TW: domestic abuse, rape, murder, graphic violence

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read an eARC of The Space Between Worlds.

I’ve had this book sitting on my shelf for ages but I kept putting off reading it because I’d just convinced myself it wasn’t going to be good; boy was I wrong. I was honestly gripped with this story from the start and it looks like this is a debut novel which makes it even more impressive.

I love the world building of this book; it feels simple yet well established. I always found it easy to follow, even in the different worlds, and I found the concept of world travelling fascinating and this was what really hooked me into the book. I feel like this was dealt with well; the limitations of the travelling were well explored and also the impact on those that travelled. I found the premise unique and intriguing and it definitely kept me gripped.

The characters were all built well too imo; I liked Cara but I also liked the wider characters - in all the worlds that existed. They all felt unique from one other but also close enough that you knew they were the same. I think Cara developed well as the book went on. There is some real slow burn romance between Cara and another female character; you don’t get to see it fully developed but I’d say it’s the main romance of the book.

The only reason I’ve given this four stars and not five is because I felt at times the pacing was a bit slow; we spend a long time building up to the final chapters and then they were over quite quickly so I think it could have been paced a bit better. The ending also felt anti climatic and I was definitely left wanting more. This definitely appears to be a stand alone but I’d be intriguing to read more from this world.

This is one of those books that's brilliant, but to the point that I feel like I need to re-read the book to full appreciate how clever it is.

It's an incredibly high concept book, with the multiple universes that Cara can access. I was initially surprised at how little time is actually spent in other realities, but instead the story explores the consequences of such a strict constraint on who can access other worlds. There's a dystopian thriller element sitting alongside the sci-fi.<

The book is set in a very dystopian world. It's never outright stated, but the world has a severe UV problem, and those with the money live in a protected city made of every-climbing glass towers. Those without live in a settlement beyond that's split in two. It's a really small scale world, even with the alternate universes, but this allows the book the scope to develop the complex relationships between the three.<

I was a bit confused by the initial marketing as to whether this book was adult or YA, but after reading it, it is most certainly not YA. It deals with some very heavy themes and explores abusive relationships and their marks in blunter, bleaker way than YA would. Plus the characters are a lot greyer than YA. I think it is probably a case of the conversation around this book falling into the "it's written by a woman, therefore it must be YA."

The information balance is superbly done. From the first major reveal that flips the book in its head to the very last, they all feel so well set up that they make sense, and yet force you to reconsider everything that's come before. It's such a hard balance to strike, but Micaiah Johnson makes it look easy.

At the same time, they're unexpected. Given how much I read, I can usually call a lot of twists because there are lots of commonly used ideas that rear their heads again and again. While the basic ideas the twists were built on are pretty run-of-the-mill, they were presented with a new and confident flair that made the whole book feel so fresh and inventive.

I will be looking out for whatever Micaiah Johnson writes next!

I've had some stellar books to review this year but The Space Between Worlds is probably my favourite so far!

A sci-fi set in a world where parallel universes not only exist but it is possible to travel between them. The only thing is, if you exist in the world you are travelling to you won't survive the trip. Cara is one of the "lucky" ones, in most of the other worlds, she is already dead.

This is proper sci-fi with a social conscience that drives the story. This is a world of haves and have-nots, of powerful and rich people that set rules that benefit only themselves.

It's also an exciting and fast-paced read with plenty of plot-twists that should keep happy anyone that likes a good action / thriller story.

It has strong world-building and a cast of well-realised secondary characters. Esther, Cara's stepsister at first seems kind and quiet and very religious but is probably one of the strongest characters in the book. Dell, Cara's sort of handler at work, is another one that almost flies under the radar until you realise what a complex character she has become.

One of the rare few that absolutely lives up to the description on the back, I loved this and I recommend it to anyone that enjoys sci-fi with strong characterisation and an exciting story.

This book is about Cara who is a Traverser. Her job is to travel between different versions of earth for research, she is from the poverty stricken part of this world but has this job as you can only travel to worlds where you are already dead.

This book covers a lot of topics like class separation, poverty and how people in lower classes are more likely to be people of colour. I feel like it covers important topics while also creating an incredible story.

