Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free ARC of this book.

An enthusiastic 5 STARS for How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. From the very first chapter, it was clear to me that this book will most likely go on to win some major awards this year.

More of a series of vignettes or short stories with a central background running through them all, How High We Go in the Dark centers around a global pandemic. And it is a heavy read. VERY heavy. Lots of death, horrifying decisions being made, and sadness all around.

But it was so, so worth it. The writing and character work was absolutely breathtaking, with each chapter taking me further into the world. I will certainly be looking out for Nagamatsu’s next novel.

Such graceful prose as we dwell within myriad characters enduring different eras of a plague ridden earth. Melancholic and meditative while not being depressing. A sure feat.

This book read like a collection of the saddest episodes of Black Mirror (which are my favorite Black Mirror episodes). Essentially a new Arctic plague is spreading through the world. First it only affects children, but it phases and morphs to become a danger to everyone. All of these chapters or stories deal with this disease and its effects, but these stories also span hundreds of years which gives a full scope of humanity's grappling with this new life (if it sounds like it's gonna hit very close to home its because it will).

If you're looking for a collection of literary science fiction stories that tackle grief, mortality, and loss then I highly recommend. While it gets pretty heavy I would say there is some light at the end and in some of the stories.

Thanks to @netgalley and @williammorrowbooks for the advanced copy!

Source: DRC via NetGalley (William Morrow and Custom House)
Pub. Date: Jan 18, 2022
Synopsis: Goodreads

Why did I choose to read this book?

Another book placed on the TBR list because its description was too good to pass up. Climate change melts an ice shelf in which a person is discovered who was infected by an ancient virus, which infects the scientists that discovered it and suddenly there’s a plague and apocalyptic events, and we witness the aftermath of that situation. Maybe it’s a little on the nose for our current reality, but call it morbid curiosity that led me to see how someone imagined this all might turn out. Learning through fiction – one of my favorite activities.

What is notable about the story?

I’ve started and deleted a starting sentence to this section 3 times, because I do not think I can do justice to the raw emotion that this story made me feel. Fear, despair, hopelessness – if you want to experience what the aftermath of a truly deadly and uncontrollable pandemic might feel like, hoo boy this is the book for you. It’s just so unbelievably fucking BLEAK. I almost stopped reading after the “theme park masquerading as a humane children euthanasia machine” because…jesus h tapdancing christ just so fucking DARK.

Nagamatsu’s ability to make you feel these emotions as if you are there is equal parts remarkable and horrifying. You too could be standing behind a line of security guards as your terminally ill child takes their final ride on the suicide coaster. I walked away from this book bruised and emotionally damaged, and I would be mad except that was the intention so A++ I guess.

Was anything not so great?

This is a book that will speak to everyone differently depending on the type of loss and trauma they have experienced. I’ve been teaching through this pandemic in a state that refuses to keep my students or I safe. It’s an every person for themselves atmosphere, and I’ve been double masking and hand sanitizing to the point that my hands hurt because of how dry they are. In a pandemic where almost 900,000 people have died in the United States alone, I find myself in classrooms of 20-30 students, 30% of which are masked (at best), rotating out for a new group every hour as the periods change. If we go remote, we lose funding. Mask mandates are against the law. Blended learning is not an option anymore, also with a funding loss threat.

So reading this book made me feel even more hopeless than I already do. Omicron is racing through anyone is can infect – how would any of this be different if the virus was one that made your brain turn into a spleen and your spleen into a lung like the Arctic virus in this story? How fast would we respond? Could we respond? At what point would the husband and I stay home, leave our jobs, hunker down and try to escape the sickness? Could we afford to? Could we afford not to? Everything I’ve seen over the past two years tells me that we’re not ready. Not even close.

If you are someone who has been affected by this pandemic, who has lost someone, who has battled their way through – the thing that makes this book so great is also what makes it not so great. You might want to think about waiting to read this one until those feelings are less raw, until we find COVID-19 in the rearview.

What’s the verdict?

This book is traumatic content in a traumatic time. I have to give it 5 stars on Goodreads because it was beautifully written and evocative. But this shit is POTENT so tread carefully if this is one you’ve been thinking about reading. If I read this 5 years ago it wouldn’t have affected me the same way it did now. Have tissues nearby, don’t read before bed, and set an appointment with your therapist if you’re going to take this journey.

Sequoia Nagamatsu’s book is one about humanity and the human condition that spans across centuries. Incredibly moving one moment, and making my skin crawl the next, Nagamatsu starts the novel with a plague that ravishes humanity. In the COVID age that we are living, this novel struck many chords and left me with a mixed emotions that I will be sifting through for the next week.

