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    The Space Between Worlds
    The Space Between Worlds
    The Space Between Worlds
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Space Between Worlds

    Written by Micaiah Johnson

    Narrated by Nicole Lewis

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    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.

    WINNER OF THE COMPTON CROOK AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE LOCUS AWARD • “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

    ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—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)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
    Release dateAug 4, 2020
    ISBN9780593213780

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    Reviews for The Space Between Worlds

    4/5

    371 ratings34 reviews

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    • 4/5

      Jun 21, 2024

      very original first book, maybe of a series? (the next book contains some of the same charaters and themes). here a poor culture inhabits a post-apocalyptic desert, both violent and religious, and suffering from extreme class disparities with the highly technological city next door: in this era we can recognize the similarities of both. but the lens widens to visit alternate worlds in which the characters and the state of play only differs slightly, with hidden portals that connect them, and thereby we are in a very different play, in which doppelgangers are almost but not quite the same owing to minor changes in circumstances. and moving between the worlds, the protagonist changes in response even to small changes with family history, so all the worlds remain dynamic and social constructs can change too.
    • 5/5

      Nov 10, 2024

      Social science fiction akin to LeGuin in many ways. Really loved all the versions and people of Ashtown.
    • 4/5

      Sep 5, 2024

      There are many parallel worlds, and it is possible to travel to the ones that are sufficiently similar to one's own... but there's one hitch. You can only survive traveling to worlds where the version of you that belongs there is already dead. Which suddenly makes people who grew up in conditions of poverty and violence much more valuable, as far fewer of their alternate selves have survived.

      It's a fantastic premise, one with lots of potential for interesting science fictional ideas, a complex plot, and some strong social commentary. And the novel is well-written, with a few interesting twists as it goes along. But I have to say, I had trouble feeling really engaged with it. This is something I seem to be saying a lot lately, so it's entirely possible it has more to do with me and whatever lingering mood I might be in than with the book itself. But maybe not entirely? Because it also has some less interesting twists, and a very unconvincing and unsatisfying romance, and a lot of exploration of a setting that feels not particularly fresh or well-realized, and a rather claustrophobic sense that the entire multiverse contains only different versions of the same eight or so people.

      So, the result for me here was very mixed. I appreciate a lot of what the novel was doing, but it just never entirely worked for me quite the way I was hoping it would.
    • 4/5

      Jan 6, 2024

      Conceptually, this was clever but the execution lacked finesse. There was too much explanation of things that had already been covered and it really bogged down the narrative. The characterizations were weak and I kept losing track of who was who.
    • 4/5

      Jan 2, 2024

      I liked it. The main character is a little cold at first, but it's an interesting world, so that didn't bother me in the beginning. And she becomes more likable as time passes. Romance was present, but low-key, I liked the way that was done. Interesting to see the different angles of various characters in the different worlds.

      Recommended to me at Queer lit, a book store in Manchester, UK.
    • 3/5

      Aug 20, 2023

      Imagine you can traverse the multiverse, the infinite number of theoretical copies of our Universe made real, visiting alternate versions of the Earth you know. It must mean your horizons are expanded infinitely. Maybe you can only visit the limited number that are similar enough to your 'original' Earth to make travel there practical. Maybe a few hundred such Earths. That's still a wide canvas on which to tell a story. That's where this one starts. And it begins with some intrigue and interest.

      But was disappointed. The story told here is not one that spans hundreds of worlds. It's a much smaller story. We follow a young traverser as she treads on familiar roads on a few of the Earths she visits. She encounters basically the same people and the same places, with just a few variations. The only civilization we are shown on all of these Earths is confined to a single familiar city, a nearby wilderness and an intervening country town, all ruled, for some reason, by a single despotic family. We see almost nothing about what is happening on the rest of the Earth. It's all very confining and all overly simple.

      The characters and relationships, though simple and repetitive, are presented in a story that is intriguing and written well enough that I did follow through to the end. But I always felt that the story could have been so much more.

      Disclosure: Thank you to Netgalley and Del Rey Books for providing a free copy of this book in return for my honest review.
    • 5/5

      Jan 6, 2024

      Absolutely memorable, gave me plenty to think about
    • 5/5

      Aug 10, 2023

      The Space Between Worlds is a really great sci-fi novel that explores the themes of identity, privilege, and belonging.

