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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 April 2023
Dark Matter is undisputedly weird, but it's also exceptionally well written, tightly paced and mind blindingly interesting. I wasn't sure what to expect going into it and frankly I still wasn't sure what was going on half way through. But that actually isn't a negative thing here. Crouch makes good use of the reader's confusion, throwing them into the same state of disorientation as his protagonist, Jason Desson.
Jason lives a near enough perfect life. He's not the brilliant scientist he once thought he'd be, but he wouldn't give up the wife and son he traded for it for the world. Only one day, he doesn't have the choice. Attacked, kidnapped, bundled into a car and thrown into some strange world where he seems to be a completely different person, Jason struggles to reconcile what has happened and figure out what his next options are. And the reader is along for the ride. Just as confused, just as baffled by what's going on. The reader works things out along with Jason and that makes for a tight and tense novel with some very high stakes.
This is a novel about choices. About how the choice you make today could have reverberated out into a completely different world and a completely different you if you had made the other choice. How the road untravelled can be a fascinating temptation if you had the ability to go back. Where it falls apart slightly is in the characters; the two main protagonists are well depicted, but everyone else is more or less just backing, easily forgotten and discarded when they have played their part. But for all that it is a fascinating and intriguing novel that caught my attention even when I had no idea what was going on.
Jason lives a near enough perfect life. He's not the brilliant scientist he once thought he'd be, but he wouldn't give up the wife and son he traded for it for the world. Only one day, he doesn't have the choice. Attacked, kidnapped, bundled into a car and thrown into some strange world where he seems to be a completely different person, Jason struggles to reconcile what has happened and figure out what his next options are. And the reader is along for the ride. Just as confused, just as baffled by what's going on. The reader works things out along with Jason and that makes for a tight and tense novel with some very high stakes.
This is a novel about choices. About how the choice you make today could have reverberated out into a completely different world and a completely different you if you had made the other choice. How the road untravelled can be a fascinating temptation if you had the ability to go back. Where it falls apart slightly is in the characters; the two main protagonists are well depicted, but everyone else is more or less just backing, easily forgotten and discarded when they have played their part. But for all that it is a fascinating and intriguing novel that caught my attention even when I had no idea what was going on.
