Who Would Like This Book:
How High We Go in the Dark is a powerful, genre-blending work that explores grief, love, and the resilience of humanity in the face of profound loss. Through a mosaic of interconnected stories, Nagamatsu paints a near-future world reshaped by climate catastrophe and a mysterious pandemic. If you love literary sci-fi, emotional storytelling, or books like Station Eleven and Cloud Atlas, you’ll be hooked. This is especially for readers who appreciate speculative fiction that asks big questions about life, death, and what connects us all.
Who May Not Like This Book:
This one isn’t for everyone - especially those looking for straightforward plots, happy endings, or traditional romance. The structure, told in loosely linked vignettes, may feel disjointed or emotionally overwhelming, and the melancholy themes of loss and mortality make for a heavy read. Readers who want clear answers, strong continuity across characters, or find surreal elements off-putting may struggle. And if you’re mentally drained by pandemic or climate disaster stories, you might want to wait until you’re in a sturdier headspace.
About:
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu is a novel that intricately weaves together interconnected stories set in a near future world affected by an apocalypse caused by a virus leaking from melting permafrost. The narrative follows various individuals at different points in time, exploring themes of love, grief, transhumanism, and the resilience of humanity in the face of disaster. The writing style is described as emotionally impactful, beautifully done, and gorgeously devastating, with each chapter offering a different perspective that ultimately ties together along a carefully crafted timeline.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Content includes themes of death, grief, loss of children, and emotional distress, making it highly impactful and potentially triggering.
From The Publisher:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE
ROXANE GAY'S AUDACIOUS BOOK CLUB PICK Shortlisted for the The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction
"Moving and thought-provoking . . . offering psychological insights in lyrical prose while seriously exploring speculative conceits." - New York Times Book Review
"Haunting and luminous . . . Beautiful and lucid science fiction. An astonishing debut." - Alan Moore, creator of Watchmen and V for Vendetta
Recommended by New York Times Book Review
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and many more!
For fans of Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven, a spellbinding and profoundly prescient debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague-a daring and deeply heartfelt work of mind-bending imagination from a singular new voice.
In 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika Crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus.
Once unleashed, the Arctic plague will reshape life on Earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, a cynical employee falls in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son. A heartbroken scientist searching for a cure finds a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects-a pig-develops the capacity for human speech. A widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embark on a cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.
From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey, spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resilience of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.
"Epic . . . Sequoia Nagamatsu is a writer whose imagination is matched only by his compassion, the kind we need to light our way through the dark." - Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists
"Wondrous, and not just in the feats of imagination, which are so numerous it makes me dizzy to recall them, but also in the humanity and tenderness with which Sequoia Nagamatsu helps us navigate this landscape. . . . This is a truly amazing book, one to keep close as we imagine the uncertain future." - Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here
Ratings (68)
Incredible (21) | |
Loved It (20) | |
Liked It (10) | |
It Was OK (11) | |
Did Not Like (4) | |
Hated It (2) |
Reader Stats (192):
Read It (74) | |
Currently Reading (2) | |
Want To Read (88) | |
Did Not Finish (4) | |
Not Interested (24) |
5 comment(s)
Very good. Maybe a little uneven between the more grounded elements that were really good and the more speculative which felt a little of out nowhere. Still highly interesting and much better than what I had in my head when I first heard about it
A few of the stories felt too slow paced for me personally, and too similar to one another. But apart from that, I enjoyed the concept and was fascinated by the idea of little links between the characters in each story. Some wonderful stories of hope navigating a worldwide plague.
I loved the writing but the story reads like a series of short stories and they didn’t all grab me.
Wow. What an emotional Rollercoaster. I was actually crying do hard by chapter 2. I almost stopped reading because I was so emotional. Just call me cry baby cristi. Anyways this may be my favorite book of 2024. I LOVED just about every chapter, and really liked the ones that I wasn't head over heels for. Will not stop recommending.
This is a book about dealing with a pandemic, families coming together and falling apart, exploring new horizons of science, and grief.
A video review including this book is on my Youtube channel at https://youtu.be/FyK7hcbNrvc?t=2
I found it terribly sad, slow, and mournful. I didn't enjoy the experience. But I'm sure that many people will love it and find it cathartic. It reminded me of watching the movie Contagion; undoubtedly well made, but the heavy subject matter stopped me from actually enjoying the ride.
The stories feel terribly real, the grief of the characters authentic. The stories in this book are short, but you get a sense of what each character is going through and what they care about. I would say that this book is less about the individual plots and more about the larger feeling. The feeling of dealing with disaster, of caring for the dead, of caring about the world.
Thanks to William Morrow and Netgalley for giving me a copy of this book for review. All opinions are my own.
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How High We Go in the Dark?
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