The writing of this book was brilliant, I was engaged from beginning to end and the plot was consistently intriguing. Going into this book I was worried I would get confused between the different worlds but the writing of it was fantastic and clear and easy to understand.

The characters in this book were incredibly written, when Cara visited different worlds Johnson really showed how different choices effected them as a person. All of the characters were well developed and I felt like I understood so many of them even the more minor characters, I think the different worlds really helped display this characterisation as they were described more in depth.

This was a fantastic book I would recommend to anyone who loves dystopian and sci-fi novels. I’d also say this book would be a great start for someone who wants to get into sci-fi as it’s not as hard as some sci-fi books to read

This book wasn’t for me . I found the plot hard to follow and stay engaged with.

It’s an interesting idea and normally I love books with different timelines / parallel worlds . Unfortunately this book just didn’t capture my attention.

Many thanks for the review opportunity

Thank you to Netgalley, Micaiah Johnson and Hodder & Stoughton for my arc of The Space Between Worlds in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: Multiverse travel is finally possible, but there's a catch, you can't travel to a world where your counterpart is still alive. Cara is a traverser, employed to travel to these other worlds and collect data from them that helps predict disasters, disease and changes of power on her own world. Cara is exceptionally good at her job because her other selves are exceptionally good at dying which means that she can travel to more worlds than most people. Her job means she's been able to leave behind the wastelands where she was born and move into a nice apartment in Wiley City, soon she'll have been there long enough to class as a citizen and that's when she knows she'll have got it made. But when Cara is unsuspectingly plunged into a world where one of her counterparts has died under mysterious circumstances she becomes embroiled in a web of deceit and lies, plots and old secrets.

I have so many mixed feelings about this book. I wasn't sure if I was going to like it as sci-fi isn't always my go to genre but after recently enjoying The Illuminae Files, Aurora Rising, Dark Matter and The Themis Files I thought I'd give it a try.
I'm really sitting somewhere around 2.5 stars on this one. The beginning about 35% was really good, the concept was interesting and there was a good twist during this part. The pace picked up around the middle section and was also good but then it never really seemed to get going sadly. I felt that there were a lot of things missing such as for example, we know travel between worlds is possible but it's never really explained why, it's just sort of 'well this guy worked it out and now we can do it' there was no real science within a science fiction book.
I think this book had a good opportunity to be a lot more than it what it was but unfortunately fell short.

Science fiction has seen something of a quiet renaissance in recent years. Adrian Tchaikovsky, with his award-winning Children of Time, breathed new life into speculative sci-fi and last year Luiza Sauma dazzled with her second novel, Everything You Ever Wanted: a book which cast aside the hard science in favour of a sceptical examination of current politics and our modern zeitgeist.

With her debut novel, The Space Between Worlds, Micaiah Johnson lands somewhere between these two hit novels, at least in concept. Here is a novel whose influences are very much on the surface but are nonetheless drawn upon with style and intelligence to create something fresh and interesting. The Space Between Worlds is a successful debut thanks entirely to Johnson’s ability to juggle and balance the sum of its parts.

Set in an unspecified future Earth, The Space Between Worlds follows Cara, a young woman who works as a traverser: someone who travels across a multiverse of 380 Earths. A traverser’s job is to travel to other Earths and collect vital information about what makes that Earth unique, before bringing it back to her bosses at Eldridge. The catch being that a traverser can only visit an Earth if that Earth’s version of them is already dead. Cara is unique in that, due to having grown up in a brutal and fascistic wasteland, she has only managed to survive on eight of the 380 Earths, and so she is free to traverse almost all of the multiverse, making her a most valuable employee.

Reminiscent of Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter’s The Long Earth, this novel opens with a lot of exciting possibilities about alternative realities, but it soon becomes clear that exploration and world-building on a multiversal scale is not the goal here. This is a surprisingly intimate novel about one woman’s facing down of her demons. It muses on questions of identity, nature vs nurture, and the consequences of our actions.

