LOVED THIS BOOK. Read it in a single day, which I don’t often do. One of the jacket reviews said something about “this is the book for which the world thriller was invented,” and I have to agree. Edge of the seat! And almost nothing too science-jargony that can make time travel style books inaccessible.
I say time travel style, because there’s no time travel. It’s multiple universes. But I’m not confident that’s an actual sub-genre since I think Blake Crouch mostly invented it.
The fact that the book spends a significant amount of time contemplating the morality of decisions across multiple universes was very compelling, and it makes you love Jason (the protag) for his heart. He is in a terrible place, and you feel for him. You root for him. You want him to win. But then you see glimpses into these other realities and recognize that those are all Jasons, too—Jasons you don’t love, feel for, or root for… and you realize this is more complicated that you thought.
My only (tiny) complaint is that the endless hallway being the way your brain would sort of entrances to multiple universes in a visual way that you could navigate could have been more creative. That feels really expected, I mean, don’t we all even have that dream? And it’s in the Matrix… anyway, small compliant.
There were a few places that the author switched voice to give us Daniela’s (Jason’s wife) perspective, but it wasn’t jarring or disjointed. In fact, the whole book has such a seamless feel even though it’s likely one of the crazier journeys I’ve ever read.
This book was high speed and high emotion. At the end of the day, it was a genuine guy who was really in love with his wife. And I’m never going to not love a book that tells me that story really well. And bonus that this book also included a magic cube and a brain serum and quantum superposition because I’m a geek for that.
