Quick Review: DARK MATTER by Blake Crouch (Crown/Macmillan)

CrouchB-DarkMatterUSA gripping multiverse thriller

“Are you happy with your life?”

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”

In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. Hiswife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined — one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

There was so much buzz surrounding this book in the lead-up to its publication. So much, in fact, that I started to get nervous. Having now finished the novel, though, it’s very easy to see why so many people have been recommending it: it’s superb. Crouch, author of the Wayward Pines novels, has penned a fantastic sci-fi mystery. Continue reading

New Books (August-September)

wwtoby-overthemoonface

Featuring: James Barclay, J. Patrick Black, Lila Bowen, Edward Cox, Blake Crouch, John French, Mira Grant, Mark Hill, Gregg Hurwitz, Greg Iles, Eowyn Ivey, Vic James, K.V. Johansen, Owen Laukkanen, John le Carré, Jill Leovy, Tim O’Mara, Susan Perabo, Sarah Perry, Anthony Riches, George Saunders, Amy Schumer, Alan Sepinwall, Matt Zoller Seitz, Michael Tolkin, Neely Tucker, Karine Tuil, Wendy N. Wagner, Django Wexler, Colson Whitehead, Fran Wilde Continue reading