How High We Go in the Dark

How High We Go In the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. It will make you weep; it will give you hope and destroy you at the same time. 5 stars.

I meant to read at least ten other books before this one, but when I sat down to check out the first few pages, I just kept reading straight through to the end. The world building style reminded me of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas in that it brought seemingly unrelated stories together woven through with finely connected threads. Each segment has an expertly introduced setting and characters of its own, and the writer brings us into harmony with them all, as well as with the work as a whole.

The ending may not appeal to everyone, and did not quite fully appeal to me, but it works in the context of the book, and I enjoyed the skill with which Nagamatsu delivered it despite being a little alienated by the direction it went.

This book is worth every minute.

I’m not a big sci-fi reader so the nearest analogue I can make for this is Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. It is a collection of short stories around an overarching story.

I started off liking this but became more and more irritated as I went on, until it became quite torturous. I wondered why this might be.

The stories are morbid and ironic, which would normally be a big hit with me, but as I went on it rang false to me. I think my central problem is this feels like a child wearing the clothes of a grown up. As a pretentious teenager I soon realised that being morbid and ironic could give me the thrill of feeling adult and vaguely profound.

But, just like me as a teenager, this book is very childish. All the adults are either just like children, or their only characterisation is via their children. This became irritating to me as I simply felt there was no insight here. The author was reaching for depth but I don’t think they succeeded.

I suppose it doesn’t help that I had the Martian Chronicles in my head. There is a book that, even though it is a bit dated, is incredibly humane and understands what makes people tick. This book by comparison can only seem facile.

Still, I have given it 3 stars for a reason. I’d say about four of the stories here are very good indeed, and I had high hopes.