Don’t bother.   I read it for a reading group- had bad feelings but went ahead anyway.  The idea is not all that impressive –  it was floated around back with Stephen King’s  11/22/63  showing alternative realities in a possibly multiplex world  with a “Joker” in control.  This time the scientists who isolated the means to traveling in those worlds are at the fore,  one is the protagonist who travels one different path  while the other is the actual developer who travels the alternative path.  These are both the same person originally but they have morphed into two life journeys –  and of course there are other possibilities.

*******
Dark Matter
by Blake Crouch
2016 / 354 pages
read by Jon Lindstrom  10h 8m
Rating:   C-   /  sci-fi / romance
*******

Jason Dessen, a brilliant physicist currently working as a professor at a small Chicago college,  is living quietly and very happily with his wife and son when he is snatched one night and taken to a place of many Jasons –  the lives he would have led had he made different decisions.     He only wants to get home to Daniella,  his wife,  but there are other “Jason”s around who want to take over his life.

This is just too far fetched for me.  I mean,  having a beer with myself in a bar somewhere?  –  How about with three or seven of my own selves – almost but not quite identical?   Each is identical up to the point of some decision – but each one is different after that decision.   Would I be willing to kill all these alternative selves to win the love of my life?  (There’s the romance.)

This is as much a romance as it is strung-out sci-fi –   there’s very very little science in the book.  It’s mostly speculation.  It’s kind of dumb but I did finish.