Review – The Space Between Worlds (The Space Between Worlds, Book 1) by Micaiah Johnson (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 322 pages
Publisher: Del Rey
Release Date: August 4, 2020
ASIN: B08191MPPS
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in The Space Between Worlds series
Source: Borrowed ebook from Library
Rating: 3/5 stars

“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.”

Series Info/Source: This is the 1st book in The Space Between Worlds series. I got borrowed this on ebook from my library.

Thoughts: I have had this on my “to read” pile for quite some time and made it a priority to finally read it this year. There are some intriguing ideas here but ultimately the story feels fairly forgettable. This book reminded me a lot of the “Firebird” series by Claudia Grey. I enjoyed the Firebird series a lot more than this book and would recommend that series over this if you enjoy reading books about multiverses.

The story follows Cara, who traverses realities. Cara was recruited from the wastelands to travel between multiverses because you can only survive travel to a paralell reality if your other self is dead in that reality. Out of the 380ish parallel realities that humanity can travel to, Cara is dead on 372 of them making her an incredible resource for multiverse travel. Cara is getting close to getting her citizenship in Wiley City, but the company she works for is on the brink on creating an autonomous way to visit these multiverses which would eliminate the need for human travelers. As a result she is struggling to figure out what is next. Then one of the realities she travels to almost kills her and she finds out there are a lot of dark secrets around this industry.

There were some things about this story I liked and some that I didn’t like. I like the premise behind the story; while not incredibly unique it is more well thought out than a lot of books about humans traveling between multiverses. I also enjoyed the way “prime” humanity is taking advantage of this ability to travel by information mining other multiverses.

Unfortunately there was a lot I didn’t like as well. Everyone’s acceptance of Cara’s reality as the prime reality was a bit odd. Wouldn’t everyone assume that their home reality is the prime reality? Also there were some twists and turns, that were incredibly predictable and you could see coming from miles away.

Lastly it felt like there was both too much going on here and that the story wasn’t going deep enough. You have Cara struggling to find a new job, you have humans taking advantage of information from other multi-verses, you have a number of sociaeconomic issues happening, and an egomaniac trying to basically control all multi-verses. It was a lot and it made the story feel unfocused and scattered. There was also a lot of potential to dive deep into some intriguing issues here but it felt like we never really go there. This hinted at intriguing world-building as well, but we never really understand what is going on outside of Wiley city and why the Ashlands are run the way they were. Some of this is briefly discussed but it wasn’t fully fleshed out.

I wasn’t a huge fan of any of the characters either, they all felt shallow and lacked depth. Cara was okay but because of the situation with her traveling so many realities she never seemed sure of who she was (I think this is part of the point).

This was an excellent idea story, but I didn’t love the way it was executed and don’t plan on reading the follow-up book to this series “Those Beyond the Wall”. I am a bit perplexed at how much hubbub was made about this novel when it was released. It’s fine but not great.

My Summary (3/5): Overall this was okay. I liked some of the ideas in here but the story felt scattered and a bit confused about what it was trying to be. This was an easy enough quick read, but it was also fairly forgettable. The characters and world felt under developed to me and the story was predictable despite having what I think were supposed to be big plot twists. I don’t plan on reading any more books by Johnson in the future. I would recommend Grey’s “Firebird” series over this one if you enjoy reading about this sort of multiverse thing.