A ordinary college physics professor is knocked unconscious by an attacker and wakes up in an alternate reality where he is the inventor of a device that allows people to traverse the multiverse.
Part 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.
...a book which is sometimes maddening in its refusal to be as good as you want it to be ... Crouch's affection for poetical (really, haiku-ical) structure within a work of prose is annoying at first, then infuriating, then simply numbing. And really, it's unnecessary — because almost the entire book is one big chase scene anyway ... [but] Crouch pulls off the big trick that makes it all worthwhile — a killer twist that is dark, horrifying, funny as hell, bizarre, completely earned and utterly original all at the same time.
...you’ll gulp [Dark Matter] down in one afternoon, or more likely one night ... Dark Matter is far too cheerful and indeed too earnest to feel cynical, even as Crouch pilfers material from dozens of sources and Mixmasters together multiple genres of popular fiction ... What Crouch really cannot do, although he occasionally makes token efforts, is slow down the pace enough to allow his characters and readers to take stock of their situation and ponder the meaning of it all ... Crouch’s obsessive need for speed sometimes leads him to tread upon his better writing and his more imaginative ideas.
