Dark Matter (2016) Blake Crouch

Ever feel like you were your own worse enemy?

Well I bet you never had another version of yourself pop out of the multiverse and switch places with you swooning your lovely wife and sucking up to your 15 year old kid - much better then you ever did. That is how it all starts off for Jason Dessen. A middling Physics professor at a small Chicago college who threw a way a promising research career to support his marry a beautiful and talented artist who was pregnant with their child. She too sacrificed her career for the family. In another part of the multiverse, Jason 2 apparently made the other choice and invented multiverse hopping but wanted his cake and eat it too by taking over the sweet family life the Jason 1 had created.

It is a fast action adventure and takes the multiverse spin in a much different direction then Bennett’s American Elsewhere. Here the monster is you - or almost you.

Once Jason 1 realizes what has been done to him and that Jason 2’s universe is going to be lethal he heads out on his own multiverse hunt eventually finding his way back home. But he is not alone in wanting what Jason 2 stole from him and that is where the adventure really begins.

Jason 1 does not make the choices that I would make - at least up to the end. For a genius he sure makes some bonehead mistakes and nearly gets himself and his personal shrink – Amanda - killed.

How do you fool yourself? When each of you knows basically the same things and minds work pretty much the same. Except, of course, that there are varying degrees of homicidal tendencies in all the Jason’s who have survived the labyrinth of the multiverse to arrive in their “home” Chicago.

Which makes me wonder, what happened to Amanda(s). Should there have been more than one if there are so many Jason’s? Just saying. She liked Jason so you might think that at least one version would have tried to follow him.

Finally, what will be the key to getting out of this world with so many Jason’s?