Dark Matter

15 years ago, Jason decided to put his illustrious career on the backburner to see through an unexpected pregnancy with his now-wife, Daniela. Daniela's talent as an artist and Jason's cutting-edge physics research were replaced with marriage and raising their son, Charlie.

On his way back from drinks with a friend who put his own career first and has the prestige to prove it, Jason finds himself unexpectedly abducted while carting home ice cream for Daniela and Charlie. Dark Matter follows his desperate effort to be reunited with them.

I thought the beginning of this was interesting, and it did pick up at the end, but I found it dragged in the middle, especially for how wild the events transpiring were. I have read a handful of other speculative fiction authored by men where the premise is excellent but the execution is lacking ([b:The Humans|16130537|The Humans|Matt Haig|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1353739654l/16130537.SY75.jpg|21955852], [b:Reincarnation Blues|33571217|Reincarnation Blues|Michael Poore|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1500555996l/33571217.SY75.jpg|54372404], [b:The Perfectly Fine House|52294362|The Perfectly Fine House|Stephen Kozeniewski|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1583945288l/52294362.SY75.jpg|77451566]).

Usually where it falls flat for me is the characters. The women are not dimensional humans insomuch as reductive motivators for the men. The men are plagued with ennui but fundamentally good and strong. This makes exciting plots incredibly boring.

Take Jason. He loves his wife and son. He doesn't regret leaving science behind for his family, unless? He appreciates his life as is, unless? The takeaways are painfully trite. Family will always be the most important thing, no matter how much you achieve financially or professionally. You don't realize what you have until it's gone. The quiet comfort of loved ones is fleeting, not something to take for granted. It's like Blake thinks his audience is a toddler watching a Hallmark movie.

Amanda was a particularly hamfisted addition, with competing roles as “free therapist” and “would-be mistress.” She spells out obvious psychological principles to redirect Jason's entire mindset, tries to sleep with him, then bolts in the night, never to be heard from again. There were so many other and better ways to accomplish the same things. I also pondered whether this book is traditionalist propaganda about the nuclear family, but I think that may just be a bad case of my Too Online Brain.In fairness, I think Ned Fulmer probably knocked this down a star as well. 2024 Becca is definitely leery of Wife Guys, and Jason is definitely a Wife Guy. Which I guess makes sense for how Daniela was written. She and Charlie immediately believe Jason about the multiverse and wander off into another universe. We really needed to have Jason kill zombie Daniela instead of giving him a few more pages with his actual wife for her to ask some follow-up questions?

Anyway, I am still thinking about this a lot days after finishing it, and I am still interested in [b:Recursion|42046112|Recursion|Blake Crouch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1543687940l/42046112.SY75.jpg|64277987].