Review: Dark Matter

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This review is also found on my Goodreads profile here! :)
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WOW. ~~Here I am, staring at my phone's screen wondering what to write because nothing I say will justify the sheer intensity of what I went through with this doggone book.~~ So far, this is my best read for 2016. I have been blown away by the magnitude of the bar for science fiction this book has set.

How to even begin to describe this? The closest I get to it is a "science-fiction-slash-thriller." This book got me questioning my existence; questioning my CHOICES in life. I'm not really sure if the few sentences that follow can be tagged as spoilers, but just to be on the safe side, I'm going to tag them anyway. I can't exactly explain to you the book for fear of getting swallowed by the plethora of confusing quantum physics terms, explanations, and theories, but I will try to put it as simple as my limited knowledge on it can offer. [spoiler] To explain it the way the book explained it, imagine the famous Schrodinger's cat experiment. The observer will only the know result of the experiment once the box is opened--and it can only be one of the two possible outcomes: alive or dead. The quantum law states that until the box is opened, the cat is in superposition. Until the moment the observer opens the box and influences the outcome of the experiment, the cat is in superposition, or to put it simply--it is both alive and dead. But that's a cat. What if there is a box that puts a human being in a superposed quantum state with a drug that changes the way the human being's brain perceives reality; a drug that forces us to loose our quantum coherence and collapses our wave function? It opens a gateway to multiple universes (or multiverse). What if it allows access to a multiverse where everything that can happen happened? [/spoiler]

In Crouch's book, Jason Dessen, a family man and a professor, was kidnapped, drugged, and woken up to a world completely foreign to him, with accomplishments completely new to him. Jason was given a chance to live his heaviest what-could-have-been. Soon enough, Jason learns the truth behind his insanity (or is it brilliance?), and proved the quantum universe's law that anything that can happen will happen. [spoiler] And how every decision forced a new branch into a multiverse where another him goes for the other decision. Crouch took his readers to an unnerving exploration of the multiverse, and how a man will go through any lengths to stand by his choices or to claim a world entirely not his own. [spoiler]

Don't let the "science talk" throw you off from reading this. Believe me, this book is WORTH every second you're going to spend absorbing it. You do not need to be a physicist in order to understand the story. The premise itself is already so engaging and interesting, all the science-stuff are an added bonus. Crouch puts everything in a perspective so clean, easy-to-understand, and engrossing. Crouch put me through so much frightening twists and surprising turns, I couldn't believe I'm still sane at this point.

The one thing that glaringly stood out throughout the book and throughout all the multiverse Jason discovered was his undying love for his family. It was all the science and quantum talk that gave this book its unparalleled brain, but his unfathomable love for Daniela and Charlie transcended all the multiverse and gave this book its core and its humanity.

Was I happy with its ending? Honestly, I'm contented. I can't bring myself to be happy after all the we've been through (yes, after all Crouch put me through, I'm claiming the right to have been part of their story), happiness will be a little harder to find. But the thing is, I couldn't think of any other ending or resolution I'd want. Crouch nailed it.

I know that this is science fiction, but given the possibility of this I couldn't help but ask myself:

What if the multiverse is true? I'm both relieved and jealous at the same time that maybe, on a different universe, another version of me have made all the right choices and can genuinely say she's happy. Or maybe I'm that version?

What if you had access to a multiverse, how far would you go? I'd rather not cross that territory. If it's anything like what Jason went through, the consequences would be dire. Even just a chance to watch my life on another universe would prove catastrophic as it might spawn spite, fear, or intense jealousy to this world's me.

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My favorite lines from the book:

And maybe that's what makes tragedy so tragic. ...but how it happens: a sucker punch that comes at you out of nowhere, when you're least expecting it. No time to flinch or brace.

It's the beautiful thing about youth. There's a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential.

How can something so powerful (love) in one world not bleed through into this one? <-- This broke me heart :'(

Until everything topples, we have no idea what we actually have, how precariously and perfectly it all hangs together.

And I think: I will go anywhere with you.

I want her in a way I can't explain. That I don't ever want to be able to explain, becuase the mystery of it is a perfect thing.

Every moment, every breath, contains a choice. But life is imperfect. We make the wrong choices. So we end u living in the state of perpetual regret, and is there anything worse?
Life doesn't work that way. You live with your choices and learn. You don't cheat the system.

I can't help thinking that we're more than the sum total of our choices, that all the paths we might have taken factor somehow into the math of our identity.