Dark matters

It's quite unusual these days for me to post at any point other than at the end of the month. Go through a bit of a recap of life during the previous circuit of the moon (well, sort of). Usually this includes some of my thoughts and feelings about books that may have been read during said period. Not this time.

In this post I'll try and restrict myself specifically to the thoughts and feelings evoked by the book I finished reading today. The book club book for this month, Dark Matter. Partly this is because I'll not actually be able to attend the next meeting of the book club and I'd rather like to put my thoughts down, maybe to be shared electronically, maybe not. Partly it's because I do feel rather strongly about the book and there's a few things that might be good to just get out of my system.

So, one indicator of how much I like a book is how deeply involved I get with the characters. Not all of them necessarily, but some. And when I do, it comes as a shock when something horrific happens to them. Particularly if it's seemingly out of nowhere. A memorable occasion of this happening (oh, by the way, spoilers ahead, for Dark Matter and probably other books, so be forewarned) was when Ned Stark gets unceremoniously beheaded half way through book one of A Song of Ice and Fire! This was a couple of decades ago, but I still remember I was so shocked that I stopped reading the book and didn't pick it up again for months, maybe even a year or two. And I feel that on my many subsequent readings of anything GRRM, I have never really let myself get as engaged as that first time.

Of course since then I've become more cynical of authors' motives in general and also read a lot more shall we say violently dramatic literature and considered myself perhaps not as easily shocked. Imagine my surprise therefore when I found myself feeling utterly outraged when Daniela Vargas (she of Jason2's world) gets shot in the head "just to clean things up"!!

Ok, so maybe I should back up a bit.

I'm generally a fan of science fiction. And I'm not particularly fussed how hard the sci in the fi is. But I have to say as someone who did study quantum mechanics in university, I felt this was a reasonable enough attempt at laying out a plausible enough paradigm. In fact working out a pseudo logical way of figuring out how one might traverse a superimposed set of realities was actually pretty cool.

I'm still not sure I'd have called them "worlds" though, but I can see how that helps on one level.

The mansplaining was generally kept at a minimum, but I was still annoyed at how long it took for Jason to figure out that he'd been done dirty by himself and shoved off into an alternate reality. I mean, I suppose it's possible the author was trying to get across just how bizarre the whole situation was... so there's that.

And it was working! The entire episode where Jason gradually accepts the enormity of his situation was really drawing me in, and in my mind Daniela Vargas was pretty central to that. So imagine my shock when she just gets killed, seemingly completely out of the blue!! I mean, yes, I suppose one could argue that this is exactly what the author wanted to convey, but man, I kinda had to disconnect. And I don't think I ever got properly involved in the story from that point on!

I mean, I read it, and at a certain level enjoyed some of the sub plots and minor arcs in alternate worlds and all that. But it felt like hard going from time to time. Particularly annoying when the writing did seem to be rather nice! I think I just kept expecting things to go catastrophically wrong again and again. I mean that Leighton was a piece of work, wasn't he!

It was only when the multi-Jason UberChat stuff started happening that I found myself engaging a bit more. Although even that was a somewhat arms-length sort of engagement. Which, given there was so much cool in this book, feels really unfortunate. 

<aside> Another time I remember getting shocked by a character I really really liked getting deaded completely out of the blue was when River Cartwright seemingly gets shot by his grandpa in Spook Street. Except he doesn't and, whether that was the reason or not, I did find myself managing to get back into the characters properly. (Although it turns out I had to stop reading that time too, and only got back to finishing the book a couple of years later.) I mean, I know he's not the main character in that series and all that, but honestly, who's actually ever rooting for Jackson Lamb?! Although, I didn't really feel nearly as bad when River gets shot, again, at the end of Slough House. But there I think part of me felt maybe he's not actually dead, again? Hmm. Should probably find and read Bad Actors at some point and find out. </aside>

So, in case this isn't apparent, apart from the whole why-did-you-have-to-kill-off-my-favourite-side-character thing, I think I rather enjoyed the book :). I mean, some of the things don't make sense when you try to work backwards I guess, but that's not too surprising in this sort of a story. 

There were some really cool explorations of what makes things similar and what makes them different. I particularly enjoyed the Amanda thoughts around what makes something more real, externally observed things or internally felt things, and how this supposedly helped the mind bring into focus a particular alternate reality. I mean there's obviously lots of holes there based on what worlds Jason does end up in, but still, cool idea.

I have to say the ending felt a bit rushed. I mean, how convenient that JasonADMIN seemed to be one of the decent ones. (Somehow the Jason that lets them through the crowd in my mind was ADMIN. :D). And also, why did Jason2 keep his spare ampoules of magic world walking juice in the car?!! Yeah, makes no sense, except to get the story to the end.

Oh yeah, and no one other than one gun shop owner notices the hundred plus Jasons proliferating in a very concentrated part of Chicago?!

One final thought, which I'd not really considered until I started typing Jason a bunch of times: is the similarity between Jason and JSON a completely random coincidence? Hmm.

Well, it does feel good to have externalized some of that! And now that that's done, I've gone and got myself some options for the next read. Choices, choices...