PositiveThe AV ClubPart of the uncanny beauty of Dark Matter is how it manages to make discussions about quantum mechanics sound romantic. And that tender element of Blake Crouch’s latest speculative adventure yarn is also its appeal. Put plainly, Crouch takes a sharp sci-fi premise and infuses it with love ... Crouch’s prose is limpid, but doesn’t suffer from the dumbed-down diction of a Dan Brown. Once his story gets going, the language is fleet and nimble, doing just enough work to propel the reader forward without coming across as utilitarian or rote ... Dark Matter is It’s A Wonderful Life for the 21st century.
Cynthia Ozick
RaveThe AV ClubCynthia Ozick doesn’t write sentences so much as she unleashes fireworks of prose into existence. Her writing—especially her nonfiction work, of which this new book is merely the most recent collection—manages the rare feat of being both lyric and intellectually stupendous, possessed of logophilic beauty and rigorous structure in equal measure. Reading her essays, it’s easy to be taken with the smooth elegance of her arguments, but there is a razor-sharp wit behind the delicately crafted curlicues of insight and analysis ... each section fairly seethes with the turbulent rumbling of her mind, the mere promise of which should send curious readers straight to the bookstore. Rarely a page goes by that doesn’t contain at least one sentence so elegantly conceived, it forces a pause of admiration and reflection.
