Name: Nik ✨'s review of The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
Item: The Space Between Worlds
Rating: 3
Author: Nik ✨

Micaiah Johnson

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE - An outsider who can travel between worlds discovers a secret that threatens the very fabric of the multiverse in this stunning debut, a powerful examination of identity, privilege, and belonging. "Gorgeous writing, mind-bending world-building, razor-sharp social commentary, and a main character who demands your attention--and your allegiance."--Rob Hart, author of The Warehouse NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR - Library Journal - Book Riot 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 doppelgängers 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. "Clever characters, surprise twists, plenty of action, and a plot that highlights social and racial inequities in astute prose."--Library Journal (starred review)

The Space Between Worlds

Jasper

That's twice now someone called me a miracle. And again it comes from the mouth of someone whose sibling I killed.

And maybe she'd be insecure, think she was less than me. I don't want to make Dell feel like that, don't want to make her feel the way she makes me feel.

The universe is brimming with stars and life, but there is a section of sky that is utterly dead and empty. They call it a cold spot, a supervoid, and they say it got that way because two parallel universes got too close to touching. That's us. That's me and Dell. We coexist, parallel but never touching, and if one of us goes too far, if I ever get too close, the Eridanus Void opens between us. We both withdraw and leave a cold darkness in the space where we almost touched that three suns couldn't light 

Basil

"A multiverse-hopping outsider discovers a secret that threatens her home world and her fragile place in it-a stunning sci-fi debut that's both a cross-dimensional adventure and a powerful examination of identity, privilege, and belonging. CARA IS DEAD ON THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FOUR WORLDS. The multiverse business is booming, 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 diseases, from turf wars, from vendettas they couldn't outrun. But on this earth, Cara's survived. And she's reaping the benefits, thanks to the well-heeled Wiley City scientists who ID'd her as an outlier and plucked her from the dirt. Now she's got a new job collecting offworld data, a path to citizenship, and a near-perfect Wiley City accent. Now she can pretend she's always lived in the city she grew up staring at from the outside, even if she feels like a fraud on either side of its walls. But when one of her eight remaining doppelgangers dies under mysterious circumstances, Cara is plunged into a new world with an old secret. What she discovers will connect her past and future in ways she never could have imagined-and reveal her own role in a plot that endangers not just her world, but the entire multiverse"--

The premise of the book is very good, and I enjoyed the story at its core… but it fell flat. I can tell that this was the debut novel for this author because the pacing was all over the place. There were some parts that were really engaging and intriguing and others when I contemplated dnfing. I feel like the author was trying to accomplish so much in a single novel, and I was disoriented by the world building and science at different points. I also felt overwhelmed by the multitude characters, but that comes with multiverse storytelling, so I can’t really critique that part. Overall, if this was cleaned up a little bit, it could’ve truly been exceptional because the concepts are there.

Nik ✨

The multiverse business is booming, but there's just one catch: no one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara. Of the 382 realities that have been unlocked, Cara is dead in all but eight. On this earth, however, she survived. Identified as an outlier, and a perfect candidate for multiverse travel, Cara is plucked from the wastelands and given a job and a comfortable apartment in the wealthy and walled-off Wiley City. Cara knows what it's like to feel hungry, and scared, so she's more than happy to reap the benefits of her new position. As long as she keeps her head down, she's on a sure path to citizenship and security for life. But when one of her eight remaining doppelgängers dies under mysterious circumstances, Cara is plunged into a new world with an old secret. What she discovers will connect her past and future in ways she never could have imagined - and reveal her own role in a plot that endangers not just her world, but the entire multiverse.

Eva Ströberg

I should have known not to pick YA sci-fi because it would just make me annoyed. I was appealed by the multiverse promise but that was only thing that I liked about this book.

Weird names? Check
Unclear but dominating love story where the character doesn’t really know how to decide? Check

So much trash and so little science. Nothing is explained properly. How did the main character could download the data about the new world she visits? Does every earth have this giant invisible USB port, a traveller could plug in? Obviously. 

So many things disappoint me but I never not finished a book so here we are. Finishing but grumbling

ploral

I was drawn to such a resilient MC survive despite everything and her effort to go beyond survival and past contentment to reach for happiness was moving. 