      The book follows Cara, a woman who can travel between parallel universes. She's an outsider in every world she visits, because her parallel selves are all dead. But she also has a unique perspective, because she can see the different ways that people's lives could have turned out. As Cara travels between worlds, she learns a lot about herself and about the world around her. She also makes some tough choices that have a big impact on her future.

      Here are some specific things I liked about the book:

      - The characters are well-developed and relatable. Cara is a complex and interesting protagonist, and I really enjoyed following her journey.
      - The plot is fast-paced and suspenseful. There were a few twists and turns that I didn't see coming.
      - The themes of identity, privilege, and belonging are handled sensitively and thoughtfully.
      - The book is full of beautiful imagery. Johnson does a great job of describing the different worlds that Cara visits.

      Overall, I really enjoyed The Space Between Worlds. It's a well-written, thought-provoking, and exciting book that I would definitely recommend to others.

      [Disclaimer: I am not very good at writing reviews so I asked Bard, the Google AI, for help]
    • 4/5

      Feb 14, 2023

      Kara straddles many worlds. She grew up in a religious sect in a Mad Max-like community of have-nots, but now lives in the domed city of the haves. Her job is jump between universes and gather data. Navigating all of these worlds can be brutal, both physically and psychologically. They always leave bruises.
    • 4/5

      Feb 18, 2023

      Dystopian society, or should we say societies. The multiverse is strong in this one.

      Main character, Cara, has the job in her world (the one with the proper technology) of traveling to other parallel universes to perform a variety of tasks. Everyone, including Cara, can only travel to universes where their counterpart is already dead.

      There is intrigue, class struggle, religious zealots, despots in the various universes.
      Like with the multiverse, things can get a bit confusing, especially when the various worlds are referred to by just a number.
      I felt that this is a great standalone, but more time in this world would be welcome!
    • 4/5

      Dec 4, 2022

      This fast-paced science fiction novel is a sometimes-brutal exploration of what it might mean if the multiverse was real but it involved a lot of death -- and I mean a lot -- to visit other worlds. The ethical quandary at the heart of the story takes a little time to reveal, but the main character has enough of her own complexity to keep things moving and the voice is strong and relatable. Compelling, a bit twisty, and with a strangely sweet relationship at its heart, this one is for those who like their sci-fi with a strong dose of thriller.
    • 4/5

      Dec 1, 2022

      This one took me by surprise, in that I really wasn't a huge fan in the beginning, but really grew to like it by the end.
    • 4/5

      Nov 27, 2022

      Excellent book. Original, beautifully written and moving. I love the double meaning of the title (both a literal sense in describing the hopping between worlds that is done, and in a more metaphorical sense describing the space (not in distance) between the city and the world where our heroine grew up). Excellent book that does exactly what Sci-Fi is supposed to make you do - think and apply the lessons to your own world.
    • 4/5

      Oct 23, 2022

      This book is full of violence. But, there is also domestic violence, and that's what is painful:
      " the first time he used those teeth on me was early in our relationship, our first fight. He'd cut my neck from behind, more a slice with his tooth than a bite. It was a small cut, not even into the artery, but I didn't know that and I'd heard enough stories to believe I was going to die. Especially once he put his fist in my mouth, my teeth stretched to aching against his second and third knuckle. No one my age has ever seen a real gun, but my mother told me my grandfather killed himself with one. In that moment I thought of him, teeth stretched around a metal barrel, and wondered if this death was in my blood.
      I waited for the telling spray, the taste they say is bitter and signals that you'll never stop bleeding and you'll never feel again. He left his hand there until my jaw cramped, until the waiting was worse than the ending and I thought about probing the ring for a trigger with my tongue myself, just to have control. Then he pulled his hand away.
      'Learn your lesson,' he said before walking away."
    • 4/5

