not even half away through this, I knew I'd give it 2 stars. I made myself finish out of annoyance at my self-knowledge (that and bc my dnf rate is getting ridiculous). the thing is: I'm not a fan of mystery books, the who-did-it, let's-follow-the-clues type of books. I don't vibe with tv shows of this sort either. most of the time with these stories, the writing's main role seems to be just to tell you things, to explain them, to say what's around the characters and what they've learned; while the protagonist's only task is to go from one place to another, leading you through the plot, in which a great deal of (hopefully) surprising stuff will happen in order to shock you. and I'm almost never impressed. this structure actually bores the fuck out of me. so why did I pick this up? bc I wanted to be blown away by science! seriously, I thought the sci-fi aspect of Dark Matter would make a difference, but now I'm afraid I'm allergic to sci-fi books too. I'm still not sure what quantum superposition is, and the story fails to link the subject to any meaningful human facet. the family drama, or the lack of it, never really lands; consequently, the what-ifs when dealing with the multiverse theory are pointless. all of the characters are middle-class white people who live fairly good lives compared to most of us mortals, so why even go there? the mad scientist here is cartoonish at best, going through a lot of trouble to fix a simple problem. the "trauma" of his mother's death is dropped out of nowhere so we can finally have a motivation for something, even if that something amounts to nothing. of course, there's a woman who eventually proves to be a temptation to the male lead, and their connection is even flimsier than the one he swears to have with his wife. she has no backstory whatsoever and is there only to help our man out of the goodness of her heart, make him company during his little spacetime travel, and then disappear out of the picture the same way she comes into it. talk about a self-realized character. the rest of the cast is as much fun as her. about the plot, other reviews already pinpoint its many inconsistencies, but what makes two adults deliberately walk into a fatal blizzard when they can simply stay where they are? also, the protagonist/narrator doesn't talk/think about his son half as much as he thinks about his wife? most of the time, it's as if the boy doesn't exist, just a name tag in a formulaic family that's supposed to be the reason the mc never gives up. moreover, the two major plot lines are predictable even to me. I'm a hater of the hidden identity trope (in my head, that's the miscommunication trope for non-romance books), but the chaos that arises from the disruption of the multiverse should be more astonishing. perhaps if I'd read this book in the year of publication, 2016, something in it would have amazed me. it's 2023, however, and I couldn't care less. despite all the action, the three acts of the story are dull and lackluster, stirring in me nothing besides a little curiosity, which no dimension visited by the characters was compelling enough to quench. maybe I should knock off another star.