“A novel that is both grimly timely while also moving past our usual notions of time to reveal a wider view— Sequoia Nagamatsu allows his story to unspool with such a great sense of scope, freedom, and clarity, creating a stunning mosaic of experience and humanness.”

“Haunting and luminous, How High We Go In The Dark orchestrates its multitude of memorable voices into beautiful and lucid Science Fiction that resembles a fitful future memory of our present. An astonishing debut.”

“How High We Go in the Dark is not a plague novel; it is an after plague novel. Sequoia Nagamatsu nimbly bounds through time, space, and species while tackling the question, Where do we go from here? My favorite kind of speculative fiction—philosophical and hopeful; endlessly inventive, with a beating heart.”

“Gorgeous, terrifying, compassionate. With funerary skyscrapers, a generation ship painted with history, and a pyramid of souls reaching for light, How High We Go in the Dark is both powerful and original. Nagamastu elegantly dissects disaster with an eye toward empathy and curiosity. At this book’s center is a great big beautiful heart. An exceptional accomplishment that left me equal parts hope and wonder.”

“You can try to compare Sequoia Nagamatsu to George Saunders or Charlie Kaufman or David Mitchell, but his is a singular voice and this is a book so original and wondrous and reality-shredding that it defies easy summary or categorization, like a dream that feels more vivid than life. It’s brave and prescient, completely bananas and yet absolutely moving, packed with humor and heart. I loved it.”

“Like an ice core carved from the frozen depths of an ancient sea, this is a novel that captures the drama across eons, containing the glittering secrets of some future history. An astonishing vision of the end of the Anthropocene.”

“As ambitious as it is intimate, How High We Go in the Dark is both a prescient warning and a promise of human resilience in the face of any odds. Sequoia Nagamatsu masterfully connects each slice of life into one epic and unforgettable tale, spanning centuries and generations. His debut envisions a future that is at once wonderful and disquieting, dreamlike and all too possible. It reaches far beyond our stars while its heart remains rooted to Earth, and reminds us that our wellbeing depends on the wellbeing of our world.”

“With How High We Go in the Dark, Sequoia Nagamatsu has done the impossible: written a book expansive enough to tackle the enormity of our climate crisis—and then gone further, to capture our even larger capacity for creation. It is clear from this book that Nagamatsu possesses one of literature’s most vibrant and generous imaginations. You will fall in love with these characters and, in so doing, remember your love for the world. How High We Go in the Dark rejects the idea of the novel as the story of an individual and bravely takes on the collective nature both of global warming and of how we can face it.”

“Sequoia Nagamatsu’s HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK is a sprawling, epic debut that ventures from the Arctic to interstellar space, from life to what may come after it. With precision and harrowing prescience, Nagamatsu envisions the effects—both cultural and planetary—of a mysterious, devastating pandemic; but he explores, too, the astonishing commitment, resilience, and capacity for resilience that enables life—human and otherwise—to reach for survival. Sequoia Nagamatsu is a writer whose imagination is matched only by his compassion, the kind we need to light our way through the dark. ”

“How High We Go in the Dark is wondrous not just in the feats of imagination, which are so numerous that it makes me dizzy to recall them, but also in the humanity and tenderness with which Sequoia Nagamatsu helps us navigate this landscape, to find a way to survive while holding onto the things that make us human. This is a truly amazing book, one to keep close as we imagine the uncertain future.”