How High We Go in the Dark

A full cast sensitively presents Nagamatsu's somber novel illuminating humanity's trials and triumphs in the face of a world-ending pandemic and its aftermath. In 2030, scientists unearth an ancient alien plague from the melting Siberian permafrost. Initially affecting only children, the plague mutates over the years and introduces a common language of death and mourning across the globe. This audiobook features many Japanese-American narrators, a thoughtful casting decision that listeners will appreciate as the narrators authentically reflect Nagamatsu's characters. With measured solemnity, the cast communicates both the bleakness and weirdness of a world in which euthanasia theme parks exist alongside funerary hotels and super-evolved talking pigs. The chapters are occasionally disjointed, but the narrators' consistent tone and pacing will help listeners quickly find their footing. S.A.H. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

March 1, 2022

More than a dozen narratives and narrators braid this ambitious piece of literary speculative fiction together, by turns surreal, mundane, nihilistically bleak, and tentatively hopeful. A prehistoric girl is discovered in the newly melted permafrost. A father mourns the loss of his daughter as he tries to finish her work. An ancient, horrific plague emerges anew. A scientist accidentally creates a black hole in his own brain, opening the way for interstellar space travel and a new chance for humanity among the stars. After being cured, coma patients return with impossible knowledge of current and past events. Suicide pacts and doomsday cults proliferate as people struggle to rebuild their lives. And then things really get weird. VERDICT Although written in clean, no-frills prose, this listen still isn't for the faint of heart. While it is likely to make a splash in awards circles, libraries without a dedicated, hardcore SFF readership can safely treat this title as an optional purchase.--Chelsea Lytal

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

This deeply disturbing but highly imaginative debut novel paints an evocative picture of a post-pandemic world – way way into the future. The story starts quietly when a young environmentalist and scientist dies after discovering the 30000-year-old remains of a part-Neanderthal girl. Deep in the heart of Siberia this find unleashes a deadly virus that soon spreads and changes the course of human history. Written prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, How High We Go in the Dark is about a world in crisis but it is told through the ordinary lives of its characters and their emotional struggle to deal with and experience loss and a radically evolving new world. Among those adjusting to this new world are an aspiring comedian, a scientist, a mother, a widowed painter and her teenage daughter, and a man who has recently survived death. Simultaneously playful and serious, it is difficult to believe that this book was written prior to a COVID-19 world and was initially conceived in a café in Tokyo 10 years ago. As the novel progressed, I found the story quite dark and depressing and became less immersed in the story and the rapidly changing landscape and leaps into a futuristic world. With his unique insight into the future, Nagamatsu is being billed as a promising writer. How High We Go in the Dark ends with a real twist. Lovers of science-fiction will enjoy this novel.  Reviewed by Karen Williams   ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sequoia Nagamatsu is the author of the bestselling novel, How High We Go in the Dark, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and the story collection, Where We Go When All We Were Gone. His work has appeared in publications such as Conjunctions, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, Tin House, Iowa Review, Lightspeed Magazine, and One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories, and has been listed as notable in Best American Non-Required Reading and the Best Horror of the Year. Other honors include a fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and shortlist inclusions for The Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, the Ursula K Le Guin Prize, and the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, as well as long list inclusions for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, The Dublin Literary Award, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. He was educated at Grinnell College (BA) and Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (MFA), and he teaches creative writing at Saint Olaf College and the Rainier Writing Workshop Low-Residency MFA program. He is originally from O’ahu, Hawaiʻi  and the San Francisco Bay Area and currently lives in Minneapolis with his wife, the writer Cole Nagamatsu, their cat Kalahira, their real dog Fenris, and a Sony Aibo robot dog named Calvino. He is at work on two other novels. Visit Sequoia Nagamatsu's website

It’s incredible that a work of speculative fiction first outlined over a decade ago would require a content warning in its review. But it must be said that the subject matter of Sequoia Nagamatsu’s ambitious debut, an elegiac collection of interconnected stories centering on a global plague that decimates humanity, is particularly challenging in our current climate. Beginning with a group of explorers who unwittingly unleash a mysterious virus that had long lain dormant beneath Siberian ice, How High We Go in the Dark chronicles humanity’s battle against the “Arctic plague” in the following decades and the ways in which society adapts and changes. Each chapter moves forward in time and features a different protagonist, giving readers the chance to inhabit multiple lives, realities and perspectives over the course of the narrative. Among the varied cast of characters are a worker at a euthanasia theme park for terminally ill children; a scientist who, while cultivating organs for human transplant, unintentionally creates a talking pig; a physicist who gives humanity a second chance at life by opening a stable wormhole in his head, which will allow for interstellar space travel; and the eventual crew that leaves Earth to search for a new planet to colonize. Early chapters feel self-contained, but as the novel progresses, it is satisfying to observe the ways the sections interconnect with and amplify one another. When the full scale of Nagamatsu’s vision comes into focus in the final chapter, the narrative resonance on display is thrilling in a manner reminiscent of David Mitchell’s mind-bending masterpiece, Cloud Atlas. Still, despite the fantastical elements woven throughout, there is no real way of escaping or softening the novel’s inherently bleak and brutal reality, in which death, loss, trauma and grief are at the forefront. And while Nagamatsu explores resilience, love and our primal need for connection, there’s no denying that the process is a sad one. Any glimpses of hope are generally fleeting and bittersweet. It’s unfair to penalize a book for being too relevant and ringing too true, but for readers who turn to fiction as a means of escaping the stress and worries of real life, How High We Go in the Dark might be best saved for a later date. However, those courageous enough to sit with the novel’s exquisite sorrows will be rewarded with gorgeous prose, memorable characters and, ultimately, catharsis.