The story begins in 2030 with a research crew in Siberia uncovering a young frozen girl in the ice. While studying her remains the crew becomes infected and a virus is unleashed on the world. The remainder of the book is told through a series of stories that are loosely connected by various characters as the plague runs its course. Most of the stories focus on the people, their experiences of either surviving the plague or dealing with the complexities of grief and the death of those around them. A few are told farther into the future and feature some science fiction themes. While this was certainly not a light read (the euthanasia theme park for young sick kids was a particularly tough read), I did enjoy the creativeness of the stories, the tenacity of the human spirit aspects, and the way it sort of came full circle by the end. I received an ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

In the near future melting ice reveals a long dead body and unleashes a deadly virus upon the world. How High We Go in the Dark is a novel told through interconnected short stories as people across the globe grapple with grief, survival, and the meaning of life. The stories reach widely across time and space, some are distressingly rooted in or own lived pandemic reality, or just outside enough to be provokingly uncomfortable, others are further outside the realm of possibility, yet nonetheless intriguing. As with any short story collection some are more impactful and memorable than others, but overall I really appreciated the contents of this collection.

The permafrost in Siberia is melting, freeing preserved plants, animals, and sometimes humans. Along with these freed humans comes their illnesses and one freed virus wrecks havoc on the human body by morphing organs. This story tell the tale of how humanity monetizes death.

This is told in a very interesting way. Its more of a series of short stories than a true novel. We're also not following anyone "important" directly (or if we do follow them we don't follow them while they do important stuff). We learn about the problems of the would as background noise to character's daily lives. Unlike most books told in this way we do get answers, so its worth reading to the very end.

Recommend if you want something different but please check out content warnings before heading into this one.

Rarely do I want to read a book multiple times, but after finishing this book, I found myself going back to the beginning to read through it again! How High We Go in the Dark is disastrously beautiful in its ability to capture humanity's response to tragedy. Hope is the last thing I would expect to feel after reading a book about a plague considering our current times, but somehow I left this book feeling hopeful and excited about the many possibilities we hold for our future. I believe that those who love short stories will find the structure of this book especially intriguing. I'm so glad this is one of the books I started the new year with! Here's to unfailing love and possibility in 2022!

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins publishers for the opportunity to read this book prepublication through an uncorrected E-proof.

While the premise of HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK, along with Matt Bell's blurb, really intrigued me, this novel feels extremely unfinished. I was so drawn in by the first story, that of a scientist whose daughter, also a scientist, dies on site, prompting the father to Siberia to see the remains of his daughter's life and work. There, archeologists and environmental scientists unleash a destructive plague from the permafrost, emitting a disease that turns people's organs into other organs (a genius and horrifying fictional illness--just real enough to be truly scary). The next ten or so stories all recount society as changed by the plague. The characters and themes pop up occasionally in each other's stories, but they never truly weave into a whole. I thought I was reading something akin to Julia Phillips's DISAPPEARING EARTH, and perhaps I could have if HHWGD had undergone four more rounds of edits. I wanted to know so much more about Cliff and Clara and Yumi. They were rich enough to carry an entire novel. The other characters I found less interesting.

She would have declared that the postapocalypse doesn’t mean we stop dancing

In the 2030s, an ancient plague is released from the Siberian Ice. The Arctic Plague first comes for the children. Then it comes for the old. Then it comes for everyone else, mutating and strange and devastating. In its wake, humanity survives. And humanity, too, changes.

In retrospect, all of us—you, Clara, and now me and Yumi—ran toward possibility because we saw no other choice. It’s a wonder that we ever found each other, with all the running around we did.

Whew. This was heavy.

How do I even begin to sum up this book?

First, simply, because I wasn’t quite expecting it to be what it was. This is a story of plague and pandemic, death and grief side by side with hope and humanity, all wrapped into a story that was both 75 and 6,000 and 4.5 billion years in the telling, filled with a set of interconnected stories picking up here and there to develop the narrative.

It’s definitely not for everyone. There is some real weird and disturbing shit that I never would have ever thought would work and yet…it does. The surreality of coping and survival, and then going from just coping to actually living among the dead, was just so emotional.

I don’t want to tell too much of the story—although I fear I already have given a bit too much away by telling the times—because I think that this is one best explored fresh, with no expectations, no underlying understanding of the narrative aside from the knowledge that this is not just a story about people coping through an incredibly devastating, long-term event that threatens the survival of humanity while also coping with the devastating, long-term event that is climate change (this is a clif-fi novel at heart), but it’s a story about us.

