When they get closer to Gruhuken, however, the expedition’s Scandinavian transport crew begins to get jittery and attempts to back out of the deal to take them to that isolated outpost. When the crew arrives in Norway and begins their northward trek by boat, Jack is speechless at the cold, desolate beauty of the Arctic. Although he’s initially put off by pretentiousness and softness of his employer-colleagues, on the way back from his interview, Jack comes across a dead body near his home – and the starkness, the hopelessness of that death is enough to change Jack’s mind about the amateur scientific expedition, and he agrees to travel and spend a long winter at Gruhuken. As war progresses, Jack has only one hope to escape enlistment – by accepting a position on a team of upper class Cambridge types on an expedition to a remote location in the Arctic called Gruhuken, for a year of scientific observation. Jack Miller is a twenty-six year old lower-middle class failed academic, barely scraping by and without a hope for the future. It seemed like the perfect time to give the book a read. I had completely forgotten that I had Dark Matter on my shelf, and then I remembered how much Ana loved the book when she read it last year. Why did I read this book: After hitting so many duds and meh reads lately, I decided that I was really in the mood for something dark and terrifying. How did I get this book: Review Copy from the Publisher (a really, really old review copy) Soon he will reach the point of no return – when the sea will freeze, making escape impossible. Soon he will see the last of the sun, as the polar night engulfs the camp in months of darkness. One by one, his companions are forced to leave. As night returns to claim the land, Jack feels a creeping unease. At last they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year. Spirits are high as the ship leaves Norway: five men and eight huskies, crossing the Barents Sea by the light of the midnight sun. So when he’s offered the chance to be the wireless operator on an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it. Twenty-eight year old Jack is poor, lonely and desperate to change his life. Clouds of war are gathering over a fogbound London.

‘What is it? What does it want? Why is it angry with me?’ January 1937.

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver