouch is also a screenwriter, I was not so surprised to learn at the back of the book that it will likely make it to a screen at some point. Whether it is movie or TV I am not sure. Either way it will likely be entertaining. Until then, we have the book and if you are looking for some light, slightly weird, page-turning fun, Dark Matter is a good option.
Sounds like the perfect book for a vacation.
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Carolyn, oh it would be totally perfect for a vacation or airplane reading!
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I have to admit I’m having a hard time wrapping my head about this one! It sounds really interesting, though.
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AMB, it’s a fun premise and the full implications sort of sneak up on you.
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Oh, the multiverse. I’ve seen this before, at the first NecronomiCon in Providence a few years ago.But the presenter at the conference truly believed it, and if I heard her right, she believed Lovecraft’s Mythos just exists on a different plane that you can reach by dreaming. Certainly interesting material, but so delicate to do it well. Maybe it’s silly og me to say this, but the GameCube game Sanity’s Requiem, largely a mythos game, did do this brilliantly, and the effects of your choices matter. You can read more about it in one of my posts about horror survival gaming, but at any rate, thanks for saving me the time on this one!
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Kathryn, there are some top notch string theorists who think the multiverse possible if not quite like it is posited in Dark Matter. It’s an interesting theory and I don;t know how any of them can go about proving.
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What do we mere mortals know anyway? I think the multiverse can be used with great effect in fiction, if you’re careful not to give your readers a physics lesson. But that’s true of any exposition, really -is should be organic and well crafted.
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Kathryn, agreed! though I am geeky enough that I also enjoy physics lessons if done well 🙂
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I tried to put a reply here by it tossed it back to me as a duplicate -the settings, maybe?
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This is one of my favorite books I’ve read this year. I love a good sci-fi, multiple universe read 😁💙 great review!! If you’re interested in a similar (but completely different take), The Fold by Peter Clines was also really good 😊
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caffeinatious, it was pretty good. Just saw your review of the fold, that looks like one I am going to have to read!
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Oh yay!! I hope you love it!
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You are so right! There is something about the thrillers these days that is not …well quite “thrilling”. I am not sure what happened to that genre of nail biting suspense, but it ain’t around now is all I can say. The thing is the premises of these books are always very interesting like the multiverse; thats the reason many of us pick up these books, but somehow by page 47 or so, you know that no matter what the ride, there will a be a near perfect ending and the thing that you thought at the beginning is actually what it is! Think will pass this one! In fact when it comes to thrillers and mysteries, I think I will stick to the dead folks like Doyle. Collins, Christie etc. Ok! I think I will end my rant now!!
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cirtnecce, there are a good many thrillers, even among the best, that have certain predictable things about them and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I mean, we generally want the hero to beat the bad guys. But some of them do this with more skill then others. Dark Matter does it pretty well, not best ever, but definitely satisfying.
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Gah, this book sounds fascinating. I love the idea of the multiverse and have read a couple of books that go into it. Plus documentaries! So seeing it explored in novel form would be such a blast.
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Read diverse books, it’s pretty fun and while it explains the concept it does it lightly, just enough to make it believable.
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I tend to like these alternate Universe/Time Travel stories for several reasons.
One of those reasons is that it does make one think about how small decisions and incidents can have a profound effect upon our lives.
The multi – Universe thing sounds so far fetched, yet some serious physicists believe that it is plausible.
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Brian Joseph, the multiverse is wild but yeah, some serious physicists see it as possible. It’s used to good entertainment in Dark Matter.
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I have it on hold on ebook after another blogger mentioned it to me. Now that I know you like it too, I’ll keep it there.
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Bryan, I hope you like it!
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I’m a bit on the fence on this one. I do enjoy thrillers but alternate universe stuff, that I have to be in the mood for. But, I may give this one a whirl.
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Iliana, if you give it a try I hope you like it. It’s not a must-read so if you never read it you haven’t missed out either 🙂
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I heard the author interviewed on a podcast and this sounded really interesting at the time. I like the sound of the multiverse and the split times and what ifs as I think often about how life might have turned out (for me) “if” I had made some other choices. Alas it can’t happen and I will never know but it is fun to think it happens in a book. Glad to hear it was entertaining if a little tedious at times. Sometimes predictable can be good. It would be fun to have the visual for this and see it on the big/or small screen. I might give this one a try when it comes out in paper!
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Danielle, I am not sure if it is comforting or just freaky that in some multiverse there is a version of me who has everything I ever wanted but never got. I wonder if that me would be unrecognizable in many ways? And would I even that version of me? It’s a fun mind game to play.
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