If you’re a short-story lover — as I am — you’ll be impressed with Nagamatsu’s meticulous craft. If you crave sustained character and plot arcs, well, you’ll have to settle for admiring the well-honed prose, poignant meditations and unique concepts. Hardly small pleasures ... The reader might best approach the book like a melancholy Black Mirror season ... This is a lovely though bleak book. Humanity has long turned to humor in our darkest moments, but levity feels absent even in a chapter narrated by a stand-up comedian. That said, the somber tone unifies the disparate characters and story lines ... a welcome addition to a growing trend of what we might call the 'speculative epic': genre-bending novels that use a wide aperture to tackle large issues like climate change while jumping between characters, timelines and even narrative modes ... Nagamatsu squarely hits both the 'literary' and 'science fiction' targets, offering psychological insights in lyrical prose while seriously exploring speculative conceits ... a book of sorrow for the destruction we’re bringing on ourselves. Yet the novel reminds us there’s still hope in human connections, despite our sadness.

... an absorbing and heartbreaking contemplation on the very nature of life, death, and what it means to be human. Stretching across eons and worlds, these stories provide the power of short narratives, while each builds on the larger text. The novel-in-stories is a form that many writers attempt; Nagamatsu clearly ranks among the masters. Beyond the sheer joy of reading a well-formed text, this novel also presents massive themes in smaller, intimate stories. This form allows us to become immersed in the details of characters’ everyday lives, individual struggles, and personal grief, leaving us willing to absorb the larger whole rather than being alienated ... This is not a book to read straight through (as I did)—it will make you weep—but it is a book as full of hope, humanity, and possibility as the grief and loss of climate disaster and pandemic laid unflinchingly bare.

Written in the years immediately before Covid-19, How High We Go in the Dark seems unnervingly prescient ... It is entirely possible that certain phrases and scenarios have been tweaked and highlighted during an editing process that will have taken place during lockdown. Yet the overall mood and tone of Nagamatsu’s fictional future is all the more affecting for being so much in sympathy with our lived present. The fact that he steers clear of the sensationalist and overfamiliar tropes of generic apocalypse, opting, instead, for a more subtle and unerringly humane response, gives the book both authority and pathos ... There is an argument that a novel constructed from what are, effectively, individual short stories will lack overall narrative focus. There is an equal and opposite argument that what might be lost in terms of a unified story arc is more than adequately compensated for by the rich, complex labyrinth of possibilities that this more exploratory approach allows. Nagamatsu’s skill lies not only in his evocative imagining of alternative realities, but also in how he builds bridges between them. What starts as a series of snapshots is assembled into a glimmering montage of interconnectedness ... Like a Polaroid photograph, How High We Go in the Dark takes time to show its true colours. When they finally appear, the effect is all the more dazzling ... How High We Go in the Dark is a truly genre-transcending work in which sense of wonder and literary acumen are given boundless opportunity to shine.

Though it includes elements of sci-fi, fantasy and speculative fiction, the book hits close to home because of its parallels to our current struggles in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic ... Nagamatsu deftly explores 'the many ways we are changed by loss,' and his stories offer an intimate portrait of grief and mourning ... Through his characters and their unique attitudes toward death, the author shows us how interconnected we are, reminding us that loss, no matter how personal, is still universal. This is a real strength in the book, and it serves as a reminder that over these past two years, although each of us has had our own experience of COVID-19, we are all connected ... That Asians and Asian Americans are centered in this novel is another strength ... readers should know that there is a lot of death in these pages, especially of children, and the horrors the book suggests a pandemic can bring may hit close to home. Also, the tone can be relentlessly bleak and disturbing and might prove too emotionally taxing for some ... But despite its heavy doses of tragedy and graphic depictions of death, there is in this novel a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit and glimmers of hope. It offers us a glimpse of how we might navigate the future despite our collective trauma, how compassion for each other and caring for our communities can see us through.

We might feel stretched to read another tale of a viral scourge, but this mosaic novel tackles a decades-long pandemic from different perspectives and angles ... These threads are artfully woven together and unraveled through Nagamatsu’s expert plotting. There are sharp moments of levity ... Yet it is hard to extricate the current moment from this novel, and in some ways, it feels as exhausting as HBO’s Station Eleven, which shares a lot of the same features of this book. Nagamatsu’s unique vision, his Japanese heritage come through with several characters based in Japan, and how the pandemic is approached there rather than the glimpses we see in the United States is stark. The plague doesn’t cause the world to collapse in this novel—at least not physically—society instead adapts for better and worse ... Nagamatsu’s attention to character is incredibly intimate. Each section stars a new individual and consists of an arc much like a short story or novelette, and readers are drawn into their lives immediately, experiencing each memory of their loved ones as they unpack regrets and grief ... There are a number of viscerally difficult storylines present in the novel, especially around the suffering of children ... For some readers, a startling blind spot for a narrative that is as thorough as this may be the minimal faith or spiritual dimension of the book ... Nagamatsu’s work succeeds at resonating on many personal levels. The mosaic nature of the story deepens the empathy as the reader comes into contact with dozens of characters, whose lives may or may not intersect later in various ways. Their struggles are our struggles and our losses are their losses. It engenders the kind of compassion that we desperately need, but it also causes us to reflect and dwell on our own grief, loss and regret. None of that will go away. None of it will weigh any less. None of it will hurt less. Ultimately, this novel encourages us that we can endure if we only attempt to join others in community. I hope we can carry How High We Go In The Dark’s underlying optimism with us into 2022 and beyond.