While The Space Between Worlds succeeds at fully fleshing out these themes and concepts, thanks to some sharply written and clearly defined characters, these themes do often become blurred by how distracting Johnson’s world building can be: there is a lot of poor definition in the book’s politics, economics, and geography. Though the novel is set on Earth, no information is offered about when or where we are. There are a few early allusions to real-world locations, but the novel is set entirely in two places: the rich and clean Wiley City, where Cara now lives, and the Mad Max wild wastes of Ashtown, where she hails from. Like in the Hunger Games trilogy, we know we’re on Earth, but we are given no frame of reference that might have helped us feel more grounded and might have made the events of this novel feel relevant to our time.

Although there are a few awkward steps in its process of world building, the novel never falls under the weight of too much complexity and confusion. The characters lead the charge, and what is handled particularly uniquely here is the way that the plot twists and turns. There are intense and weighty revelations from page 1, and they all matter. But, because of Cara’s hardened past, her reaction to them is softer than the reader’s, which endears us to her immensely.

Despite some jagged world building and an ultimately smaller scale than one might hope for, The Space Between Worlds is an assured success of a debut novel, thanks entirely to some witty and sharp dialogue, deep and dynamic characterisation, and heavy themes that are explored with real consideration and savvy.

The Space Between Worlds | Micaiah Johnson

Reason To Read

A unique, original concept with Mad Max vibes and an outstanding, modern heroine. A phenomenal debut from Micaiah Johnson.

Review

This book blew me away and renewed my passion for the science fiction genre which I had fallen out of love with.

In short, The Space Between Worlds is about traversing the multiverse. It’s about Cara, a woman who is dead in all but eight of these multiple worlds which makes her a valuable commodity and it’s about dark secrets on which this technology is built. And it’s about survival against the odds.

I’m not going to lie there is a lot to absorb in the first half of the book, the multiple worlds concept, the technology, the characters and Cara our protagonist takes a while to warm up to. But as the twists in the book start to detonate, the book becomes unputdownable. Amidst a great science fiction story, the book also has something real to say about race, privilege and finding ones place in the world. These ideas have never been more important.

An astonishing, high concept sci-fi thrill ride ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of five

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this book.

DNF @ 20%

I wanted to love this so much, unfortunately, it wasn't for me. This is definitely a "me not you" situation though so please check out other reviews! I was just so confused, I had no idea who any of the characters were and while the main character was great, the world-building, info-dumping and side characters left me feeling disorientated.

I didn't feel like pushing myself to read something I wasn't enjoying, but I totally understand why people love this one! I'd say if you love sci-fi and multiverse worlds, you should definitely check this out.

I wanted to love this book so badly. I usually adore stories about the multiverse, as well as those that examine the chasm between rich and poor.

Unfortunately I think it was a case of right book, wrong reader. The writing style, in conjunction with the vagueness of the world building, just didn’t fall in line with my personal preferences and hindered my overall enjoyment.

I found the descriptions of the settings and the technology/process of traversing the multiverse more of a sketch than a fully fleshed out idea. I’m a reader that is much more interested in Science Fiction and Fantasy that delves deeper into the construction of a world and the mechanics behind it’s technology and ideas.

I could never really get a grasp on what the world truly felt or looked like and how it worked beyond a few snatches of information, which left me feeling rather unanchored and therefore unconnected to the world in which the action played out.

Despite my personal issues with this, I was still able to find positives in the story. I loved the queerness, the diversity, the ideas (even if I would have liked them to be a bit more built out) and Cara’s characterisation.

One thing that Johnson gains from her lean prose and focus on action and character over world building is a fast pace which helped me fly through the book.

Cara was my favourite part of the novel, her relationship with Dell was fascinating and heartbreaking in equal measure and this was the aspect that carried me through to the end of the novel.

I’m glad to see that this story is finding the right readers to strike a chord with. I’m disappointed not to be one of them, but I will definitely still search out Michaiah Johnson’s future works.

What an incredible debut, I have been searching for a new Science Fiction novel to devour and I have to say it did not disappoint at all. I’m actually in awe that this was a debut by Micaiah, her writing is mature and established, and overall, it’s a well written novel. Reading about multiverse travel can be quite daunting, the language and terminology can often be quite complex, however I found the storyline quite easy to follow, although I have heard it can take a little while for some people to get into the story, that wasn’t the case for myself.