      Sep 7, 2022

      This is an unrelentingly grim book - honestly, by a quarter of the way in I was hoping that the protagonist would just die and put us both out of our misery - but I'm glad I stuck with it. The protagonist is a "traverser" - someone who can travel to parallel Earths largely because her alternate-selves have all died on those Earths. The mechanics and reasons for the traversing are never really explained in anything other than a hand-wavey way, and there are plenty of loose threads and a rather feeble denouement for the Bad Guy, but that's not really the point of the story. The real story is about power, the resilience of the oppressed, and taking the least-worst option to survive. As I said, it's unrelenting grim and violent but there is a spark of hope at the end. Definitely worth persevering with.
    • 3/5

      Sep 4, 2022

      I listened to most of this book on audio so I thought my confusion stemmed from not giving it the attention it deserved but I see that other readers had similar issues. I almost gave up on it but the audiobook narration was quite good (at 1.25 speed) so I stuck with it. Deep into the story, the world finally starts to make a little more sense but, honestly, I’m not entirely sure I understand what happened! Where the story succeeds is in the ways it explores real world social issues like classism and discrimination and portrays the main character’s “undesirable” upbringing as the key to her survival.
    • 5/5

      Sep 4, 2022

      I absolutely loved this bittersweet exploration of one person’s possibilities through the lens of the multiverse. Cara was an intriguing protagonist, and became even more so as the twists and reveals continued. Her stakes grew from merely wanting the security of permanent residency in the relatively comfortable Wiley city, to something much more.

      A multiverse story could easily become unwieldy, but Johnson uses some clever worldbuilding tricks to make sure that doesn’t happen. It’s only possible to travel to 380 worlds that resonate with ‘Earth Zero’, the world where Cara lives. This means the worlds Cara travels to aren’t vastly different. The worlds where society is more equal are somewhere out of reach, as are the worlds where gun violence is prevalent. The same cast of characters fulfil different roles within much the same society, and this is resolutely a character-focused rather than a technology-focused story. If you want to know exactly how world walking works you’ll be out of luck. (I never understand why people want to know how things like this work in books, because of course it *doesn’t* work in reality, so any possible explanation would be made-up gobbledygook?)

      So, if that doesn’t put you off, stay for the warmth of the mentorship between two world-weary people (Cara/Jean), stay for the understated but life-sustaining connection between two women (Cara/Dell), stay for the complexities of interacting with someone who in another life was your abuser — stay for a story about life.
    • 4/5

      Aug 31, 2022

      The prose was good but I didn't really care.
      I like to care about the characters in a story, I like to root for them to survive the story; granted that in the 380 known realities in this story Cara is only alive in 8 of them, her survival in the core reality of the story didn't matter to me. I didn't get a real feeling for t he peripheral characters in the story either and just didn't care.
      I read this because it was nominated for the Hugos and I can see why, it's well written and I'm sure there are people who would love it but I'm not one and my favourite novel of all that I have read still stands.
    • 4/5

      Jul 21, 2022

      Well paced and well told this is an exploration of self across parallel worlds well balanced between action and contemplation. With a good central character and interesting versions of family and associates it does fall down in spite of its own cautions in the portrayal of the love object. Also the world building is too Hunger Games level, though the tight focus on the main actors and clear representation of current class issues minimizes that as a flaw.
    • 3/5

      Mar 25, 2022

      The only people who can travel to alternate timelines are people who are dead in those other worlds; the only worlds that can be traveled to are relatively close cousins. This means that worldwalkers are almost always people from precarious circumstances, who survived via luck, who are brought in by the privileged enclave from the environmentally destroyed world around as tolerated servants. This is a great setup and I wish I’d liked anything else about the book. There’s a neat twist about our protagonist’s connections to her family/her past, but while her obsession with an abusive past lover might have been realistic, it really put me off. And I couldn’t stop wondering about the rest of the mechanics: what exactly were the worldwalkers taking from those other worlds, because there was supposedly some vague exploitation/resource extraction going on? Given the setup, the enclave only would have bothered with worldwalkers for material benefit, but what? Why didn’t those other worlds, with roughly similar technology to that in the enclave, notice what was going on and do something about it?
    • 4/5

