Book Review: The Chrysalids

A side project I've been working on in 2018 is catching up on readings books that have been sitting on my to-read shelf for years, and this year that meant getting back into John Wyndham.

I had read a number of his books during my teen years (Midwich Cuckoos, The Kraken Wakes, The Day of the Triffids, etc.) but as Wyndham wrote books from the 30s through to the 70s, I had never got to them all.

The Chrysalids (1955) follows a young man in a post-apocalyptic era wherein society has fallen back into agrarian levels. His community, a close-knit, heavily religious one, focuses on the purity of mankind and deplores any who are different. 

David, our main character, is the son of a local leader, and has a pretty big secret - he's telepathic. This allows him to pass as human, but if anyone were to ever find out, it would certainly mean his death, and likely that of his family as well.

Having now read through Wyndham's earlier work (and some of it has some pretty big problems), part of what I think really works in the novel is the use of David as a our first person narrator, rather than simply have him as the protagonist - seeing the world through David's eyes as a child and becoming a young man made the book much more immersive for me and I think kept the writer much more on task.

A great read and a wonderful introduction into science fiction if you happen to be looking.

Book Review: Dark Matter

Last month I read Blake Crouch's Dark Matter for one of my book clubs, as a selection by my friend Ron. The novel (which I really enjoyed), follows Jason Desson, a college physics professor, who, after being kidnapped, wakes up in a strange new world, one where he is not married, not a father, and is instead a world renowned physicist. He's wealthy, well regarded and lives in an amazing version of his old home, and somehow, he's managed to create a door (spoilers follow) between worlds.

The book follows Jason as he attempts to reconcile his new life with his old and eventually, tries to leave it all together. As a story it follows an action/science fiction plot, and I imagine that if I hadn't seen a number of dimension-hopping stories before (Sliders, Ring Around the Sun, etc.), it may have took me a little longer to see where the novel was headed.

The book is quite engrossing, keeping up a really great pace and if you are not as familiar with this sub-genre of science fiction, it could be a gateway novel to a lot of really fun reads. It had a number of set pieces that worked extremely well (including the climax) and definitely has me interested in reading more from the author.