Aimee Gunther reviewed The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson (The Space Between Worlds, #1)
This protagonist was not one to be trifled with #Bookstodon
5 stars
A great exploration of many concepts by a protagonist who stays true to herself
Paperback, 336 pages
Published May 31, 2021 by Del Rey.
Multiverse travel is finally possible, but there's just one catch: No one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying--from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn't outrun. Cara's life has been cut short on 372 worlds in total.
On this dystopian Earth, however, Cara has survived. Identified as an outlier and therefore a perfect candidate for multiverse travel, Cara is plucked from the dirt of the wastelands. Now what once made her marginalized has finally become an unexpected source of power. She has a nice apartment on the lower levels of the wealthy and walled-off Wiley City. She works--and shamelessly flirts--with her enticing yet aloof handler, Dell, as the two women collect off-world data for the Eldridge Institute. She even occasionally leaves the city to visit her family in the wastes, though she struggles to …
Multiverse travel is finally possible, but there's just one catch: No one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying--from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn't outrun. Cara's life has been cut short on 372 worlds in total.
On this dystopian Earth, however, Cara has survived. Identified as an outlier and therefore a perfect candidate for multiverse travel, Cara is plucked from the dirt of the wastelands. Now what once made her marginalized has finally become an unexpected source of power. She has a nice apartment on the lower levels of the wealthy and walled-off Wiley City. She works--and shamelessly flirts--with her enticing yet aloof handler, Dell, as the two women collect off-world data for the Eldridge Institute. She even occasionally leaves the city to visit her family in the wastes, though she struggles to feel at home in either place. So long as she can keep her head down and avoid trouble, Cara is on a sure path to citizenship and security.
But trouble finds Cara when one of her eight remaining doppelgangers dies under mysterious circumstances, plunging her into a new world with an old secret. What she discovers will connect her past and her future in ways she could have never imagined--and reveal her own role in a plot that endangers not just her world but the entire multiverse.
A great exploration of many concepts by a protagonist who stays true to herself
This is a character driven story in a dystopian, desert inspired multiverse. I liked the characters and it holds together well for the most part. For a multiverse premise the world(s) felt too small to me, which serves the story but maybe diminishes the mood. I really like the mysterious liminal space as a character in itself, which tempts me to continue the series.
Despite my edition's somewhat misleading tagline (380 realities; 8 chances to survive) this is not an interactive chooseable-path book, but an ordinary novel. But: it is a good novel! I'm most stricken by the strong voice and the tone of it: dark and gritty, with distinct Mad Max vibes: pretty much a (gritty) action film in book form. (This is not to say that it'd work better in videographic form; it does use the medium of prose effectively.) The protagonist is relatable in an irreverent sort of way - I'm somewhat reminded of Murderbot - and, again, has a good, strong voice.
And for all that dark-and-grittiness, it is in some ways surprisingly gentle and hopeful, which a) seems like quite a feat to pull off and b) makes it a comforting read inside a not-very-comforting (sub)genre, which is, well, neat.
A thing I especially liked was the way it …
Despite my edition's somewhat misleading tagline (380 realities; 8 chances to survive) this is not an interactive chooseable-path book, but an ordinary novel. But: it is a good novel! I'm most stricken by the strong voice and the tone of it: dark and gritty, with distinct Mad Max vibes: pretty much a (gritty) action film in book form. (This is not to say that it'd work better in videographic form; it does use the medium of prose effectively.) The protagonist is relatable in an irreverent sort of way - I'm somewhat reminded of Murderbot - and, again, has a good, strong voice.
And for all that dark-and-grittiness, it is in some ways surprisingly gentle and hopeful, which a) seems like quite a feat to pull off and b) makes it a comforting read inside a not-very-comforting (sub)genre, which is, well, neat.
A thing I especially liked was the way it dealt with sex work: a nuanced and wholesome depiction. A thing I was less sure of was the way it dealt with religion. There's not a whole lot of detail gone into as far as religious worldbuilding goes, but the impression I got was that in this future, all religion is kind of thrown onto the same pile - not even in a "morphed together into one big superreligion" sort of way, but in a "people of this subculture are super pious but the details of that are up to them" sort of way. Which is an interesting approach, for sure, but not one I find particularly convincing.
