First of all: Please know that this is really NOT a pandemic novel, despite the existence of a plague in it. So if that's a concern of yours when picking up this book, let it be assuaged!

This novel has some very imaginative images, and I liked the hopeful arc of it. I also liked many of the characters, particularly Cliff, Skip, and Dennis. And I liked the interlacing way that the characters appeared or were mentioned in each other's stories.

Overall, the novel gave me <i>very</i> strong Station Eleven vibes, both in its pros and its cons. Both novels have heavy-handed themes and a vast cast of characters, and are slightly saccharine in a pleasant, surface-level kind of way.

Because this is really, in many ways, a collection of short stories, plot is not at all an engine of this book, which I think meant it had a harder time sustaining my attention. But it's a sweet book with some neat ideas, and it's fun to track the ways the characters connect with each other, so I think it's a worthwhile read overall.

I received an e-ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

In this novel of loosely connected characters, an ancient plague discovered in Siberia threatens to wipeout humans.

I came into How High We Go in the Dark with two very distinct biases against it.

The very American bias that anything free can’t be -that- good (I received a preview copy in exchange for my review), and the indignation that someone thought this thing was in any way comparable to Cloud Atlas. However it may have landed for you, Cloud Atlas is incredibly well-constructed and there’s just no way Sequoia Nagamatsu lands that sort of achievement in a debut.

And I was right.

Nagamatsu isn’t writing a version of Cloud Atlas. He’s writing something much more personal and in the end something that was a lot more affecting. Where Cloud Atlas is operatic, How High We Go in the Dark is for all its literal cosmic scope, much much smaller. Small enough to place oneself very clearly in some part of this world he’s created. Woven so intricately that each world changing ripple feels earned.


You probably know, but you should be warned this is a plague book. On beginning I didn’t particularly relish being faced with a plague book. I like a tad more escape than that in my speculative fiction. But the dread of impending Crichton-style plague quickly gives way to the personal in every moment. The Cloud Atlas references come because structurally this book is a net of short stories, each building in some larger or smaller way off the previous. By the end of the book the threads of multiple past stories are shot through each new story, some more artfully than others, but always rewarding.

Maybe it’s silly to talk about a plague narrative being about love and loss, because of course it is, and maybe it’s underselling Nagamatsu to not spend more time talking up his intricately built world expanding in scope with each shift as the world shatters and heals – the scars layering over each other.

But in the end this is a book about wondering if you have the courage to take needed next steps while nursing a beer on a fire escape, not about funerary credits. It’s about the quiet camaraderie in limning the future with art depicting a very personal past – not the starship that serves as the the canvas. It’s about giving a miracle of science a taste of real living and exploring what real living means, not explaining every twist of biology that might make such a miracle “real”.

And family. In every possible permutation.

If you prefer your science fiction to be plot heavy space opera, this won’t be for you.

If you need to like each of your protagonists, this won’t be for you.

If you like nuanced, character driven situations that nest inside one another and linger long after reading?

This is for you.

3.5 stars

This was an ambitious and unique sci fi story, and I liked much of it. It's told through a series of interconnected stories spanning thousands of years about a not so distant future world that is hit by a deadly pandemic.

If I had read this book a few years ago, I would have responded differently to it. Given the current pandemic we are living through, my thoughts and fears about pandemics are definitely different now. Covid has given us a glimpse of how quickly a pandemic can change the world, so reading fictional stories about what horrors a pandemic can bring feels far more scary and possible than it would have a few years ago.

Some of the stories in this book worked better for me than others. The story that really jumped out to me was about a guy who worked at a euthanasia amusement park for kids. The pandemic, at first, only affected kids and there was no cure. So this amusement park was created to give kids a chance to have a fun final day, before putting the kids on a ride that would gently kill them. It was so dark and grim and tough to read. What kind of desperation would lead to a place like this being created?
But after finishing the book, it is also the chapter that I remember and think about the most.

If every chapter would have affected me like that one, this easily would have been a five star read. But I didn't connect as much with every story, so it was a little hit and miss for me. Still this is a brave, dark, and thought-provoking book that serves as both a grim reminder about the importance of taking care of the earth while also providing a tiny bit of hope at the resilience of the human spirit.

Thanks to Netgalley and William Morrow for sending me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review. This book will be available on January 18, 2022.

