I really liked this book. I thought it struck a great balance between hard science and well-written characters. Recursion is probably my favorite sci-fi novel in a while.
Never read Dark Matter but I LOVED this one, was sneaking in pages everywhere I could!! This technology existing once, means it existing is all but inevitable, so I hope he writes a sequel to this at some point!!
I liked both Dark Matter and Recursion. I didn't think they were that similar. I read them months ago and I can still keep them separate in my head.. you should read Wayward Pines. It's really interesting.
Love this author. Without spoiling anything I think every book I've read of his has a fantastic ending. Also just reading Andromeda Strain for the first time, I can definitely see the comparisons between Crichton and Crouch.
As a major Lost TV show fan, I loved this book. I listened to the audiobook and will be buying a physical copy also. It’s one you have to read multiple times for sure
I'm a Neuroscientist and the science in Recursion didn't bother me. Last thing I want is for my books to feel like work. I was one of those people who read this and Dark Matter back to back but I still enjoyed both immensely. I liked Dark Matter a touch more because the multiverse hypothesis fascinates me. Excited for you to read Pines. It's got a lot of light horror, which I think you'd love!
You did a really good job selling this one. My To-Read pile has gotten a bit high lately, but I’ll put this one on it for sure and get to it eventually.
I enjoyed both Dark Matter and Recursion. Recursion maybe a bit better. One thing I was saying to myself as I was reading Recursion "this feels like a Marcus Sakey book." As it turns out, Blake and Marcus are friends, and Marcus Slade is named after Marcus Sakey!
The only similarity I see between Recursion and Dark Matter was the romance/love story element. I loved them both, but Recursion is my top favorite. Seems like between these two, whichever one you read first is your favorite....at least that's how it's worked with all my pals who have read them both. :D
Great review as usual. I've read both and enjoyed them separately for what they were. Even my romance/thriller reader friends liked them both (one more than the other).
I started wayward pines a week ago. Im 1/3 through book 3. They go super quick and are great. Also loved recursion, dark matter im saving for next year. Turned a few people onto recursion as well and they also loved it.
I went to the library looking for Dark Matter and found this. I am just getting started, and so far so good. I see what you mean comparing Crouch and Crichton. Funny you say that I picked up Timeline during the same trip to the library.
Fairly new reader here, just read Dark Matter, then Red Rising, then finished Recursion last night. Now I’m gonna read the next in the Red Rising series and probably another Blake Crouch after that
Arghhh! Mike, you are starting to cost more harm to my wallet than my wife is lol. Jokes a side, this is another one on my TBR. Great video and hopefully Mr. Crouch does appear on the channel in the future.
THANKS a ton for this review! I was really looking forward to seeing your thoughts on this one. As for me... I'm definitely in the camp that LOVED Dark Matter and thought this one was more on the "ok" side. I actually did not love the pacing in the sense that the three main acts of the book were quite big shifts (act 1: NYC and boat and set up; act 2: Helena and the government; act 3: World War III stuff). I would have liked more pages to unpack those. But I must admit, that ending was SO good (Slade's surprise). So overall as I'm thinking about it.... reallly good book. But Dark Matter was on another level for me.
Great review, I preferred Dark Matter but still loved Recursion. Definitely agree on the accessibility. We read Dark Matter in my book club of mostly general fiction readers and they enjoyed it.
Really liked this book. I think I enjoyed it about as much as I did Dark Matter, but Dark Matter maybe has the slight edge because the multiverse thing really appeals to me. I enjoyed the extra trippy-ness of Recursion though with people having false memories etc.
"Rode hard and put away wet" hahaha I grew up hearing that phrase from my dad lmao! Really interested in picking up Crouch. What author would you recommend for A SK obsessive?
It's definitely derivative of Dark Matter. Sure, it's a variation on the theme but it still is a thriller about somebody jumping between time lines. For as many differences as there are there's a lot that's just very familiar. I still loved it and would recommend the book. But don't read them back to back.
As a long-time reader of great books (dune is also one of my all time faves) I can no longer enjoy a decent story if the writing is bad... and BC is bad. Filed in the Dan Brown pile. Dig your show though. And I'll for sure check out the shows...
Feels like I need to reread Recursion, I wasn't a big fan of it. Thought it was just "above average". However Dark Matter and Wayward Pines trilogy were both great for me
I was not a fan of Dark Matter , i dint hate it but i dont understand the hype . Recursion was pretty good , i enjoyed this book but i still dont fully understand the hype but it was good
Challenge: Mention Blake Crouch without bringing up Michael Crichton. The man worked years on these books only to be constantly called a modern Crichton as if Crichton had a hand in writing these.
Just like people can't talk about George R.R. Martin or Robert Jordan without bringing up J.R.R. Tolkien. It isn't meant as a sign of disrespect. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Crichton is one of my favorites to ever put pen to paper and it's an incredibly high compliment coming from me that his stories remind me of Crichton. Thanks for watching.
I thought the second half of this one was too exhausting. I don't think it was too similar to Dark Matter, though. The characters kept making the dumbest decisions. Some I can't get into because of spoilers. But for example, she's sad her mom is going to die of Alzheimers, she keeps going to the past, and her mom keeps dying from Alzheimers on the same day!? She's a scientist! Alzheimer's is preventable!! (Or at least, you can greatly reduce your chances). Even if her mom went for a 10 minute walk every day for a month, that'd create enough of a ripple effect where her mom would at least die on a different day. But how could she not try the myriad things we know reduce the likelihood of Alzheimer's? If I knew my mom was dying in March 2043 from Alzheimers, I would do everything in my power to get her to eat better and exercise more, get better sleep etc so she didn't get it. This is just an example. The second half of this book was loaded with characters not making sense. I'm glad you enjoyed it a lot though, Mike. I read this in like a day and a half; for all my issues in the second half, it is still an extraordinarily well paced sci-fi romp.
I honestly thought Recursion was pretty terrible. The basic idea was fantastic, but the writing style was so, SO, basic I actually found it painful to read at points. I read fanfic on the reg.
I feel like it only remains a mystery until the end because Crouch spends the entire book lying to you. You're told you can't do something almost immediately, its reiterated throughout, and then the solution is that thing you're told you can't do. As for the similarities, I mean it's both a dad falling into a whole redo/second chance type of mystery, that revolves around choices and them effecting where they currently are. The only thing that's really different about the two books is the way they go about it. Only this book has less characterization, the main characters whole point of doing everything just gets dropped halfway in and never even thought twice about. Spoiler alert, I think Crouch is awful outside of Dark Matter.
I just read Dark Matter and LOVED IT! Read it in 3 days because I just couldn’t put it down! That’s was my first Blake Crouch book, so I excitedly moved immediately to Recursion only to find myself bored stupid. I don’t understand how someone can read this book and think there’s never a dull moment when the beginning of the book has felt like a chore the entire time-so much so that I’ve been “reading” it for 4 days and am still less than 20% of the way through. I was hoping to hear you say the book started slow and then picked up, but if you thought it was a page-turner from the get-go, that doesn’t bode very well for me. I’ll give it until 1/3-1/2 of the way through before I decide, but I’m actually considering DNFing this thing 😬
I liked Recursion better! I had read Dark Matter first, so I think I was more prepared fir the concepts in Recursion. I have also read the Wayward Pines series, and really liked that. I will def keep reading Blake Crouch because you just never know what you’re going to get! I feel that he is a worthy successor to Crichton.
I read Dark Matter last year and just finished the first two of the Wayward Pines trilogy. The trilogy are definitely very quick reads. Adding this to the TBT!
Dark Matter and Recursion, for me, were way better than the Wayward Pines trilogy. Don't get me wrong; I flew through the Wayward Pines trilogy like I did through Dark Matter and Recursion. However, I didn't care as much for the main characters in Wayward Pines. There were two overlapping soap opera-like love triangles going on in which I thought one of the characters and his side story was just superfluous. And, I couldn't believe the main protagonist of the story could take as much physical punishment as he does and still stay functioning, let alone pull off the physical feats he displays. The story's main concept set around the secret of the "idyllic" town of Wayward Pines was the most interesting.
I remember hearing about the Wayward Pines show and wanting so desperately to watch it. I finally got the chance when I started dating someone who had it available on streaming. We gave it a shot. "Blake Crouch?!" she said upon seeing whose books the show was based on. "He lives here!" "Here? In Durango?" "Yes!" That cemented my decision to read one of his books. I made the mistake of trying Desert Places. It felt unnecessarily hateful. I'll give him another shot eventually, but not just yet.
I liked the book in general, and I thought the concept was VERY interesting. However, I really didn't get the ending. Rather, I got the ending, but I don't get why what they did should work in the stabilished internal rules. I'm not going to expand on it because this is a spoiler-free video, but it felt to me like that shouldn't work based on what was explained before.
