Kemper's Reviews > Dark Matter

I’m late to the party on this one, and judging by all the 4 and 5 star reviews I can only assume that the mob will be after me with pitchforks and torches for 3 starring it. Come at me, Goodreads!

Jason Dessen is just an average guy with a wife and son he loves, and a job teaching physics at a small college. One night he goes out to meet a friend for drinks, but he ends up being kidnapped by a mysterious man who somehow rips him out of his life and drops him in the middle of a nightmare.

This is one of those books that’s nearly impossible to review without spoilers because so much of what happens comes after major revelations are made. Even if you see the first big twist coming then you’ll probably still be surprised by what comes next.

Here’s the 100% spoiler free review: This is an entertaining sci-fi thriller that reminds me of recent books like Influx (Slightly better than this.) and The Fold (Slightly worse.) It’s got a pretty good hook, and the story is begging to be turned into a movie although the trailer will probably give away the entire plot once they film it. It flirts with big crazy science ideas, but in the end is more interested in being a human drama about family and choices we make. It didn’t hit a mind blowing level for me on the science side, and it did a better than average job for this type of book of getting me invested in the character side. Overall, it still fell a little short of its ambitions.

In short, I liked it but didn’t love it. No regrets about reading it, and I’ll see the inevitable movie version if it’s got a decent score on Rotten Tomatoes.

To dig into this in more detail here’s some specifics. I’m not giving away the ending, but I do address the overall plot in general terms.

(view spoiler)[I guessed fairly early on that we were dealing with an alternative universe situation, and that it was another Jason who had kidnapped original Jason so those revelations weren’t shocking to me. However, I was pleasantly surprised when that scope expanded to include the whole multiverse exploration angle, and I thought those ideas were fun.

Yet, I was again a little let down that the focus so entirely remained on Jason’s desperate quest to get back to his family, and the guy started to irritate me a bit. He’s seen disastrous consequences as a result of trying to find his wife, and it irked me that as a scientist he never seemed all that interested in any of the amazing things he was right in the middle of. His obsession to get home was incorporated into the story and dealt with in ways I appreciated, but this whole book was constant underlining how the only thing that this character cared about was his family. Which is understandable but felt one-note in a story with the potential to have epic scope.

Yes, you could make the argument that was the whole point and that the sci-fi elements were just window dressing for a story about a man literally traveling multiple universes to get back to those he loves. But that runs squarely into a pet peeve of mine. A lot of mainstream fiction peddles the notion that we all have to make a choice between greatness/professional success versus having love/family. Since most of us are just average folks with average jobs but have people we care for in our lives it behooves the creators of these stories to reinforce the idea that we made the right choice, that we’re better off than those who may seem to have it all because we’re told they must surely be lonely and empty without the vital human connections that we have.

In short, it’s complete pandering nonsense that I have little patience for anymore. Sure, those who accomplish a lot make sacrifices, but all kinds of people who make their dreams a reality have family, friends, pets, etc. that they care for and spend time with. As an easy example: Follow Lin-Manuel Miranda on Twitter. Then try to tell me that someone can’t have a spouse and child and still write and star in a groundbreaking Broadway play, win a Pulitzer Prize, deal with an insane amount of public attention, get involved in political and social causes, generally make the rest of us look like lazy slack-asses, and apparently have the time of his life while doing all of it.

Ultimately I found this to be somewhat unsatisfying because its whole premise is built on that idea. It’s telling that Jason never found a world where his doppelganger had both a successful career and the family. That world would have undercut the central idea that the average Jason, who cares only about his wife and son, was the ‘best’ one. (hide spoiler)]

So its sci-fi elements aren’t as deep or well presented as other books I’ve read dealing with a similar concept, and its major theme rubbed the wrong way a bit. Still, it was an entertaining read with some big ideas that I enjoyed.

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