Dark Matter

amazing story with all manner of existential dilemmas thrown in about identity, love, quantum entanglement, and all on a can’t catch your breath wild ride through infinity

Full 5 here because this was just epic, no other words better describe it. I was impressed with every aspect of this novel. The premise really pushes you to think about life down to your smallest choices and those resulting effects and really what is scarier than that. This was so fun to read and the ending was just everything I wanted. 10/10 recommend!

This novel tears off from Page 1. You’re simply hanging on for the ride. It is legitimately one of those books that you cannot put down, flipping page by page until you realize that it is morning. The premise is unique and interesting, at least it was for me. This could’ve gone sideways fast with what amounts to a convoluted thought experiment, however the author manages to wrap some interesting characters and backstory around the riddle that is multiple parallel universes. All the while the reader is barreling toward the inevitable conclusion, one that you should’ve seen coming, but somehow were distracted from like sleight of hand.

Excellent read!

Exciting and packed with action. And that was only in the first 120 pages! I definitely plan on reading the book next & judging by the sample, I can already recommend! Brilliant!

This is the type of book that just sticks with you, hours and days after finishing. Imagining yourself in their shoes and dealing with multiverses! Definitely my favorite read so far this year!

A sci-fi meditation on how there's a multitude of choices that can lead to different paths in life.

My favorite book in the world 🥺 I will be thinking about it for a long time

I literally read this in a couple days, couldn’t put it down. Compelling, strange, yet somehow relatable. I’m a sucker for all things parallel-universe and this didn’t disappoint. My new favorite book.

Let me start by first saying that this story is quite unlike anything I've ever experienced before. There's quite literally nothing out there that quite compares to this novel, and I don't exactly mean that in a good way. Without revealing any spoilers, there's about 150-200 pages that are, respectfully, utter nonsense. The author often breaks paragraphs for one-liners that seem like they're trying to be suspenseful, but really just take up more space than they need to. There's a huge lack of brevity in this work, overexplanation that's pretty unnecessary and sometimes just plain weird or creepy. (The choice between sleep or water being sexy? Being horny for building?) Another review called it "a book that wants to be a screenplay" and I absolutely agree. This story was made to be a movie or limited series and doesn't play as well in text as it could as a cinematic work. The author describes Dark Matter as a "love story," and I can certainly agree on some level. Jason Dessen is charming, albeit stupid for a Physics professor. His dedication to reuniting with his wife and son is admirable, and even though there were so many moments where I could feel my feet dragging through the text, I wanted him to succeed, and that's what kept me reading. At times, though, I pulled the book down from my face and audibly said, "This is so stupid," which brings me to my final point: suspension of disbelief. Fiction, especially genre fiction, requires you to buy-in in order to enjoy yourself. Dark Matter breaks that suspension on several occasions, and every time it happened, I wanted to stop reading. The romance was the only thing tugging me along, because it was the only thing that was justified well enough. If you haven't read this book, don't start. Just watch the movie when it inevitably comes out, it'll be a better use of your time in the end.