Synopsis:
“Are you happy with your life?”
Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the kidnapper knocks him unconscious.
Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.
Before a man he’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”
In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college professor but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.
Is it this life or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how will Jason make it back to the family he loves?
Review:
Dark Matter was a phenomenal story. I’m going to do my best to sum up my thoughts about it, but I’m not sure I can fully capture my experience in this review. My advice: If you like science-fiction, read it. It’s worth your time.
There’s some science in the plot, but it’s addressed in such a way that anyone can read it and understand exactly what’s going on (even though the concepts are rooted in theoretical physics, which can be mind-bogglingly difficult to wrap your head around.) It focuses on the many-worlds theory and how every choice we make as individuals sets off a new branch (or branches) of reality, where we chose differently than we did in our reality. If you think about it, the possible other realities are infinite.
But beyond the science is a story about a man whose life is uprooted and stolen from him by himself from another reality. Jason Dessen is a professor of physics in his reality, but elsewhere, he’s uncovered a breakthrough that allows him to experience his life if he had chosen differently. It is a wild case of stolen identity, and the lengths professor Jason will go to to get his life back. It also showcases the human elements of the story; love, loss, grief, despair… There were a couple passages that had me almost in tears when Jason was thinking of his wife from his reality. They were married for 15 years, she was his best friend, and to know that he had been replaced by an alternate version of himself, while she remains completely unaware, was heartbreaking (I’ve been married 19 years, and feel much the same about my husband, so that part of the story really hit hard.)
I don’t know what else to say about Dark Matter, other than it’s such a good book. Highly recommend.
One final note: I have not watched the TV series based on the novel, so I don’t know how it compares.
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