In the year 2030, a team of researchers unearth a virus from a thousands-year-old body found in the melting arctic permafrost. The virus sweeps across the Earth, causing a decade-long plague that kills millions and forces humanity to contend with their feelings about grief, fear and memory. 

 

How High We Go in the Dark is told through a series of connected stories over the course of decades. Starting slow, we see the immediate effects of the Arctic Plague and society’s ways of dealing with it, while later chapters follow how future generations—and even extraterrestrials—interact with Earth and humanity. Many characters and ideas are referenced across stories (some very vaguely) and it was fun to connect the dots across time, geography and space to unveil how characters indirectly affected one another in the wake of this disaster. 

 

I should note that the author wrote this book before COVID-19, but I think its release timing could not have been more appropriate. Reading plague fiction after a pandemic is difficult, but I don’t think I would have appreciated this nearly as much if I didn’t have a real-life basis to compare it to. That said, the stories are much less about the plague itself and more about human nature. They discuss the ideas like how to say goodbye, grieving and memorializing loved ones, the impacts we have on our planet, and the impacts of personal sacrifice. 

 

Some of these stories hit harder than others. I keep thinking amount the euthanasia park, pig son, funerary skyscrapers with holograms and space expeditions where humans must memorialize Earth from light-years away. I’m not sure how I felt about the last story, which brings the novel full-circle. It felt much less grounded in reality than the others, but perhaps that’s the point—it ended with a “Scope of Possibility” we don’t often dare to imagine. 

 

I will absolutely be returning to this book again. There are far too many quotes to list and far too many feelings to share.