Sorry for confusing title, but it's a confusing book. Unlike anything I had ever read before.
How High We Go in the Dark is about a plague, paralleled to COVID, but even more deadly, even more contagious and worst of all: primarily targeting children.
And yet the book focuses very little on the plague itself. The characters sure are focused on it, but the book itself is more concerned with following those people through their lives and emotions. Each chapter is almost like a short story, jumping around in time, space and POV. There are occasional ties from person to person, but they're few and far between. It's an emotional rollercoaster the whole way though, and I mean that literally because there is a chapter involving a euthanasia roller coaster. This is played incredibly seriously and is a genuinely heart wrenching part of the book, I'm tearing up just remembering it.
Even odder is that there is absolutely no dedication to realism in what's happening. What's realistic is the character's emotions and responses. They all feel like real people, reacting in real ways. But the world theyre in has mini black holes in a person's head and genetic mutations that make you a magic mutant then kill you. Does this sound confusing enough yet? It is.
But I'm also so glad I stuck with it. Reading it felt like being led through a dance I didnt know by an aggressive but talented lead. I was spinning, dizzy, and lost for a long time, but by the end I had just about gotten my footing enough to recognize a sort of pattern, and was enjoying the beauty of it.
Yall there was a psychic pig. I cried.
by Overall_Advantage109