      Feb 6, 2022

      This is a really strong first novel in which there are a number of things that really jump out at me. One is that Johnson has written an effective novel for the COVID era, in that this story reads like an allegory of the "essential" workers, who are, in reality, expendable. Two, there is the related point that this is a critique of "tech boy" Libertarianism, which has turned out to be merely a glossy take on the same old authoritarianism. Three, this novel feels really well crafted, reflecting Johnson's academic background; file under speculative fiction you can hand to a non-SF reader. My complaints are few, though I do agree that this story feels a little shallow in places, but it is a first novel after all.
    • 5/5

      Sep 7, 2021

      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.
    • 5/5

      Aug 1, 2021

      Multiverse travel is now possible, but you can only travel to worlds where your parallel self is dead. This gives people born into bad conditions where survival is unlikely a unique, if limited, value to the Elbridge Institute in walled and wealthy Wiley City.

      Cara is one of those outliers, plucked from poverty and danger in the wastelands, to work as a "traverser," bringing back data from the scientists from many of the worlds where her parallel self died. She works with Dell, her Watcher, temptingly attractive yet aloof and withdrawn, a woman of old money in Wiley City.

      Everything is going smoothly, and Cara has a nice apartment and a good income, and makes regular visits to her family in the wasteland settlement of Ashtown. Then another of Cara's parallel selves dies. Cara has a new world to visit, and events start to threaten Cara's dangerous secret.

      It also leads to Cara discovering the dangerous secret of the seemingly kindly scientist and Elbridge CEO who invented the world-crossing technology.

      I started reading this book with some real skepticism, as it superficially seemed like yet another dystopia, a part of the sff genre that I really do not love. It does take place on a blighted Earth, where developed, technologically advanced civilization exists only in walled cities. There's trade between the cities and their outlying slums in the wasteland, including a sort of edgy tourism by the well-off city people to the safer parts of the slums arts and crafts can be purchased.

      We only see Wiley City and its Ashtown slum, but there are other cities and other slums, and other inhabited, if struggling, areas. One of these people is one of Cara's mentors, Jean Sanogo, from the Ivory Coast, survivor of a time as a child soldier before he was found and identified someone who had enough parallel selves dead that he was a good candidate for one of the first traversers. This is a climatologically blighted world, with more damage done by wars caused by the climate change, but the wars now seem to be over, and it's all about living as well as possible in the blight.

      One way of doing that is to import raw materials from parallel worlds, similar enough that the world-crossing technology can reach them, but with enough accessible resources to be worth stealing.

      The plot-based conflicts are interesting, if sometimes thin. The characters become interesting and compelling, both in meeting alternate versions of some, and in the development the versions we get to know best experience. Jean and his family are more than just a warm, family group with a love of good cooking, though that's an important part of them. Cara learns, develops, changes, makes major choices along the way from a young woman who just wants to remain gainfully employed long enough to earn citizenship in Wiley City, to a woman who wants to make the world better, and is willing to make real sacrifices for her family. Other characters also reveal themselves in interesting ways. Overall, far more satisfying and enjoyable than I originally anticipated.

      Recommended.

      I received this book from NetGalley via the 2021 Hugo Voters Packet, and am reviewing it voluntarily.
    • 5/5

      May 24, 2021

      The title of Micaiah Johnson’s book is one with multiple meanings embedded in it. At its most basic, it’s a reference to the space between alternate Earths that a scientist in an unspecified future had figured out to cross. There is a catch, however: traveling to another Earth can only be done successfully if the person crossing over has no living counterpart in that world, otherwise the traveler dies a horribly painful death upon their arrival.

      This complication puts an unexpected premium on people near the bottom of the social scale, whose life expectancy makes it likely that their analogues have already died. Among those hired to work as a “traverser” is Cara, a young woman from the badlands outside of the gleaming metropolis of Wiley City. Traversing offers Cara an unexpected opportunity to trade the poverty she knew for a life of prosperity and security. In taking it, though, she finds herself navigating between a different set of worlds that define her existence. And at the heart of all this lies a secret that Cara holds dear, one that makes her feel like an outsider regardless of whichever world she happens to occupy.