A little about the story itself;

There are 380 parallel worlds in total, where people can travel between. However, to be able to travel to another world, you of that world cannot be alive. Cara an outsider who has died in every world except for 8 is an ideal candidate for travelling between the other 372 worlds. Getting intel and data for the Eldridge Institute. Cara’s wish is to become a citizen, originally from the wastelands, she is desperate to become more and not to go back to where she started, she is on the right path to gain it, she just needs to make sure she keeps her value and doesn’t become disposable. However, not all is as it seems and as secrets get exposed, things may not go to plan…

This book covers elitism and class, exploring society and how this is a common thread in all the worlds Cara has travelled to. It also has LGBTQ+ representation, which is always a bonus, diversity in books should be the norm.

I would recommend this book to my sci-fi and dystopian loving friends. It gets a solid 4 stars from me.

This book was absolutely fab! Imagine existing in over 300 different worlds in parallel time?! You can only visit your other parallel worlds when you are dead in that particular world. This was a plot that I haven't fully seen come up in a while! I loved the idea that you could have doppelgangers across the universe. I fell straight into this sci fi book and I finished it in one go.

I loved loved LOVED this book!! While premise intrigued me from the summary, I’ll admit I was a bit nervous as science fiction stories about different dimensions, doppelgängers and parallel universes can go right over my head. This was not the case for The Space Between Worlds where the rules were clear and uncomplicated, there are parallel worlds to travel to but only if your other self has already died in that world, then and only then can you safely travel, observe and investigate these different versions of Earth and the different life ‘you’ and your peers have loved. Cara, our protagonist, has a bad habit of dying, 372 times in 372 worlds in fact, which makes her very useful to the Eldridge Institute, the governing body in multiverse travel, however when yet another of her doppelgängers ends up dead and it looks like murder, Cara needs answers and in turn has to face her past, her demons and her role in the future.

There’s so much to this book that I don’t think the descriptions do it justice so first I’ll just say I urge you to read this book. It’s feminist and full of incredible women badass and beautiful getting **** done. Cara is a complex, interesting character in her many forms, she is likeable and good but stubborn to a fault. You follow Cara as she faces who she is, who she was and where she’s come from, growing up in the wastes and seeking citizenship in Wiley City, and deciding this time to choose her own fate. Then there’s Dell, a woman I am painfully in love with and I don’t care that she’s not real. Dell supervises Cara, instructing her from her base in Wiley City, she has privilege Cara resents and yet there’s delicious sexual tension between the 2 and a conflict to be revealed. Dell has a wall around her and as the book goes on the bricks start to come downwind you learn what this woman will fight for. Jean, Cara’s mentor and father figure, also deserves a special shoutout because again he is another brilliantly created character brought alive and instantly loved.

This book deals with a variety of topics beyond a science fiction feminist LGBT adventure (although that would surely be Antigua for my heart), this book addresses class equality, privilege, racism, domestic violence and at a deeper level, self worth, identity and forgiveness. This book is about what divides us and what brings us together, about what we can change and that we can’t avoid, I loved how everything fit. Micaiah Johnson is an incredible writer, the words she writes both beautiful and compelling and I was hooked instantly by everything book had to offer. This is a complex, intoxicating adventure that wraps up so perfectly but still left me wanting more.

Thank you NetGalley for the copy - I now have to buy a beautiful copy for my shelf!

The first time this book caught my eye it just seemed to call out to me. The premise sounded so intriguing.

But the magic is not just in the concept.
Micaiah Johnson's writing style is deceptively simple, soft and supple, like silk satin. She draws you in and with seemingly little effort she has created a world around you.

Cara is a traverser, travelling between parallel worlds in order to download data for the use of the Eldridge corporation and her world is populated with vibrant characters:
Dell her handler, Jean her mentor, Esther her religious half-sister and Adam Bosch the genius who has invented the technology that makes traversing possible.
All became real people to me as I was reading, people I cared about deeply.