Nagamatsu's collection of interlinked stories unflinchingly inhabits the ripple effects of a 30,000-year-old Arctic plague, released from melting permafrost ... Tracing the lifespan of the Arctic plague via interrelated vignettes certainly gives How High a very A Visit from the Goon Squad vibe, but it's vital to crack the surface of its timely narrative context and focus more on the emotional underpinnings. Like Jennifer Egan's novel, it deserves to be read in order, as the connections between various lives over the subsequent generations are often subtle, from a minor character in one story undergoing a career change in the next, to a few potential forays into alternate universes ... The novel's title comes from one of the weaker stories, 'Through the Garden of Memory' ... this more out-there story lacks the affecting specificity of the accounts that precede and follow it. By contrast, a story like 'The Used-To-Be Party' is so achingly poignant because of its hyper-specific and relatable form: a social media posting from a lonely man to the neighbors that his late wife knew intimately but to whom he is virtually a stranger ... If you regard How High We Go in the Dark as an emotional roller coaster, then you might agree that it peaks narratively about two-thirds through the collection, with those daring stories providing the reading equivalent of a slow ramp-up and stomach-dropping plunge. That necessarily means that subsequent stories may fail to elicit the same thrill. Yet, the ride needs its downs to balance its ups in order for the reader to feel as if they've experienced the complete arc, as if they've gotten their money's worth, as if they can get off the ride and decide whether to get back on again.

... an emotionally heavy read. Nearly every chapter deals with loss or trauma of some sort, and while handled quite skillfully in Nagamatsu’s capable prose, there is a definite undercurrent of pain wending its way through the book. Fortunately, there is an even broader current of hope and optimism overlaying that pain, so just be aware that this book might kick you in the feels more than once as you make your way through it ... I felt like I was getting snapshots into the most important days of a person’s life, inflection points where vital connections were lost or made, a feeling reinforced by Nagamatsu’s choice to use first person perspective in each entry. It’s slightly disorienting at first, due to how loosely bound the individual chapters are, but it quickly becomes second nature to start a new chapter and jump into that person’s mind ... this is a book that is innately, essentially human in a way few writers manage to capture ... Read if: You’re interested in flawed people; you appreciate a good Babe reference; you’ve ever felt that despite your best efforts your parents still weren’t satisfied.

Dazzling ... The story of the plague and all that comes after is told through a series of interconnected, short story-like chapters, narrated by a cast of fascinating characters ... In each chapter, Nagamatsu tenderly and precisely examines how far we'll go to defy death and the sheer pain that comes with accepting it ... The grief you experience while reading How High We Go in the Dark is grasping and helpless and quiet and enrageing and hideously unfair. It is far-reaching and elastic, stretching across generations and the depths of space.

Strange and sensitive ... Refreshing for its resistance to easy dystopian tropes and its commitment to the emotions of wonder and hope, even in the face of grief ... Especially savvy is the way that Nagamatsu does not posit one single monolithic human destiny, be it grim or triumphant, but rather an innumerable variety of destinies ... By constructing his narrative as a novel-in-stories — a set of loosely connected tales about characters whose lives often intersect only obliquely — he's able to achieve a sophisticated polyphony ... Literary fiction meets speculative fiction in each vignette, and as heavy as the accumulated material comes to be, Nagamatsu punctuates the tragedy with moments of humor ... Timely as this novel inarguably is, Nagamatsu has emphasized that the book was actually more than a decade in the making. One hopes that readers won't have to wait quite so long for his next one.

Ambitious ... Nagamatsu’s zany vision extends, via a succession of first-person narrators, thousands of years into the future, incorporating interstellar travel, advanced cryopreservation and alien shape-shifters ... As the losses pile up, Nagamatsu succeeds in assembling a book that feels energetic despite its base note of mainly muted, sometimes maudlin despair. A little over halfway through, tales of endings give way to visions of new beginnings, albeit not here on Earth. It closes with a somewhat corny solution to a mystery whose seeds were planted in the first pages ... Many of these chapters have been published as short stories in the past decade. While they don’t convince as a novel, they’ve undeniably found their moment with their sustained message that love and hope continue to flicker even in the face of catastrophic pestilence.

