With Dark Matter I did something I haven't done in a while with a book - finished it in four days.
An incredibly fast read, Dark Matter takes a familiar "It's a Wonderful Life" trope and jazzes it up for the modern age.
Jason Dessen, a community college physics professor has always wondered how his life would turn out if he had walked away from his pregnant girlfriend in his 20s and pursued his planned scientific research. As he watches his college roommate receive a prestigious scientific award, his feelings of regret become acute. But Jason is happy with his wife and teenage son.
On the way home from celebrating his friend's award, Jason is abducted and drugged. When he awakens, he finds himself in a world where he is a renowned scientist on the verge of a breakthrough. Missing for 14 months, this Jason Dessen is welcomed back as a triumphant hero. Turns out he's been working on this box that collapses time and space, allowing you to move through multiple realities in which reality forks off whenever a choice is made. Jason knows this is not his world, but since he's not the brilliant scientist who invented the box, he's not quite sure how it works, or how he is supposed to get home to his family.
Jason doesn't spend long in his new world - it's instantly apparent he doesn't belong or want to be there. I don't want to give any more plot points away since mega spoilers folks, but you get the drill. He opens a lot of wrong doors to other worlds in his attempts to find the right ones. Sometimes the descriptions come off as a bit too manufactured, but since the book moves so lightening fast, so do the descriptions.
There's no time to rest in this book. The short declarative sentences keep you moving from one scene to the next. It kept my attention and kept me moving through the whole story. I was thoroughly entertained. It's gonna make a great movie.
4/5 Stars.
Despite all my rage I am still just a worm in a cave....
Well, 3500 years after the end of Children of Dune (read that review here), God Emperor of Dune checks in on Leto Atreides II who we last saw donning a suit of sand trout and becoming one with Dune. Over the millennia, Leto has grown in size and become more worm like. His prescience stretches out into the future as he attempts to follow his "Golden Path".
He's created three millennia of lasting peace (through brutal means when necessary) - an apparent irony which is lost, but also not lost on him. He's stamped out rebellion through his loyal legion, the Fish Speakers, militarized woman who use their feminine ways when they can, or the typical chop chop, shoot shoot method of militaries everywhere.
Leto has also undertaken an ambitious breeding program, none with more attention that that paid to the offspring of his sister Ghani and all the Atreides through the ages. People have gotten faster and stronger. But through it all, he keeps resurrecting poor Duncan Idaho - a man condemned to live the later years of his life over and over. The trauma of being dropped into a time and space not his own causes Duncan to rebel against the God Emperor over and over again. So he is accordingly killed over and over again in showdowns with Leto.
It appears finally that Leto has achieved his aim in breeding an Atreides worthy of carrying on the Golden Path in Siona. Taken out into what little desert remains on Dune, Siona is given the spice essence and passes the test of not being filled with the personalities of all her ancestors. Once this breakthrough occurs, Leto knows his time is short. Despite repeatedly stating that his blindspot is his own demise, he sure seems to push the narrative forward to that end. And despite stating that the years following his death will be full of terror and bloodshed, this is somehow the best outcome possible for Dune, wherein Leto is supposed to ditch his outer sand trout skin and return to the dessert as the first worm of the empire. Well, things don't seem to exactly go his way as he spent three millennia casually ignoring all the possible work-arounds the citizens of his empire would concoct to overcome the dependence on spice that crippled the empire and focused too much power in the hands of one planet and person.
3/5 Stars
