Dark Matter

Science fiction

First published: 2016
Print length: 400 pagesPan Macmillan, 2017

Description

Chicago physicist Jason Dessen is abducted and wakes in a life that is almost—but not quite—his own. In this reality, he never married Daniela or raised their son; instead, the choice he made fifteen years earlier turned him into a celebrated scientist. Jason discovers that another version of himself has exchanged their lives using a device that opens paths through alternate realities. Desperate to recover his family, he escapes with a fellow scientist, only to become lost among worlds shaped by different choices, fears, and desires. The thriller turns quantum possibility into a personal ordeal, testing whether identity rests on memory, circumstance, perception, or the commitments a person makes.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Atmospheric · Direct · Spare

Pace

Fast

Tone

Cerebral · Suspenseful · Tense · Unsettling

Structure

Linear

Focus

Ideas · Plot · Relationships

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 4 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

FamilyIdentityKnowledge and truthLoveTechnology and society

About Blake Crouch

Blake Crouch is an American novelist whose science-fiction thrillers turn speculative technologies into pressures on identity, family, and individual choice. He writes in direct, often spare prose, setting complex ideas in motion through characters facing urgent practical problems. Alternate realities in Dark Matter test whether a life is defined by circumstance or commitment, while the altered memories and timelines of Recursion connect private grief to the broader consequences of invention. The controlled community of the Wayward Pines novels shows the same method without centering a new technology: surveillance, confinement, and withheld information force a protagonist to question both his surroundings and his understanding of them. Across these settings, Crouch keeps abstract questions close to physical danger and emotional consequence, using suspense to examine how people respond when familiar accounts of themselves and their world no longer hold.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Language: English
ISBN: 9781509853786

Keep your books and notes in Collected for iPhone.

Apple Books is a service mark of Apple Inc. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.