Dark Matter

Dark MatterNeil and I listened to the audiobook on a drive up to Edinburgh recently. I’d read the novel a couple of months before.

Jack Miller is down-at-heel, working at a stationery company in London. He gets the opportunity to join an expedition to the Arctic, working as a wireless operator, and he sees it as an escape from his dreary life. But the team of five is whittled down over time and as the nights get longer, Jack is soon left with only some husky dogs for company. And then he starts to realise that all is not right in this solitary outpost — there’s something else out there.

As a novel, I quite enjoyed it. I haven’t read a proper ghost story in a long time — if that terrible book I read about supposed real-life hauntings in Singapore counts. Jeremy Northam definitely did the story justice, with great accents and such expressive reading (and he was in Emma. Squee). Neil kept asking me to put the next disc on as the previous one ended.

My sister would be terrified of Dark Matter (and how her fear affects those around her is not suitable content for any website — heh). Reading the words on the page or listening to someone read you the story were both fun.

(Full disclosure: I run the official fan community for the author’s series of Stone Age novels.)