AUDIO

How High We Go in the Dark

by Sequoia Nagamatsu
HarperAudio. Jan. 2022. 9:20 hrs. ISBN 9780063072671. $26.99. SF
COPY ISBN
More than a dozen narratives and narrators braid this ambitious piece of literary speculative fiction together, by turns surreal, mundane, nihilistically bleak, and tentatively hopeful. A prehistoric girl is discovered in the newly melted permafrost. A father mourns the loss of his daughter as he tries to finish her work. An ancient, horrific plague emerges anew. A scientist accidentally creates a black hole in his own brain, opening the way for interstellar space travel and a new chance for humanity among the stars. After being cured, coma patients return with impossible knowledge of current and past events. Suicide pacts and doomsday cults proliferate as people struggle to rebuild their lives. And then things really get weird.
VERDICT Although written in clean, no-frills prose, this listen still isn’t for the faint of heart. While it is likely to make a splash in awards circles, libraries without a dedicated, hardcore SFF readership can safely treat this title as an optional purchase.
Reviewed by Chelsea Lytal, Cabarrus County PL, Concord, NC , Mar 01, 2022
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