How we will survive these devastating events, and how it will impact our future, and our children’s-children’s-children’s futures. How our trauma and pain will ripple down through the timeline, as our parents and their parents and their parents before have rippled into ours. Yup, this book heavily explores generational trauama.

I was in tears most of the time from how fucking desolate everything was. Would I have had the same reaction if the entire world was not going through what it was? I don’t know. Would this book even exist without covid? I don’t know.

What I do know, however, is that this is a book for now, to be read now, not just for being a touchpoint of coping in the current pandemic, but also a touchpoint in the ongoing climate crisis.

Because, despite all of the desolation and grief and death, but overall message is hope through community. We can survive together. Only together. But that survival will look a lot different than life now, or even life before. And that change is not only okay, but necessary.

I can easily see this one sweeping up awards left and right. It’s got the same mix of a little something for everyone that Station Eleven had—the literary prowess of the writing, the sweeping narrative, the plague dystopian, the characters who worm their way into your heart despite your wanting to keep everyone at bay, the science in the science fiction. The emotional beats that hit and don’t stop hitting. And that fucking—nope, will not spoil that bit for you.

Although, now I want to know what really existed in Area 51.

Oops, I’ve said too much.

Or have I?

You’ll just have to find out for yourself.

I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review

How High We Go in the Dark releases January 18, 2022, from William Morrow

Trigger Warnings: ableism, graphic death, pandemic, euthanasia

Wow this was a tough read. Not only is it eerily similar to the virus we are currently living through but reading about the long lasting devastation caused by the plague was terrifying. The hardest and most graphic parts to read included the deaths of children at a “fun park” designed for terminally ill kids. I’ll never forget those descriptions. Each chapter presents itself as an interconnected short story, some resonated with me more than others. The death hotel, the talking pig, there were some really bizarre things going on here. But ultimately, this dark, dark book is about death and grief.

I’m not usually a big fan of trigger warnings. I think we’re all adults and can do the necessary research to determine if a book is right for us or not. However, I have to say, this book is incredibly dark and heavy. Be in a good place in your head before picking up.

This book should get all the stars for its inventiveness and writing. It was just not the right book for me, at this time.

Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review. Sequoia Nagamatsu's How High We Go in the Dark is ambitious and bold, offering readers insight into a not-too-distant future where human life is jeopardized by disease and natural disaster. It is incredibly heartfelt and devastating and one of the most well-written and literary science fiction books that I have ever come across. At times, it was difficult to understand whose perspective I was reading about, especially with multiple POVs in first person, but upon learning that many of the chapters were first published elsewhere as short stories, it is easy to overlook those moments of confusion and instead recognize Nagamatsu's visionary and well-rendered world.

Let’s see if I can do this book justice … this is one of the best books I read last year, and yet I’m hesitant to recommend it because so much of it is set in a devastating, global pandemic (not to mention we get to watch humanity grapple with climate change). But for me, it was worth it. I felt every emotion as I read this book — love and hatred, hope and despair. There was joy, but I also openly wept at several parts. And isn’t that a great representation of the human experience? It made me wonder and think and captured so much of what I love about science fiction and literature as a whole. The novel is made up of many interconnected stories throughout generations, and it’s an adventure watching what happens a d trying to figure out who they are. And the ending? That’s what sealed the deal for me — so cool. Fans of The Vanished Birds or other literary sci fi should pick this up. It’s out Jan. 18.

This is a story about resilience.  The book begins in the near future, in 2030, as grieving father travels to the Arctic Circle to understand the last days of his daughter, who recently died while conducting her research based on fossils and other items uncovered as the melting permafrost reveals discoveries that have long been buried.  One such item is a perfectly preserved young girl, whose appearance and clothes are not easily explained by what is known about the age from which she comes.  These new discoveries also unveil a previously undiscovered virus.  At first, the researchers do not believe the virus is much of a danger.  But the Arctic plague, as it is soon known, is more serious than anything the Earth has experienced in centuries.  

As governments and people struggle to respond to the Arctic plague, life as they know it is fundamentally altered.  The chapters jump through time, providing glimpses of the various ways that society is responding to the plague, from seeking creative treatments and hopefully a cure, to new ways to grieve and memorialize the dead, to searching for planets that may provide a new, hospitable environment for humankind.  Through these stories, we see how the impacts of the plague reshape relationships -- creating new, unexpected connections and prompting reflections about past relationships.  