Samantha 

Robert Leubner

I have finished "The Space Between Worlds" by Micaiah Johnson. The setting is Wiley City a highly built gated community as an industrial nation and the surrounding area with Ashtown, the Wastelands and the Rurals as a developing country. The Heroine is an employed alternative world traverser from Ashtown with a limited visa. There is a conflict in this story and the heroine has to find out the threats. She isn't a muscle-packed fighter with a lot of skills. No, she is short and unsporty. She has to be cunning, and she inquires into a tangle of relationships, enmities and many possibilities and eventually acts. The heroine traverses between worlds in the multiverse. From world to world, little things are varied, thus these very little things change the characters of the doppelgangers in the worlds. The circumstances and events form the characters. 
The novel is understood as a critique of the momentary structure of industrial nations and developing nations, exploitation, migration policy and the disdain of people from below classes and remote poor countries.

karol tang

not bad i just couldnt lock in for some reason. world/plot confusion and my inability to focus fed off each other

Claire Cantlon

this book has an incredibly slow beginning but once it finally picks up, it’s great!

grace richards

3.5,, my existentialism did not enjoy this book

Cindy Lieberman

Intriguing novel about a young woman whose job is to travel to hundreds of different versions of Earth to monitor and collect information for Earth "zero." Since it's too dangerous to travel to a version of Earth where another version of you exists, the "best" travelers have already died on many other worlds... i.e. were born into poor and/or dangerous situations. So it's a story about race and class as well as the multiverse -- and how even the smallest choices we make, or those around us make, have consequences. It's a story about family relationships and the patterns that repeat themselves through time...and space.

Leonor Ribeiro 

McKayla Bohnsack

“It is only one world in infinite universes where this impossible happiness exists, but that is what makes it so valuable.”

	I wanted so much to love this book because of its premise, the sapphic romance for Pride month, and the fact that I haven't read a sci-fi book in a while. There are plenty of things I did love about this book- the world-building, the mystery of Earth 0 Cara's origin, and the sometimes philosophical writing: 

“Death can be senseless, but life never is.”

“Human beings are unknowable. You can never know a single person fully, not even yourself. Even if you think you know yourself in your safe glass castle, you don’t know yourself in the dirt. Even if you hustle and make it in the rough, you have no idea if you would thrive or die in the light of real riches, if your cleverness would outlive your desperation.”

However, I did think a lot of the world's details and history were unnecessary for the plot we got to see even though it was intriguing. There was a lot about the previous emperor and civil war, but I still could not picture what Wiley City and Ashtown looked like (especially at the border).
I also found the pacing to be a little off towards the middle with what read like a false ending. It made me put the book down for a few days to muster enough motivation to keep going (which I am glad I did because I think it picked back up again). Some parts of the writing read a little YA to me, which I didn't expect but have seen others mention. Not necessarily good or bad, but I would have preferred a more mature tone.
Some of the characters and relationships fell flat for me. I didn't really understand Cara's family's dynamic and her relationship with her sister that really only appeared when it was necessary for the plot to be pushed forward. I was hoping to see more of a relationship blossom between Cara and Dell (I am a sucker for romance plots in my books), but it didn't really progress to the happy ending I was hoping for. 
Overall it was a decent read and I did end up enjoying it, just not as much as I was hoping to.

Livia

I need a moment to absorb everything that happened and the fact that I will never get over earth 175 Nik Nik nor can I get over Cara and Dell

Ben Bastow

What a great book!! Its a proper long sapphic slow burn sci fi novel. 

If this sounds like your jam, pick it up!!!!!!!!! Its a bit confusing at first, but i really enjoyed it after it got going and started to make more sense.

Tbh i pictured the world as a mix of Cyberpunk 2077 and Borderlands 😂 but i bet thats my weird imagination

Jenna Ward

This book has incredible themes with a world that draws you in from the first page. The diversity, action, and moral dilemmas kept me on my toes and made the ending all the more satisfying. I felt seen!

Laura Wilson

Had really high hopes for this premise but it feel short. I read this a while ago and plan to give it another shot down the road.

