Very M Knight Shamalayan or Dean Koontz, but with spies. Lots of scenes that were pretty gruesome, intense, blood, torture. In fact, the first 3/4 of the book is all about the protagonist being beaten, then he’s running, then he’s tortured, running, climbing, then beaten again. There seems to be little else besides the action for most of the book.
We open with Ethan Burke, who is stranded in a small town called Pines after a horrific accident that’s left him with amnesia. But the more he tries to find out what happened, the less seems to make sense.
The story is intriguing if you’re interested in sci-fi/horror. We have Crouch’s very skilled, almost frantic pacing, which kept me turning the pages as I tried to figure out what was going on. But if I’m going to suspend belief for a book, I want to like and believe my character within the world that’s created, and in this case there is zero character development. While I didn’t love this book, Dark Matter is in the top 10 books I’ve ever read, so I’m definitely looking forward to reading other books by Crouch.
