Dark Matter

Jon Lindstrom delivers an excellent reading of Crouch’s mind-bending novel. Jason Dessen is a physics professor at a small Chicago college, whose more ambitious career aspirations in quantum physics were set aside for the tranquil normalcy of homelife with a wife and teenage son. He is content with his life, until one day when he’s abducted and drugged and wakes up into a world in which his particular quantum many-worlds theory has become a fully realized technology for interdimensional transfer. In this world, Jason didn’t marry his girlfriend and never had a son. Lindstrom’s strong, well-modulated voice relays Dessen’s travels through a multitude of alternate worlds and realities with a solid conviction that keeps the story moving forward at a steady pace. He pulls the listener fully into the story with an earnestness that perfectly captures Jason’s bewilderment, despair, and desperate desire for home. There’s plenty of action and unexpected, even shocking, turns in the story, which Lindstrom handles with expert skill. A Crown hardcover. (July)