Like most anyone, Jason Dessen has regrets in his life. He could've been an award-winning researcher; his theories on quantum physics might have changed the
world. His wife Daniela could've owned the Chicago art scene. But he wouldn't trade his wife or their teen son, Charlie, for anything in the world - even if he
sometimes takes them for granted.
Then, one night, on the way home from the corner bar, a stranger accosts him. The masked man steals his phone. He takes his clothes, even. Then he sticks a
needle in Jason's arm, and everything goes black.
He wakes up in a strange concrete room, like a hangar, surrounded by people he doesn't know who all act like he's their best friend and their personal hero.
According to them, he's the scientist who created a breakthrough: an isolated room and a drug mixture that allow a person access to the quantum multiverse,
where every possible chance and choice play out in parallel and equally real realities. In this world, he never married, never had a son, never settled for
teaching physics to bored students in a middling college instead of pursuing his own research to dizzying heights of academia.
The Jason of this new world stole his life and family. The original Jason will stop at nothing to get them back, even if he has to search every possible
world...
Review
The concept of the multiverse is always a brain-bender, and here it makes a great setting for a thrilling, harrowing journey, one that makes one man question
not only his sanity but his very concept of identity. He thinks of himself as the "real" Jason, but how is he any more or less real than the countless other
Jasons that exist? How is his world in any way superior? Driven by the love of his wife - a love that happens in more than one world, but which is somehow never
quite the same, as nobody is quite the same (when they exist at all; some of the Chicagos he visits are devastated nightmares) - Jason struggles first to escape
the life of "Jason 2", as he comes to call the version of himself that thrust him into this unwanted journey, then to find his way back through the infinite
possible worlds to the right Daniela, the right Charlie, the right Chicago. The story has plenty of action and tension that keeps ratcheting up, with odds
overwhelmingly against him... and, even if he does make it back "home," his troubles may be far from over. There are a few elements that I thought could've used
more closure, and Jason's family can sometimes feel less like autonomous people and more as possessions for him to claim and defend, but on the whole Dark
Matter is both an interesting and exciting story told across multiple worlds.
New York City detective Barry Sutton had heard of FMS - False Memory Syndrome, people who suddenly and inexplicably find an extra set of incongruous life
memories in their brains - but until that night atop the Poe Building he'd never encountered a victim. The suicidal woman claims to be plagued by a life that
no longer existed, a marriage that never happened, a son she never had. He wants to forget about the tragedy and the death he couldn't stop. But she was so
convinced, and had so many little details of the life she never truly lived, he can't help poking around. What he finds will upend his understanding of time
and memory, an invention created by researcher Helena Smith with the best of intentions that is exploited by humanity's worst representatives, threatening the
future of the species and possibly the structural integrity of reality itself.
Review
Recursion follows some very familiar themes from Crouch's Dark Matter, which explored the quantum multiverse, but in a different enough
fashion that they're not simple rehashes (mostly.) Once again, a scientist's ambitions open the door to the darkest of human impulses, and one man finds
himself caught in the middle of it with a strange and attractive woman. It's hardly a spoiler that FMS is not just a matter of "false" memories - this is a
sci-fi title, after all - but something far more revolutionary. His journey takes on deeply personal overtones when he's given a chance to undo the great
tragedy that has defined his life, the death of his teenage daughter, but actions always have unintended consequences, even actions motivated by love.
Meanwhile, Helena sees her life's work horribly altered; what started as a plan to map and store human memories against dementia (inspired by her mother,
afflicted with Alzheimer's disease) instead gets co-opted by a series of outsiders once it turns out to be a scientific breakthrough she never anticipated,
one that opens the gateways of time and reality. As one might guess from the "thriller" tag, the story involves lots of harrowing and horrific moments,
games of cat and mouse through a malleable timestream where enemies can literally stay a step ahead of any move. Barry and Helena are pushed to the physical
and psychological breaking point and beyond by their efforts to stop the world-ending cataclysm unleashed by Helena's research. At times, Crouch drew out
the tension too long, there's a little too much navel-gazing on the nature of reality toward the climax, guys have a way of having to protect gals a little
too often, and Barry could be slower on the uptake than a detective ought to be, plus - like in Dark Matter - there's a subtle reliance on the "white
picket fence" family ideal being the only truly good and fulfilling ambition a person ought to have (with those who aspire to build other lives and careers
either deeply regretting it or turning amoral/evil), but ultimately it's a decent and intense thriller.
As a closing note, I do have some minor complaint about the audiobook version. The narrators sometimes dropped their voices low to imitate whispers or
mumbles, which did not work out well when one is listening to said audiobook in a less-than-quiet warehouse.
The Wayward Pines trilogy, Book 1 Blake Crouch Thomas & Mercer Fiction, Mystery/Sci-Fi/Thriller Themes: Country Tales, Cross-Genre, Weirdness ****
Description
Wayward Pines, Idaho - a nice place to visit, but you'll never leave...
After two colleagues disappeared in the small town, Secret Service agent Ethan Burke and his partner were on their way to investigate when a truck crashed into their car.
Waking alone, memory scrambled, with no ID and no wallet, he soon realizes there's something very, very strange about Wayward Pines. On the surface, it looks like
something out of an old TV show, with its almost car-free Main Street and neighborhoods of classic Victorian houses and friendly folks on every corner... but there are no
TVs, no contact with the outside world, and he can't seem to get a straight answer on what happened to his partner or his personal effects, let alone what happened to the
missing agents he was sent to locate. Just beneath the surface lies a dark secret, one that someone is going to extreme lengths to protect... one that may well kill Ethan
if he digs too deep.
Review
I figured I needed a change of pace, and I don't read a lot of thrillers, so this looked like a decent choice. (I'd also heard a few things about the series, so I was
curious.) It starts quickly, building a nice sense of surreal danger in the less-than-idyllic small town. Ethan's past - time as a tortured POW in the Middle East and
other personal demons - creates plausible reasons to question whether he is being paranoid or if the whole world really is out to get him. Hints and clues and terrifying
incidents ratchet up the tension in a fast-paced plot loaded with creepiness, action, and more than a little gore, with nobody acting overtly stupid (as some authors stoop
to in order to facilitate the story or obscure plot holes.) It builds up to a reveal that both explains everything (or at least enough to satisfy the reader) and sets up
the next book in the trilogy; I was half-expecting the story to run head-first into a cliffhanger ending, obligating me to read further if I wanted to know what was going
on and why. I enjoyed it more than I expected to, and might consider reading onward when I next need a quick-reading change of pace.