Selling points: astute social commentary in a fun actiony wrapper; gritty setting and cynical protagonist but with a hopeful core; queer rep, including a bi/pan narrator
Warnings: domestic violence, abusive power dynamic in the context of employment, class disparities + classism (by characters, not the narrative).
I am so mad at myself for putting this book off for as long as I did. I actually checked it out from the library TWICE and didn't get around to reading it either time. I picked it up during this slow work week to read at work since no one else is working, and I was absolutely gripped. Despite some questionable structural decisions I enjoyed this the whole way through.
We are following Cara, a woman living in the fictional, ultra prosperous Wiley City, one of the many walled fortresses surrounded by desolate wastelands which are populated only by the impoverished slums existing outside the city. Cara is originally from Ashtown, one of these slums, but due to extremely lucky circumstances, finds herself as a temporary resident of Wiley city working for the Eldridge Institute, a massively influential mega corporation founded by Adam Bosch which has discovered the secrets …
I am so mad at myself for putting this book off for as long as I did. I actually checked it out from the library TWICE and didn't get around to reading it either time. I picked it up during this slow work week to read at work since no one else is working, and I was absolutely gripped. Despite some questionable structural decisions I enjoyed this the whole way through.
We are following Cara, a woman living in the fictional, ultra prosperous Wiley City, one of the many walled fortresses surrounded by desolate wastelands which are populated only by the impoverished slums existing outside the city. Cara is originally from Ashtown, one of these slums, but due to extremely lucky circumstances, finds herself as a temporary resident of Wiley city working for the Eldridge Institute, a massively influential mega corporation founded by Adam Bosch which has discovered the secrets of the multiverse, and the secret to traveling to parallel worlds. Over 300 worlds similar enough to the original "Earth Zero" were identified as being traversible, but there's a catch. One can only travel to a world where they are dead. Because of this, the wealthy and privileged residents of Wiley City are generally not suitable candidates for traversal because their parallel selves likely have a similar upbringing and would never have died. This requires the Eldridge Institute to recruit individuals from extreme life circumstances that are likely to have died in other parallel worlds, like Cara who grew up amidst extreme gang violence, addiction, and devastating environmental conditions. In fact, she is dead in almost all parallel worlds, making her an ideal traverser. In this story, we dive into some of Cara's missions on these other worlds as we learn about her complicated relationship with her work counterpart Dell, a woman Cara is clearly in love with, and her mentor Jean, a former traverser himself. We also learn of Cara's home life, her existing family, and the vicious life circumstances that she's not quite escaped, and the life the failed to escape on so many other worlds. But after a botched jump to another world and being embroiled in gang drama she managed to escape in her own world, Cara gets thrown into a vast conspiracy that threatens her position an the Eldridge Institute and shakes her sense of identity as someone who is truly between two worlds.
The back of the book blurb does not do this story justice, it is chock full of dramatic action, deeply complex character arcs, conspiracy, and thrilling twists. And there's even a sapphic, slow burn love story in here too. While long, the book did a good job of pacing the story so it didn't feel like it dragged on too much with a loose three act story. With that being said, I did find the second act to be most compelling, and it was difficult to leave that arc of the story. There was so much information revealed at the end of the second act, it did feel at times like the story was being artificially extended just to wrap up an over arching narrative. In fact, it almost felt as if the author realized half way through the book that they wouldn't be getting a book deal for a sequel, so they rushed to wrap everything up nicely. But that's not to say that the final act wasn't good, I truly did love this through the end. This story also had a LOT to say about class which I think was very well done, and had something to say about race, which I would have liked to be explored a bit more than it was.
It's hard to identify any one thing that this book did best, it was very strong throughout. The characters were all fantastic, each compelling in their own way. But what was particularly impressive was the author's ability to write characters across parallel worlds different enough based on their life circumstance, but similar enough to remind you that they are in fact the same person. I found it extremely well done. The complex world building was also expertly integrated into the narrative with minimal blocks of exposition. There is a particular funeral scene that very nearly brought me to tears with how much love and gentleness in exuded despite it being a completely fictionalized ceremony within a fictionalized culture.