This book was powerful.  Given our current circumstances, it inevitably leads the reader to reflect on society and individual responses to the pandemic -- and what would have happened if the current pandemic was even more serious.  At times, it is heartbreaking.  The chapter about the amusement park created for children with serious infections of the plague is one of the most haunting pieces of writing I've read in a long while.  In all the stories, the author excels at capturing the intimate, human dimensions of a global catastrophe.  The linked nature of the stories also allows the reader, after getting a deep dive into the experiences of a character often at a critical turning point, to get some sense of how that character's life and choices unfold in the future.

Strongly recommended!

The synopsis of this book was very intriguing given the current circumstances of the word. The book is well written and I like that the chapters are told from a different perspective throughout the illness, however, I could not get past the 2nd perspective. I am not easily affected by dystopian plots and literature but an amusement park to euthanize children who got the illness is apparently my limit.

I think there will be many people who enjoy this book and it already has good reviews on Goodreads. As a librarian, I would need to be extremely cautious of patrons I would recommend this to given the content.

I honestly don't know how to describe this book. It starts with an arctic plague unleashed on the world and what follows is a series of interconnected stories about the fallout from this plague. If you like dystopias READ THIS BOOK. It goes every which way it possibly can from characters dealing with the immediate fallout from the plague to characters working in the prominent funerary industry due to the plague almost 100 years in the future to weird things the plague does to people (and animals!) to hundreds of thousands of years of space exploration looking for a new home. You would think this would be a recipe for disaster but the author does it in such an imaginative and well written way that it all comes together beautifully. It kind of reminds me of when I read the Road by Cormac McCarthy with how I felt reading it but McCarthy's prose elicited that grim hopeless feeling with his spare writing style while this is written with so much imagery and humanity that it just sings. It gave me the all the feelings McCarthy's book did when I read it. The staff at our library does a display to share their personal top 10 for the year with our patrons and this book definitely earned a spot in my top ten for 2021.

Following his short story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, Nagamatsu’s exceptional debut novel reads as if it were from the pen of a more seasoned author. It keeps to the short form, as it is something of a collage novel. Following its bravura opening—an ancient plague is reawakened from the melting permafrost of Siberia—the narrative jumps ahead a few years with each successive chapter, charting the world’s devastation as a roster of characters navigate myriad social and personal collapses. Nagamatsu masterfully folds more conceptual dystopian stories—reminiscent of George Saunders’s early 2000s short story work—into the novel’s broader climate and pandemic fiction story line, stacking his narratives and lending a sheen of surreality to even the most science-heavy moments. The result is an appealing mélange of literary and science fiction, with rich, mournful language aiding the imaginative strokes. This work reflects the best of what short fiction can accomplish, sketching memorable characters and settings with economy, but Nagamatsu manages to excel equally in the long form, subtly linking his narratives into a handsome whole. If at the end there’s no denying the bleakness, Nagamatsu importantly resists nihilism, consistently finding beauty and meaning in the darkness, even at the end of the world.

First and foremost, a beautiful work of literary speculative fiction. At first I was weary of picking something up about a pandemic when we are dealing with our own.

This book is exceedingly beautiful and I am glad to have had the chance to read it. It reminds me of so many things, like World War Z (the book) by Max Brooks in the way the story covers the evolution and spread of their particular pandemics. The style and story structure reminded me of CivilWarLand in Disrepair by George Saunders and the gorgeous short story collections of Ken Liu. I think any serious writer or reader will be pleased with this book.

Lastly, didn’t we learn anything from Jurrasic Park? Do not reanimate prehistoric life forms, whether dinosaur or bacteria or virus, thank you.

Take a imaginary mind bending trip in Sequoia Nagamatsu's science fiction debut novel "How High We Go In The Dark".

In 2030, Dr. Cliff is grieving the loss of his daughter Clara. Complicating the sadness, Clara leaves behind a young daughter named Yumi. To honor Clara and deal with his grief, Dr Cliff goes to the Batagaika Crater in Siberia. This crater is the location of Clara's death and Dr. Cliff wants to finish Clara's research. When Dr. Cliff arrives at the crater, he encounters a ancient perfectly preserved thirty-thousand year old little girl that has died of a mysterious virus. Clara's has lovingly named the little girl Annie. This archeological find brings on a plague that will change the course of mankind for many years to come. This is Dr. Cliff's chance to find a cure, but what will happen on his quest?

In some ways this book is a series of short stories involving the character's Dr. Cliff, Maksim, Yulia, Dave, Cliff, Skip, and Dennis. The author beautifully intertwines the characters lives and connects the stories.

I was privileged to read the book on Kindle while following along with the Audiobook. Both be published January 18, 2022. The audiobook is narrated by a full cast for maximum listening pleasure.

Thank you NetGalley, Harper Audio, William Morrow and Custom House for the e-book and audiobook.