Dark Matter appeared on a book recommendation website I used several months ago, and has an interesting premise (quantum mechanics? yes!), so I picked it up. Despite its moderate thickness and page count, it’s a very short read; each page has about ~20 paragraphs on average, each very short (often only a single sentence). It took me about ~3 hours to finish the book, and I did so almost entirely in a single sitting.
I came across this New York Times review from the book’s Wikipedia page, and agreed with this take:
What Crouch really cannot do, although he occasionally makes token efforts, is slow down the pace enough to allow his characters and readers to take stock of their situation and ponder the meaning of it all… He has mastered the use of one-word sentences, one-sentence paragraphs and dramatic oceans of white space that allow your eyes to surf down the page.
— Andrew O’Hehir, A Countdown Thriller in Which the Hero Inhabits Many Alternate Universes
This pattern of short, simple paragraphs feels almost like the “TikTok-ification” of books; it’s as if Crouch couldn’t bother writing longer, stylistically interesting prose, or maybe it’s that the modern audience can’t be bothered to read it. Either way, I’m not here for it.