Juliette

I loved the concept of this book, but there is so much happening, especially with all of the world traveling, that a lot gets lost. At times, the world-building got to be a little too confusing and could've been flushed out better.

Rebecca

Sunyi Dean

Gorgeous

Filed under: Books that make me cry.

It's really good. I'm glad I bought it. I hope this recommendation spurs someone else on to read it, too.

Story Eater

This book was built on a great premise that was easily ruined by preachy social commentary and a plot that had a rushed ending and weak culmination. 

Multi-dimensional travel now has a limitation: people can only do it if they are already dead in another universe. Of course, this means that only underprivileged, poor, excluded people can do this. In addition to the generalization that all of the outsiders from the places full of the non-elite from places called Ashtown and the Rurals are non-white and poor, we have the stereotypical struggle to achieve citizenship in the magical place of the City of Wiley, where outsiders who are granted special access in the form of jobs or school scholarships fall into the trap of hardly ever being able to achieve that coveted citizenship, no matter how hard they work. 

Digging through all of the not-so-subtle social, racial, and political commentary brings the reader finally to a plot that is very simple: a greedy, murderous tyrant tries to to murder his way to the ultimate power, gets foiled by someone who has no perceived power, and everyone lives in a modified happily ever after. 

I didn’t completely hate it, but I don’t really like it. It gets 2 stars for the interesting meta-narrative.

Candyce Kirk

Heather Heaton

I feel as though I dont see much in the way of standalone sci-fi! Adding this one to my very small list. check out this sci-fi reading vlog for more of my thoughts on this one and a couple more
https://youtu.be/ttV1q1Z9yBc

Michelle Xu

Rating: 3.25 stars

I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about this novel and I think a lot of that stemmed from it not being what I expected. I was leaning towards a 3 star, but bumped it up a bit because I think it's unfair to rate the book based on something it wasn't meant to be.

Summary: In this world, technology allows people like Cara, our main character, to travel between alternate universes (called Traversers). Only, traverers can only go to universes where they have died. As Caras from other worlds start dying, the worlds increase for Cara. A routine jump goes wrong and Cara needs to figure out why that happened. 

That was the best I could do without spoilers.

First, a few things I really loved about this book:

The novel was really beautifully written. It was really impressive for a debut novel. It was descriptive and lyrical without being too flowery. The concept was also really creative and provided a unique take on what traveling between multiverses can look like. The author did a great job at mixing science fiction with some mystery and thriller elements. I also thought it was really creative how she folded in issues such as race, socioeconomic status, and religion into the world she created. It paralleled those issues in real life such that the interactions between the rich Wileyites and poor Ashtowners made sense. Moreover, the explored themes were also so relatable to the real world, such as its emphasis on the importance of family (or found families), the double-edged sword of blind ambition, morality, and capitalism. 

The novel was also incredibly diverse without being specifically about diversity. There were so many casual references to sexuality, gender, and race that so neatly and genuinely incorporated into the story.

Another impressive thing that the author did was how she kept the story moving throughout the story. I felt like she had dropped pieces and hints of the bigger picture here and there throughout that kept me reading. Starting from even just a two chapters in, we learn a big twist about Cara's past. Then as you keep reading, every few chapters reveal a new twist or just something I didn't really see coming. The reveals were done really well and each time I would be shocked until it all came together in the end. 

So despite all my gushing for what the book did great, I still had such a hard time staying interested in the story. Despite those twists and reveals, the areas in between left me a bit frustrated. One of the biggest issues for me again was the book being different from what I expected: From the synopsis given on the back of the book/on Goodreads, it sounds like it is going to be a multiverse-traveling adventure. I thought we would see more of other worlds, their differences, and how Cara interacted with them. Instead, there was a lot more telling rather than showing. We would be told Cara is going on a jump to another world, then the next chapter or paragraph would start with her back on her world and telling us that the jump had happened. I guess I didn't realize that the story was not so much about adventures of traveling across different worlds, but rather we only see her traversing in detail to one world that becomes relevant to the plot of the story. 