There’s something both compelling and disconcerting about experiencing stories about a pandemic from within a pandemic. That’s a sensation that Sequoia Nagamatsu memorably captures in his new novel How High We Go in the Dark ... How High We Go in the Dark is often brutally sad to read ... Before reading this book, I did not think that I could have my heart broken by the story of a swine named Snortorious P.I.G. It turns out that I was very, very wrong ... Over the course of the novel, then, we start to see society as a whole begin to bring this new pandemic under control. It’s one of several things that keeps How High We Go in the Dark from feeling like an endurance test. The book is harrowingly sad in places, for sure—but there’s also room for hope, and the ways in which it gradually turns is one of its most deft maneuvers ... How High We Go in the Dark also takes a few turns into a more cosmic realm ... For me, the elements of How High We Go in the Dark that were the most moving were those focusing on human connection, that showed how the bonds of friends and family endure (or don’t) under impossible duress. The larger worldbuilding, though fascinating in its own right, took the narrative in some directions that warranted more exploration—but some of the shifts it took to get there were overly jarring. In the end, it’s the ground for hope that kept me rooted to this book.

... not always a pleasurable experience. Emotionally gritty, uncomfortably plausible, and incredibly timely, this novel is packed with pain, grief, loss, and the kind of possibilities that make you want to forget how much you don’t know about the future. However, it’s also a book you can’t put down once you start reading, because the poetry of pain and the strength of the characters inhabiting its pages pull you in and make it impossible to not share their feelings, to not join them in that brief moment of their lives we’re being shown ... Writing about grief in a powerful way is no easy task, but Nagamatsu makes it look easy here. The pages of this novel are packed with people who have lost someone and/or are helping others deal with their loss, and the array of feelings they experience radiates off the pages and right into the readers’ hearts. This is a narrative about humanity struggling to survive, fighting to hold on to those they love for one more day, and people dealing with untimely death, but it’s also a story that celebrates the small things: finding someone and spending time together for a while, doing something nice for someone who needs it, or sacrificing our desires to put someone else’s before our own. A horrible plague easily pushes the worst people have to offer to the forefront because pain and anger change us, but it can also change us in good ways and remind us of the things that matter most, and Nagamatsu writes about both things while somehow finding a perfect balance between the light and the dark ... a superb, wildly imaginative, and prescient debut from an author whose short stories have already shown the world what he is capable of. This marks the arrival of an exciting new voice in science fiction; an author whose amazing imagination is as big as his heart.

... basically the book’s narrative arc consists of vignettes separated by fairly significant time gaps, detailing a future history seen in spurts, with recurring characters. The assemblage is nicely done and satisfying, but resemblance to the off-the-shelf narrative unities of a traditional novel are tenuous. So the reader needs to be aware of that ... Readers willing to ride the rollercoaster will enjoy every minute ... Nagamatsu’s ability to evoke many distinctive and distinct characters is powerfully on display. His speculative abilities are top-notch, as he examines all the macro- and micro-effects of his prime story engine, the plague ... His prose, while not showy, often attains poetic liftoff ... Taken together, his talents make for a primo SF writer whose future path will assuredly lead to many more unique wonders.

... particularly challenging in our current climate ... Early chapters feel self-contained, but as the novel progresses, it is satisfying to observe the ways the sections interconnect with and amplify one another. When the full scale of Nagamatsu’s vision comes into focus in the final chapter, the narrative resonance on display is thrilling in a manner reminiscent of David Mitchell’s mind-bending masterpiece, Cloud Atlas ... while Nagamatsu explores resilience, love and our primal need for connection, there’s no denying that the process is a sad one. Any glimpses of hope are generally fleeting and bittersweet ... It’s unfair to penalize a book for being too relevant and ringing too true, but for readers who turn to fiction as a means of escaping the stress and worries of real life, How High We Go in the Dark might be best saved for a later date. However, those courageous enough to sit with the novel’s exquisite sorrows will be rewarded with gorgeous prose, memorable characters and, ultimately, catharsis.

Both epic and deeply intimate, Nagamatsu’s debut novel is science fiction at its finest, rendered in gorgeous, evocative prose and offering hope in the face of tragedy through human connection.

A product of more than 10 years’ labor, this novel will ring out sharply in today’s pandemic world ... Nagamatsu blends literary and visionary verve in a narrative winning comparison to Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven.

Cobbling these stories together makes a novel-length book, but it doesn’t necessarily make a satisfying novel. The different ways in which people deal with grief and survival accumulate without revealing new insights ... And while there are characters who recur, a lot of these connections feel superimposed for the sake of crafting a novel. The final chapter—but for a brief coda—circles back to the beginning in a way that’s thrilling for a moment. Then Nagamatsu lays bare the mystery of the opening chapter in a way that can only be rewarding for hardcore devotees of the ancient astronaut school of ufology or readers for whom this concept is entirely new.

Nagamatsu’s ambitious, mournful debut novel-in-stories...offers a mosaic portrait of the near future ... Combining the literary and the science fictional, each subtly interconnected chapter examines a point of failure during the dying days of the great human experiment ... Nagamatsu can clearly write, but this exploration of global trauma makes for particularly bleak reading: the novel offers no resolutions, or even much hope, just snapshots of grief and loss ... Readers willing to speculate about a global crisis not too far off from reality will find plenty to think about in this deeply sad but well-rendered vision of an apocalyptic future.