I am admittedly not the best Sci-Fi reader and I loved this one. It you loved Station Eleven, The Dreamers, Project Hai Mary you're bound to love How High We Go In The Dark. The stories are intertwined in a weird but wonderful way. I loved how piece by piece the story unfolded and you learned a lot more about the world and what was happening. This takes place in a pandemic world while not COVID, be warned there's some triggers about living in through a pandemic.

I don't think I've ever read a book quite like this one. Although it can be described as a finely woven story about human society in the aftermath of a devastation pandemic, it feels incredibly fresh and original. The story unfolds over chapters each zooming in on a distinct character who is intricately linked to the others against a human tapestry that spans centuries, and as we slowly discover and experience this strange world, we're also given some pensive and deeply meditative reflections on our own. Although it can be a difficult story to read since it deals with some bleak and depressing visions of possible futures, there is so much beauty in the writing. I can't wait to see what Sequoia Nagamatsu writes next.

This book was surprising at every turn. Even when a premise seemed at first blush to be a bit ridiculous, the author carried it off through an incredible commitment to the characters and their emotions. There were of course some stories I enjoyed more than others throughout the interconnected narrative, but almost all of them hit me in the feelings. I have to admit that I didn't love the "twist" at the end, but I appreciated the way it interwove throughout the narrative.

3.5/5 stars

How High We Go in the Dark is a haunting, devastating, and beautiful collection of short stories that chart the course of a vicious and society-changing pandemic. Drawing from elements of science fiction, dystopian fiction, and climate fiction, Sequoia Nagamatsu rarely loses sight of the human element that unites all these tales together in grief, resilience, acceptance, and courage in the face of something unimaginable. There are some excellent pieces of speculative fiction here, but this collection does not pull punches and gets very heavy at times, so if you aren't in the mood to get very sad or emotional, put this aside until you feel up to it.

This is also not going to be for everyone, as some of the stories do tend to go far out on the edges of science fiction and might throw some people off, but I very much enjoyed many of the stories found here.

Even if you don't think you're ready for a novel set during a pandemic, do not miss out on How High We Go in the Dark. Showing brief glimpses into the lives of various loosely connected characters across hundreds of years, the novel beautifully explores all the different ways people search for hope in the face of impossible hardship and loss. It's a deeply moving story about resilience, connection, and empathy first and foremost, but the creative sci-fi elements make it unlike anything else you've read before.

This book is wonderfully written. The story is timely, yet I believe the book will not become dated. Namagatsu writes well-developed characters (a thing not always seen in speculative fiction), despite there being a rather large cast. (full review to follow)

How High We Go in the Dark begins with the discovery of a preserved body that is thousands of years old in a cave in Siberia in 2030. The body is holding a virus that eventually spreads and becomes the Arctic plague. The book follows the world as the Arctic plague spreads rapidly, the effects of climate change on Earth, and eventually the aftermath of the plague. Each chapter follows a different character as time progresses and the world changes. As you read, you begin to see how these different characters are connected.

This book was very dark at times. There is a lot of death and grief, which is to be expected during a global pandemic. While it was dark, the shining light of the book to me was the continued human connection and hope. I really enjoyed that each chapter followed a different character. You don’t always get a conclusion to their story, but sometimes they show up in later chapters. I like that the author was able to paint a picture of the dramatic effects of human-caused climate change, such as rising sea levels and disappearing cities. I recommend this if you enjoy science fiction, dystopian fiction, and climate fiction.

*Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for this eARC! This book will be available on January 18, 2022 and is available now for pre-order.

A euthanasia theme park, a talking pig named Snortorious P.I.G., and a funerary hotel. There is no shortage of dark humor to be found among the increasingly macabre story beats of How High We Go in the Dark. Even so, some sections are just incredibly devastating to read and that’s a credit to Nagamatsu’s excellent writing.

Not every vignette worked for me, but the ones that did were awfully affecting. My investment in each small story waned as we moved farther away from the “present day,” but the ever-evolving interconnectedness of the narratives was intriguing to track throughout.

If you’re looking for an escape from our current pandemic-ridden world, this is not the right book for you. If you can put that aside, there’s some really effective storytelling at work here.

DNF'd at 25%. I enjoyed the beginning but lost interest in the story. This book was not for me.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the digital ARC.