Micaiah Johnson’s writing is subtle:
Cara has suffered a harsh life but there is little-self pity. Her past does cause moments of self-doubt but also provides believable experience enabling her to understand and handle difficult situations.
Cara travels between parallel worlds, worlds where there are (or have been) different iterrations of Cara, Esther and the brutal Emperor NikNik. Some things are constant like the separation between the Ashtown and the City, the role of the House and the Emperor's control of Ashtown but the people are slightly different and distinct, each having reacted differently to their situation in life. In particular this is shown through Cara and her mother.
There are also a few times when we comprehend things are not exactly as we had thought. A single sentence makes the reader stop and realize that there is a twist in the story. But there is no artificial build-up of suspense leading to a ‘big reveal’. Instead, once a few sentences have passed and the author is sure we have taken the hint, the truth is explained as an integral part of the narrative.

Many books written by English scholars are straining to display their writing ability with complicated sentences, flowery descriptions and not enough editing.
This is not Micaiah Johnson. Her writing is understated and precise with fully developed, engaging characters, a solid, exciting plot and a well thought out ending.
Reading this book was both satisfying and fun and I look forward to reading the author’s next contribution to the genre.

This book was brilliant and uncomfortable, in a good way.
It’s an incredibly sensory experience; you can feel the discomfort of crossing worlds and the velvety, dark mind of the goddess who dwells there (brilliant detail!); the hot, sticky grit laced with danger of the Ashtown neighbourhoods, the clean, emotionally and psychically sterile atmosphere of Wiley City and you are so drawn into Cara’s mind her experiences seem to become yours for the duration.
In this, it extremely good, visceral writing. It seems inconsistent in some places sometimes, but as this is a first novel, I would confidently put money on the author’s writing becoming tighter and sharper with every work. And this is something I hugely look forward to, as this book definitely has me interested to read more of Micaiah Johnson.
The characterisation is excellent and the developing narrative arcs of the same characters in different worlds is handled really well.
It is an interesting choice to have those characters have similar lives, or at least backgrounds (not to mention names), on different worlds, since the many world theory kind of hinges on the unlimited possible varieties of lives and selves.
The premise of many worlds and traversing between them is not a new one ,as such, but I enjoyed the matter of fact way in which the writer dealt with it as an established process, rather in the way that a truly good zombie apocalypse story has the zombies almost as a backdrop to the intricate dynamics of interacting and developing characters.
The main character Cara is broken, flawed, angry and determined to survive. I have been on a personal streak of fatigue with flawed heroes and heroines but I was made to understand Cara so well that I became thoroughly invested in her.

For those who may baulk at this subject matter: Cara deals with abuse trauma in an incredibly immediate manner, having several memories that might be somewhat challenging to read.
I appreciated these parts very much: it might be seen as gratuitous to add any kind of detail but it was such an integral part of Cara’s situation, her choices and why she is who she is (and isn’t, which is deeply important) that I was extremely happy the writer didn’t shy away or mince her words in this regard. Also, these things are what they are and why not look a beast directly in the face if you are going to describe it, including the pain.

And, hurrah, it has an f/f love relationship! I was rooting so hard for it to work out well my teeth hurt, honestly.
All in all, a gripping dystopian novel where, truth be told, almost no one is likeable or only partly so (very realistic) and even the pretty likeable ones make appalling choices most of the time, with a satisfying (if not wholly rosy, but again, I adored the realism) payoff.
It comes out on August 4 and I highly recommend a preorder..!

Thanks to Netgalley and Hodder Books for the ARC.

I think this is a case of it's me not you. The story sounded exactly my type of book but unfortunately it just didn't work for me. It was confusing at first and a lot of information was given to us. It did start to get interesting later on in the story but I just didn't feel invested in the story however i think that many others would love this book.

Super creative SF. Would love to see a follow-up from Dell's POV , or Esther's. Thanks to Hodder for the review copy.

Cara is a young woman with a very unusual job, she’s a “traverser”, someone who travels between parallel and near parallel universes. She’s able to do this as she is dead in almost all known universes. As someone who has been fascinated by the idea of parallel universes, the “multiverse” etc since childhood I absolutely loved the world building in this book. It’s parallel universes are able to show “what if” scenarios as well as aspects of time-travel, as some universes are past or future to “world 1”.

As well as being fascinating from this point of view, this book has great characters, and lots of representation across race, gender and sexuality. It also has some great commentary on class, social inequity and capitalism. It’s innovative and universal and I highly recommend it!