      These layers of meaning speak to the quality of Johnson’s novel. From it she spins a tale of love, ambition, and power that propels the reader effortlessly throughout the book. Often her story takes surprising turns, yet none of them feel implausible or contrived as they are revealed. Much of the emotional power in it comes from the relevance of her imagined world to the one in which we live, the space between which is probably the smallest of all the ones depicted. It all makes for a great read that, like all good science fiction, uses imagined worlds to provide insight into our own.
    • 4/5

      Apr 24, 2021

      This is one of those books that while well written, with some really great characters, but the actual rules of this world don't make a whole lot of sense.

      First - I really liked Cara in this story. She is an incredibly interesting character. The characters surrounding her also well written, from her handler, Dell, to her sister. The premise of the book - multiverses where you can only visit if your version in that universe is dead, is an interesting one. The themes of the choices made vs luck was really well done.

      Unfortunately, the author sacrificed world building for the greater story. For example, it doesn't make a lot sense that guns are outlawed, to the point where nobody even knows how to make them. Or that one man is given control of the whole project. There were a few other problems with the story that I found myself rolling my eyes.
    • 3/5

      Mar 25, 2021

      Ok...I was very intrigued when reading the description of this book, then seeing all the award nominations coming out while I was reading. I've always liked the multiverse concept and this one sounded like it was going to be great. The beginning "world-building" was interesting but then it started to get flat for me after that. As much detail that was given and all the intricacies woven throughout, it just didn't deliver that 4-5 star roller-coaster I was expecting. I can see how many readers would like this a lot, just not me.

      Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the ARC.
    • 5/5

      Mar 16, 2021

      This is one of those reads that has you thinking you know what sort of ride you're in for and by the third chapter you realize that you've severely miscalculated... you have no idea where you're heading so you strap in and pray for the best... it wasn't... by any means... your standard Multi Dimensional Traipsing fare. There were most definitely triggers for domestic violence both implied and incurred as well as drug use, murder and brutal treatment of anyone and everyone... no one is 100% safe, not children or the elderly BUT it isn't graphic or gorey or horrific, just disturbing... I'm not condoning, just relaying.

      That aside, this book was twisty and turny and all sorts of unique, messed up, hard-hitting exposition. It had an expertly crafted, slowly teased out, unfiltered, unapologetic character reveal. Each dribbled fact we were given felt like a dirty secret earned and even though some were freely given in the beginning and some were easily sussed out, they weren't any less delicious.... the rest felt hard won and masterfully doled out... little breadcrumbs leading us to the character's truist self. We learn as she does about her background, morals, self-checks, stopgaps and core values. We learn what she is/has been/will be willing to do to keep "safe", what she was willing to overlook in that pursuit, who/what she will allow herself to ultimately become and it is exciting AND, in the end, extremely rewarding.

      The writing was solid... the world(s) development far exceeded that and THAT'S saying something. I stayed up into the wee-ist of hours craving... absolutely fiending to know what happened next and I regret nothing. I might not have known where the story was going but it turns out that I was in good hands the whole way... what a ride... what a great example of how streamlined and unencumbered Scifi can be and ohhhhhh what a satisfying ending can look like!

      Overall:
      This book shows much love and for the LGBTQ community and showcased an extremely complex, well developed POC MC... I loved the inclusivity all around.

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

      That about sums up my feelings for this book. I highly, 100%, both hands in the air, reccomend this read!

      ~ Enjoy
    • 5/5

      Mar 3, 2021

      UMMM the multiverse and a queer love story! This book exceeded all expectations I had of it. So beautiful and thought out. I was laughing and crying and on the edge of my seat.
    • 4/5

      Dec 24, 2020

      It was difficult for me to get into this book at the start—the state of our world is so bad, and this book highlighted a lot of the ways that is so, so I kept putting it down to stop myself from despairing. But it's really such a clever, twisty sci-fi suspense story, eventually I got to the point where I couldn't put it down at all.
    • 5/5

      Oct 20, 2020

      I absolutely devoured this book. The plot is fast paced, but the characters are complex and memorable even given that. The world building is super interesting, too. I love the way Johnson handles the problem of multiple realities having the same people in them. It's novel and very clever. I also love the way she shows that any one of a million choices can change these characters' lives -- that both where you come from and who you choose to be are important.
      Eminently readable and absolutely addictive. If I could give it more than 5 stars, I would.

      Recommended for anyone who likes the possibilities of a multiverse in their narratives, including complex relationships and social commentary.