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A review by hedonicbooks
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
5.0
Mind blown. If you're familiar with the 'Schrödinger's cat' experiment and a fan of the multiverse theory, this book is for you.
Here me out, I've been mulling this book over for the past two days, trying to come up with something intelligent to write here, but ah, my brain is just a tiny bit fucked. Excuse my language, but this book was so good that no amount of ramblings will do it justice.
The premise of the book? Jason Dessen is a college physics professor, content in his everyday life, with a beautiful family by his side - his wife, Daniela, and his teenage son, Charlie. He goes out one night to meet with an old college friend and he never makes it back home. Instead, he wakes up in a strange place, surrounded my people in hazmat suits that are really happy to see him come back.
I'm not entirely sure how to write this review without giving out massive spoilers, just know that indeed Jason wakes up in an alternate universe where he is a very successful, prize winning scientist that has made an incredible (still secret) breakthrough, but his family is not his family - his wife is just an old girlfriend and his son doesn't exist.
I was so entranced by this book, it's just brilliantly paced and although there are a few scientific paragraphs where your brain might hurt a bit if you're not into quantum mechanics and all that, the revelations that came further down the line made this a hell of a ride.
The multiverse theory is such a mind-bending thing to read about. It really makes you feel small and insignificant. I don't know what else to say, you need to read this book to understand why I'm tripping right now. Haha.
I was a bit shocked by the ending, in the sense that while I saw the first plot twist of the book coming, this second one had me reeling. It was so painful to see Jason trying to do what was best for his family. I read somewhere that while this is obviously a sci-fi novel, it's also a bit of a love story. Jason's actions and decisions were always made with one goal in mind: get back to his family.
Ah, anyway, I'm lost for words. Read this book, please. I think it's incredibly well thought-out and researched and just brilliant. But what do I know?
FAVOURITE QUOTES:
'We're all just wandering through the tundra of our existence, assigning value to worthlessness , when all that we love and hate, all we believe in and fight for and die for is as meaningless as images projected onto Plexiglass.'
'What if we actually inhabit the multiverse, but our brains have evolved in such a way as to equip us with a firewall that limits what we perceive to a single universe? One worldline. The one we choose moment to moment.'
'- Every moment, every breath, contains a choice. But life is imperfect. We make the wrong choices. So we end up living in a state of perpetual regret, and is there anything worse? I built something that could actually eradicate regret. Let you find worlds where you made the right choice.
- Life doesn't work that way. You live with your choices and learn. You don't cheat the system.'
'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 out identity.'
Here me out, I've been mulling this book over for the past two days, trying to come up with something intelligent to write here, but ah, my brain is just a tiny bit fucked. Excuse my language, but this book was so good that no amount of ramblings will do it justice.
The premise of the book? Jason Dessen is a college physics professor, content in his everyday life, with a beautiful family by his side - his wife, Daniela, and his teenage son, Charlie. He goes out one night to meet with an old college friend and he never makes it back home. Instead, he wakes up in a strange place, surrounded my people in hazmat suits that are really happy to see him come back.
I'm not entirely sure how to write this review without giving out massive spoilers, just know that indeed Jason wakes up in an alternate universe where he is a very successful, prize winning scientist that has made an incredible (still secret) breakthrough, but his family is not his family - his wife is just an old girlfriend and his son doesn't exist.
I was so entranced by this book, it's just brilliantly paced and although there are a few scientific paragraphs where your brain might hurt a bit if you're not into quantum mechanics and all that, the revelations that came further down the line made this a hell of a ride.
The multiverse theory is such a mind-bending thing to read about. It really makes you feel small and insignificant. I don't know what else to say, you need to read this book to understand why I'm tripping right now. Haha.
I was a bit shocked by the ending, in the sense that while I saw the first plot twist of the book coming, this second one had me reeling. It was so painful to see Jason trying to do what was best for his family. I read somewhere that while this is obviously a sci-fi novel, it's also a bit of a love story. Jason's actions and decisions were always made with one goal in mind: get back to his family.
Ah, anyway, I'm lost for words. Read this book, please. I think it's incredibly well thought-out and researched and just brilliant. But what do I know?
FAVOURITE QUOTES:
'We're all just wandering through the tundra of our existence, assigning value to worthlessness , when all that we love and hate, all we believe in and fight for and die for is as meaningless as images projected onto Plexiglass.'
'What if we actually inhabit the multiverse, but our brains have evolved in such a way as to equip us with a firewall that limits what we perceive to a single universe? One worldline. The one we choose moment to moment.'
'- Every moment, every breath, contains a choice. But life is imperfect. We make the wrong choices. So we end up living in a state of perpetual regret, and is there anything worse? I built something that could actually eradicate regret. Let you find worlds where you made the right choice.
- Life doesn't work that way. You live with your choices and learn. You don't cheat the system.'
'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 out identity.'