I also felt that while Cara herself was really well developed, all her relationships were not. All the other characters were not given enough time and just weren't fully fleshed out. For example, I always always always love a good sister relationship in novels. And while I still believed in and rooted for Esther and Cara's sister-relationship, I would have liked to see more of their relationship so that the impact Cara's travel to world 175 and such would have had a bigger impact. The same honestly goes for her entire family. I felt like the differences between her world and world 175 later in the story just could have been more impactful had we seen more of her family in her world. The only character that the 175 Earth successfully contrasted for me was Nik Nik. In addition to her relationship with her sister, I also felt like Cara's romantic relationship with Dell was just so underdeveloped that I honestly could not see the ending actually happening. I wish that their relationship was developed earlier on. I don't need straight-up romance in my books by any means but the sapphic relationship was hyped up and yet the characters don't even communicate (like at all) until the last few chapters of the book. I just couldn't even tell what their relationship was based on.

Another issue I had with the pacing of the novel is how the author would actually interrupt pivotal action scenes within her novel with detours of something else. For example, there was one scene where on Earth 175, Cara is traveling across the desert towards a port. It seems like it could be high stakes, the sun is unbearably hot, she might be caught, and there may be other runners or people around who can hurt her. Yet in the middle of that, we cut to Cara thinking about Dell and how much the sun's brightness reminds her of Dell... for 3 pages. This ties in with how the book is much more telling than showing. We don't see the action scenes, and we don't see the emotional, character-developing scenes. Instead we get action interrupted by Cara's thoughts and narration to TELL us about her past and feelings towards other characters. All that together made this book a slog to get through despite interesting concepts and unexpected twists.

Lastly, the ending just felt way too abrupt to me. Everything wrapped up in like 25 pages. I just could not believe that (view spoiler)[ Earth 0 Nik Nik would so easily believe Cara and suddenly decide to go after Adam Bosch who he had no idea existed or was related to him until that point. I also felt like everything was just a bit too convenient at the end. Bosch seems like the type of guy who has planned everything meticulously since the beginning and yet Cara still got away with so many convenient things in the end, ranging from sneaking onto Floor 88, to sneaking into his house, to poisoning him. It was just such a fast ending that it didn't give the reader time to sit with the outcome of Bosch's poisoning. It was also too convenient to Cara how Bosch reacted to her stunt.  (hide spoiler)] We go from highly intense action for 20 pages of the climax to a sudden epilogue that tried to be open-ended but seemed to suggest that everything worked out perfectly in the end. 

I think that the author has so much potential for her sophomore novel and I will still be interested in picking up what she writes in the future. I just hope she can incorporate a bit more showing rather than telling in her writing, as well as pacing out the conclusion of her stories a bit better. 
----
Original Review:
Somewhere between a 3 and 3.5 stars.

Review to come... I need to gather my thoughts bc it took me 2 months to read this (not the book's fault, I just got so busy). 

Preliminary thoughts: Not quite what I expected, beautiful writing, too abrupt ending.

Reasons Cara has died:- The emperor of the wasteland wanted to make an example of her mother and started with her- One of her mother's boyfriends wanted to cover up what he did to her- She was born addicted and her lungs didn't develop- She was left alone, and a stranger came along- The runners came for a neighbour and she was in the way- The runners came for her mother and she was in the way- The runners came for her boyfriend and she was in the way- The runners came for no one, serving nothing but chaos and fear, and she was what they found- Her mother left her alone in a shed while she worked or got high and she fell asleep alone and hungry and foreverReasons Cara has lived:- She doesn't know but there are 8.The multiverse business is booming, but there's just one catch: no one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara. Of the 382 realities that have been unlocked, Cara is dead in all but eightBut on this earth, she survived. Born in the wastelands where if a basic lack of resources didn't kill you, violence would, Cara is happy to reap the benefits of a job and a safe place in the city to call home.But when one of her eight remaining doppelgangers dies under mysterious circumstances, Cara is plunged into a new world with an old secret. What she discovers will connect her past and future in ways she never could have imagined - and reveal her own role in a plot that endangers not just her world, but the entire multiverse.

Nikki K

tw: abuse, murder, guns, mention of suicide

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