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson is a staggering debut and the most recent Sci-Fi novel that I've read but not the first novel this year that has featured multi-verses! Does anyone have any recommendations for others? I seem to be really digging them in 2020 - maybe it's because the real world is a mess!

Anyway, Cara our protagonist is absolutely full to bursting with intrigue for the reader, she's a bad-ass female character that I loved even though some of her actions were morally questionable. Discovering her secrets as we read through her story and traveled through worlds with her was like watching Making a Murderer all over again and trying to guess what had happened and WHY. Alongside Cara there are several characters that I really invested in - Nik Nik and Jean for example among others. Since there are the same characters in different worlds, you can see them wholly - the good and the bad of their characteristics which makes for a fascinating dissection as their choices and circumstances change.

I have to talk about the world(s) around Cara though. Not only has Johnson imagined multiple versions of Earth, it's not Earth as we know it but an Earth in the future - writing this I'm not even 100% sure it was Earth (it is). It's different, there is a split between those who live in the city (rich, flashy apartment blocks) and those who live outside of it (poorer, imagine wasteland), in the desert with limited protection from the Sun which is ridiculously hot - so hot that there are times of day where you can't be out in it or you'll burn and only the city-dwellers seem to have protection against it. Johnson's imagination seems to have no bounds in The Space Between Worlds and I read the split between the city and the desert (and the worlds) with a terrifying societal commentary around race, religion, privilege and wealth.

As such a fascinating read, I really recommend this to readers wanting a different kind of Sci-fi read as I do believe it twists the genre on itself. The narrative bounds along so quickly, I often found myself unable to put it down - there is one point where the whole trail of the story seems to be thrown out like toys out of a toy box and then re-arranged on a shelf, I'll be keeping my eye out for any future releases by Johnson.

If you've been around here for a while then you might know that parallel universe stories are my jam. I absolutely cannot get enough of them, as I find the entire concept so intriguing and exciting. When I first heard about The Space Between Worlds, I knew I had to snap it up, because it sounded exactly like the kind of thing I would enjoy. I am here for anything about travelling between parallel dimensions.

Cara was a very interesting character, and she actually becomes more interesting the more you read. It isn't immediately clear why she is the way that she is, or what exactly it is that she's dealing with, but trust me, it's A LOT. And as the book continues you keep finding out more about her. She's somewhat mysterious in the beginning, I guess, but she's an incredibly layered character.

The science part of the book left me a little... deflated. The Space Between Worlds isn't supposed to be hard science fiction or anything, but given my love for parallel universe stories I was excited to learn about how or why these worlds exist. So in this book, people can travel to different Earths if their "Other Self" is dead in them. But they can only travel to Earths that are already quite similar to their own. So there are a lot of Earths that they can't access. All good so far, right?

Well, my problem is that there is a set number of different Earths in this book. Around 380. And the numbers isn't increasing. But the thing is, THE NUMBER SHOULD BE FOREVER INCREASING. If the parallel universes happen because choices cause divergence, the number of universes should be increasing at a rapid rate. Right? It doesn't make sense that the characters in Earth 0 have only discovered a limited amount of Other Earths, and only the ones that are most similar to their own. If the main character, Cara, decides not to go to the toilet on the upper floor of her apartment building and instead waits until she gets to work, therefore getting there sooner, and her Other Self does the opposite, that's already just one divergence. So a new Earth should have been created!

I'll stop my ranting about that now, because despite that... slight... upset, I did really enjoy this book. I would say that a lot of people would enjoy it, even if they don't like science fiction, because it turns into more of an action thriller for the most part. The second and third acts of the book aren't very sciencey at all, and it's more of an action/thriller/dystopia type deal.

I enjoyed the discussions of class that were prevelant throughout this book. The Space Between Worlds covered many more themes than that, but the class bits were the ones that most intrigued me as it's something I can relate to and am passionate about. I also really liked that the main character was bi/pan. At the very least, Cara is definitely not straight. More F/F sci fi, PLEASE.

Overall, this is a very good book and an easy one for new readers of sci fi to read. Pick it up if the concept of the multiverse sounds intriguing, but try not to think about the science too closely or you might find yourself quite frustrated.