How High We Go in the Dark

A stunning debut novel by Nagamatsu. From deep under the melting permafrost in Siberia an ancient virus is unleashed upon the world by unsuspecting archaeologists. So you might think this is another Covid influenced “pandemic” novel, but the germ of the idea came to the author in 2008. Indeed this is more a tale dealing with loss, grief and the thread of humanity that carries this species forward.

Essentially a series of interconnected stories, where characters from one tale pop up in another, or their descendants do. The characters are well drawn, the stories are moving, melancholy at times yet also uplifting, as humanity fights to find a cure. Along the way scientific breakthroughs lead to the singularity, which in turn enables intergalactic flight and ships sail to the stars looking for a second Earth.

The narrative moves forward in time and shows how we deal with the huge loss of life, how we care for victims of a virus that causes mutations. The strange funerary customs that grow up, the way even that business changes as a cure is found and the aftermath, how the survivors deal with returning to a world forever changed.

I have not enjoyed a novel this much for quite a while, hence the five stars. The revelatory chapter at the end, that pulls all the disparate threads together is surprising and yet makes perfect sense of all that has come before. Wonderful stuff.

This one started off very promising to me, and kind of fizzled out a bit further into it. I really like the structure of this book, it's a series of short stories told as vignettes from different characters, but all within the same world and timeline. (It's also a pandemic story, although a fantastical one, but that might be off-putting to some).

There are a few stories near the beginning that were incredibly engrossing. I'll try to keep it vague and it will sound silly, but one is about a euthanasia theme park and another is about a talking pig. These are complete stories, well told, and are actually quite heartwrenching.

I think I may try rereading this at some point, I listened to the audiobook and it's possible I just wasn't in the mindset to pay property attention to the latter parts of the book, but they just didn't hold my attention as much and by the end I was a bit unsatisfied. Still worth reading for the high points though.

I heard such great things about this book, although I do not remember now where I heard that. I had high hopes and was sadly disappointed. 

I had just read The Wrack which was a similar concept of interconnected stories, all with different characters about the same event or happening. That story was also about a pandemic and at first, they were very similar. However, where those stories had lots of emotion and depth I felt these were very superficial. Especially in the beginning, all the stories were very sad but they didn't actually make me feel anything. They were just tragic in the most basic ways.

Some of the stories also felt very out of context and not at all relevant to the whole story. Like the talking pig. It was trying to be too much and the quality between stories varied wildly. A Gallery a Century, a Cry a Millennium, for instance, was great although again with too little depth in my opinion. The timelines were also very different as well. And the last chapter felt like a tack-on to connect all the stories because they weren't connected enough by themselves. 

This jumbled collection of disconnected stories is too ambitious for its own good and didn't do the hype justice.