Wow. This book was simply amazing. It felt like a novel in stories to me, with each chapter featuring different characters and settings. Although the chapters are all intricately related, I also think some of these chapters could stand on their own as some of my favorite short stories of the entire year. ("City of Laughter" and "Pig Son" immediately come to mind.) I mean, a story about a pig made me cry, so if that's not a ringing endorsement, I don't know what is.

P.S. - If you are wary of reading this book because you've seen it described as "pandemic fiction," please don't let that stop you. I am personally not interested in reading any books featuring Covid-19 right now, but this book is not that. First, the author wrote this book before Covid-19. Second, the virus in this book is vastly different from the novel coronavirus. And third, most importantly, this book is not really about a plague -- it's about people.

If you can stand to read about a pandemic even worse than the one we're in, this is a most powerful science fiction novel. In a fairly near future, the melting of the arctic icecap discloses the body of an ancient young girl and the virus that killed her millennia ago. The interlocking stories that follow describe the horrors for the next hundreds of years from now, when that virus is unleashed on the world. The nightmarish quality of the mass deaths, the futility of science for centuries, and the impossible decisions that survivors are confronted with, make for difficult reading. Even reading this book fairly quickly, I found it hard to remember how characters were connected across generations, but those connections are what give the story strength and meaning, and what make it memorable.

What do I think about How High We Go in the Dark? Should you read Sequoia Nagamatsu’s debut novel?

It was mesmerizing. Mind-blowing. Devastating.

I am haunted by images from the novel. An altruistic swine. A mass of lost people cooperating to, hopefully, save an infant. Burn out among those working with the dying and the deceased.

Reading such an original novel, I feel spurred into alertness, dragged from my somnambulant comfort zone. This what I needed to get my mind reeving, get out of my slump.

I requested the galley for the references to Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven. And because on Twitter author Matt Bell (Appleseed) remarked on reading the galley and I followed Nagamatsu on Twitter. I was intrigued.

Yes, it is nightmarish stuff, about a plague and climate change and how society copes with mass deaths, capitalism responding by creating theme parks for dying children and new ways to memorialize the deceased. It is disturbing because although speculative fiction, we see its roots in reality.

It is also a deeply human and humane book with characters demonstrating love and courage. And hope.

What more can a reader ask from a novel? This one hits all the bases.

I received a free egalley from Custom House through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

*3.5
It's a sad, emotional anthology of stories interconnected with each other. The interweaving of plotlines and characters was masterfully done. It begins with the discovery of a virus and each story is a display of how the world reacts to it, what people do and/or create in response. There were some stories that gripped me more than others but they all had tragedy woven in there, they were also quite chilling because of how close some were to becoming reality. The revisits and glimpses we see in the lives of characters from other stories was enjoyable since most stories were left open-ended. I loved the prose and the atmosphere and how speculative it is to the truest sense of the word; the concepts were brilliant.

One of the most ambitious books I've read in a while. It's about as bleak as pandemic lit gets, but if you love interconnected short stories that punch you in the gut, this book's for you!

In the not so distant future, humanity’s disregard of the planet we call home has created not only a climatological disaster but also a biological one. Climate change has caused Polar ice caps to melt, releasing a long buried virus that rips through the world, leaving many dead. At this point, you might be thinking, no thanks, sounds too much like our own reality, not fiction. Yes, there are some similarities in this book to current events, but the interwoven stories of the people affected by these tragedies are transcendent. This book, instead of instilling fear and despair, lifts readers up in a way it’s almost impossible to put into words. Nagamatsu has created a book that will be a balm to all who despair about our future as a species and I believe this will be hailed as one of the greatest books of this generation. without a doubt, the most remarkable book I have ever read

Sequoia Nagamatsu’s “How High We Go in the Dark” is a novel made of inter-locking short pieces set in a distant dystopian future where both a climate and a viral epidemic have altered life on earth in strange and disturbing ways. And yet for all that, there are layers of hope and humanity threaded through the narrative that bring you closer to the people inhabiting the planet, as their lives intersect in unexpected ways. I found I could only read 1-2 chapters a night, because there was so much to process in each story, and the images keep me thinking long into the night.

If you’re a reader who has been ravaged by the current pandemic, this might not be the book for you. But if you’re fascinated by what the present situation may foreshadow about how our society will move forward, about what it means to be human, about how families and friendships and work may morph into different permutations in the future, this heart-wrenching and compassionate work of art will move you in expected ways and linger long after you turn the last page.