There's so much here that any fan of science fiction will find to love. If you enjoy Blake Crouch (particularly Dark Matter) or Jeff VanderMeer, you'll likely enjoy this. And this is a specific comparison I wanted to make because I couldn't help thinking of it the whole time, but if you liked This Is How You Lose The Time War but you wish it were a bit more narratively comprehensible with a more straightforward story, this is exactly the book for you.
Great characters and story, pacing sometimes felt a bit strange and the world felt small, but still a very enjoyable book with beautiful writing.
I had wanted something to read where I did not feel obligated or compelled to take notes, but then there were so many phrases buttressing the plot worth noting down, that I quickly ran out of bookmarks — even despite abandoning a majority of Johnson’s sharpest constructions to the depths of pages read. So, by a third in, I guessed that regardless of how I was to find this novel in any other respects, The space between worlds was at least a four star piece for revisitability. The word-to-word texture remained more prosaic than I fully take to in fiction, but there is much to appreciate in what Johnson has built, and how.
Dimensional travel is possible, but only if your doppelganger is dead. The MC travels to a world where her double was recently murdered, and the plot gets going in earnest from there. I was pleasantly surprised by how deliberate the pacing is, it doesn't rush to get us to that very important journey. Instead we linger in the setup, getting to know the hub world and at least one other before she goes to the plot-important one for the first time.
The MC is mostly a reliable narrator, but when she travels she can be very wrong about what’s happening in a particular world. This is used to its full advantage, creating subversion and surprise as she discovers mistakes in her assumptions and the new possibilities opened by those gaps. The plot which I thought would take the whole book to tell turned out to just be the first half …
The first section of this book was hard going because it seemed to be hitting the allegory bat a bit too hard, but it was worth slogging through because once the basic premise was set up Johnson went all kinds of unexpected places with it and the story really took off.
This is a novel of alternates worlds set on post-apocalypse Earth. On Earth Zero, as he calls it, an inventor-entrepreneur safely ensconced in a gated city shielded from the harsh conditions of its planet has found a way to reach alternate versions of the planet. Crossing over is risky, so the task devolves to the expendable: the citizens of the wasteland ruled by warlords outside the city gates. Like Cara.
I’m not sure anyone could care enough for Cara, or her tech megalomaniac boss with a dark past, to carry a novel, were it not for a simple fact: This is not a novel of alternates worlds set on post-apocalypse Earth.
What Micaiah Johnson has created instead is something that takes the form and background of its genres and uses them for a meditation on inequality, violence – carried out on others and self-inflicted –, and all forms of exploitation, …
This is a novel of alternates worlds set on post-apocalypse Earth. On Earth Zero, as he calls it, an inventor-entrepreneur safely ensconced in a gated city shielded from the harsh conditions of its planet has found a way to reach alternate versions of the planet. Crossing over is risky, so the task devolves to the expendable: the citizens of the wasteland ruled by warlords outside the city gates. Like Cara.
I’m not sure anyone could care enough for Cara, or her tech megalomaniac boss with a dark past, to carry a novel, were it not for a simple fact: This is not a novel of alternates worlds set on post-apocalypse Earth.
What Micaiah Johnson has created instead is something that takes the form and background of its genres and uses them for a meditation on inequality, violence – carried out on others and self-inflicted –, and all forms of exploitation, all couched into a simple, slow burn thriller. And as if this were not a small miracle alone, Johnson’s writing – wry, personal, sharp and human – will get you into the head of her protagonist in a way only the best can. This is more Red Harvest in speculative 21st century costume than anything you’d want to call “sci-fi”, and I for one can’t wait to read what she writes next.
At first i wasn’t convinced, I felt it was a bit confusing. Then everything got in line and the big reveals are surprising. Good character-driven story.
Raw, mystery, missed connections.. Slum & urbane, a spectrum of casual, mass, intentional, personal violence. Brought very sharp by a not-overused multiverse premise. Like a Mad Max version of Butler's Kindred? Good.