Chciałbym już oficjalnie potwierdzić, że w tym momencie Blake Crouch dołączył do zacnego grona moich ulubionych autorów.

Wszystko, co napisałem o "Rekursji", mógłbym równie dobrze przepisać w recenzji tej książki. A że napisałem tam same dobre rzeczy, to sami rozumiecie, że "Mroczna materia" musiała również otrzymać maksymalną notę.

Wszystko – począwszy od naukowo podbudowanego zaczątku fabuły, przez emocjonalne jego konsekwencje, aż do zwrotu akcji, który jeszcze bardziej komplikuje już przecież zwariowaną sytuację – tworzy zwartą, kipiącą akcją i emocjami całość.

To jest zaskakujące, że ja, który zazwyczaj ślimaczę się z czytaniem nawet najbardziej zajmujących powieści, książki tego autora konsumuję błyskawicznie. Jeśli to nic nie znaczy, to niech mnie ciemna materia pochłonie

Łohohoho, chyba właśnie znalazłem nowego ulubionego autora!

Chyba nie ma w tej książce żadnego elementu, który by mi się nie podobał. Koncepcja SF, która legła u podstaw fabuły – świetna, pobudzająca wyobraźnię. Wątki osobiste -– przykuwające, poruszające emocje, zmuszające do myślenia "A co ja bym zrobił w tej sytuacji?". Ale przede wszystkim udane połączenie tych dwóch obszarów, które wbrew pozorom nie jest tak powszechne w fantastyce.

Wszystko to sprawiło, że książka czytała się sama. Błyskawicznie. A ja chcę więcej od tego autora.

I think I figured out why Crouch books suck you in so effectively. You always kinda hit the ground running. There's immediately urgency and mystery and it keeps you on that edge, with the stakes raising and game fields changing right up till the very end. I read this all in one night. It grabbed me from the very beginning and I could not put it down until I finished. Looking forward to book 2.

by Blake Crouch

The opening of this story reminds me of the beginning of Nine Princes in Amber, because the Protagonist awakens, lacking memory of who he is, in a forest with light hurting his eyes.

He has no wallet or I.D., he's bruised up severely, and his neck hurts a lot. After some not very clear-headed investigation, he finds out where he is at least, and starts to remember what put him in his current condition.

In the quest to work out who he is, how he got where he is and why he can't contact anyone outside of a small Idaho town, a lot of confusing details work into the story to keep the brain working to make sense of what's going on. Clues to some sort of deception are constant and increase throughout.

There are some edge of your seat action scenes and it's a pretty wild ride. Near the end, just when I was getting worried that loose ends might not be explained until the sequels, things actually fall into place and the reader finally learns what it's all been about. The story kept me reading and left me breathless at times.

If you like mysteries and thrillers, this is recommended. Personally I need a rest!

by Blake Crouch

I admit I wanted to read this because I enjoyed The Pines so much.

Abandon is a ghost town with a mystery; where did everybody go? On Christmas Day 1893, the whole population of the town just disappeared without trace. Scroll ahead to modern day, and a group that includes two paranormal investigators decide to visit the town and see what they can find out. Among them is Abigail, who is a journalist following the investigation.

The beginning where they have to go through some difficult conditions to climb a high, snowy mountain to get to the old mining town was pretty interesting, but the story almost lost me with the first flashback about the inhabitants of the town in 1893. I don't know, it just seemed to move slowly. Then suddenly things start happening and I found myself breathless with fear for the characters.

About a quarter of the way through, things happen that change the game. I was expecting a ghost story, but got something entirely different. The chapters continue to flip between 1893 and 2009-10 with some pretty unpleasant things happening in both. Most of the story I found slow going and not at all what I had expected. I have to admit that I was disappointed that there wasn't the supernatural element that having paranormal investigators involved made me assume.

The writing itself is very good, as I've seen with Crouch before, but the movement of the story itself was just too slow and depressing.