Murder of Crows discussion

Although I am not from Chicago specially, I am from the Midwest.

I was a little annoyed for the first hundred or so pages because there is something big that the reader doesn’t know (and neither does the main character). However, it’s all a set up to the rest of the book (for me everything clicked around page 120) and is actually quite clever.

The main subject is very thought provoking and an interesting topic of conversation even outside the story of this book.(view spoiler)[The end of the book is where it really gets trippy because of the numerous possibilities of timelines that have sprouted because of this “box.” Because of this book, I did some research into Coherent quantum, and let me tell you that is quite the rabbit hole to go down. It is still worth looking up. (hide spoiler)]

To get to more of the topic of the actual book, I enjoyed the author’s writing style and he kept the plot moving fast. You might not feel this way as you’re reading the book but when you look back on these parts you can see why they were there. I feel like all of the characters are really well developed and they even have flaws that complement what is going on in the book. I feel bad that I don't have more good things to say about this book, but I also don't have much to complain about.


What my brain can't seem to wrap around is(view spoiler)[ that when all the Jasons are in Chicago (and different timelines split off with every decision that is made) how do the timelines split? Because they are no longer in their own timeline, does the timeline they are all in split? Does this also or only split their original timeline? That would mean there’s an exponential growth of Jasons that will overpopulate regardless of where he goes. Depending on the answer to this, is there even enough timelines for each Jason to hypothetically have (including the ones that died at some point)?

How did multiple Jasons make it back to that one singular timeline? Especially since they are all thinking of their own timeline. Shouldn’t they’ve been taken back to their own? Are they thinking of a “slightly better” timeline? Is it statistics that there’s so many Jasons at that point that the hundreds of Jasons that are in that specific timeline only holds 0.01% of them, and there's other Chicagos that have a couple thousand or just three?

How does he even know he's in the right timeline? In the bar, he talks to a Jason that their timeline split while in the multiverse so everything is the same in each timeline (as much as they are aware) including what Daniela and Jason2 have done (and Jason isn’t the only person who decisions in the world, so there would be many Jasons EXACTLY like him because for example, Daniela could’ve decided to stay mad at Jason2 and BOOM another timeline). Even if he can say this is most likely his, he can't say for sure because there's probably a bunch of Jason's that their timeline also looks identical to this one with just a little bit of variation that can’t be distinguished from a handful of other timelines. (hide spoiler)]

If that blurb doesn’t tell you how much I’ve thought of this book, I don’t know what will.