The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson // Multiverse, sapphism and a masterfully-crafted sci-fi novel

Title: The Space Between Worlds
Author: Micaiah Johnson
336 Pages
Published August 4th 2020 by Crown
Representation for: Black bisexual main character, sapphic Japanese love interest, f/f relationships, Black side characters, and non-binary side characters
Trigger Warnings: on-page violence and descriptions of past abuse, both emotional and physical

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 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 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

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The Space Between Worlds might probably be my favorite read of 2020. How could it be otherwise? Micaiah Johnson offers us a sci-fi masterpiece addressing social class privilege, politics, and the importance of healing. And time travel between alternate worlds. Did I mention the most amazing sapphic slow-burn you will ever read?

REASONS I HAVE LIVED: I don’t know, but there are eight.

Cara is a traverser. She is one of the few chosen to traverse between parallel worlds because her mortality rates in these worlds are high which allows her to travel because you need to be dead in these worlds to do multiverse travel without harm. This premise only is genius because it establishes marginalized people as valuable assets. They are needed by a society made up of wealthy people, and scientists who still dismiss their lives and their societies and think they are more worthy than them in spite of everything. With a few lines, Micaiah Johnson addresses social class privilege and racism. But these elements are not casualties, they are not afterthoughts. They are at the core of the plot and this is why the intrigue works.

As Cara is sent out on an Earth where she died under strange circumstances to gather incels on the behalf of her company, she starts to unravel secrets that could threaten not only her position in the company but also the future of multiverse travel itself. The book has its fair share of thriller aspects, corporate espionage, but also romance. It is an amazing sci-fi book filled with essential social commentaries and a lyricism that cuts through your bones while staying grounded to the reality and the important topics The Space Between Worlds deals with such as how to reconstruct yourself and your identity after abuse.

This book is as much of a sci-fi novel as a tale about the dangers and the double-edged sword of knowledge. Johnson explores the dark sides of our wants, our needs, our aspirations to more. She enlightens us with this deep comprehension of the human psyche and questions us during the whole: are we our own downfalls?

I hope she died trying to take a piece of something that wasn’t hers. I hope she died trying because my mother always said that was how I was going to go, so her mother probably did to.

Johnson’s writing style is so neat and sharp, it is the kind of writing that could puncture your heart and your ribs. There is this dense understanding of her own character’s motivations and behaviors that make every sentence hit you. In its sobriety, The Space Between Worlds carries power and every word undo you. I don’t know how to convey the strength of her writing skills. Every word is crystal clear and they carry weight and meanings. Micaiah Johnson jungles with parallels and echos in her narrative crafting which is kind of on-brand for a book dealing with parallel worlds, but she never prioritizes the matter and the plot over the emotions and her characters’ rawness. This book is so much more intelligent than I’ll ever be and I’m grateful for it because I know that when I will come back to it for a reread, there will be a lot of things to look at, things I did not notice during my first reading. There are so many layers to this literary object and this is the essence of a masterfully-crafted sci-fi book.

I love sci-fi because sci-fi exists alongside humanity: it is a means to study humanity through the progression and the challenges of science and to explore the intense duality of men and machines. However, most of the time, humans and characters are pawns to the complex science-fiction concept introduced. Their humanity is used as a counterpoint, but it is not at the core of the writer’s worldbuilding. With Micaiah Johnson, humanity comes first. People come first. And what a delight to witness Caramenta learning her own humanity, learning she is allowed to feel and to be besides survival and ambition.

The characters are also what makes this book stands out for me. I’m repeating myself but I’m really weak in the knees for a book whose red thread is love. Books whose culminant point is love, not especially a romantic one but the one we are always seeking out and missing as human beings. The pacing made time for characterizations, for interactions, and for relationships development. I loved to read about the bond between Cara and her sister, Esther, the Ruralites’ princess. Every character, no matter if they are secondary or main characters, are full-fleshed and three-dimensional, and even though it should be something required in every book, it was so good. Characters pull you in the story, it makes you care and it makes you on the edge at every moment.

In the divine plan, every union must end with separation. Whether it was now, twenty years ago, or twenty years in the future, you were always going to lose her. We are pilgrims at an inn. When we leave is immaterial, because we are only meant to leave.

Every part of the book opens with a discussion of the Space Between Worlds’ lore, opposing scientists, and religious. It was really interesting to see it because faith has an as important role in Cara’s narrative arc as science, and it was really powerful and heartwarming to see religion discussed and portrayed in the book. To see Cara who is a character driven by death (the fear and the apparent inevitability of her own as well as the ones of her alternate selves) comes to peace with death, and owning her grief, but also to thrive in the way Ashtown and Ruralites treat their deads with rituals and faith and life, was striking.

The worldbuilding is amazing. It left me gasping. At first, it was really hard to keep tracks of every world Cara visited and of their discrepancies with Earth-Zero (where our protagonists come from) but it was such a genius way to build an ever-expanding world and to completely flesh-out characters. Indeed, can you really know someone until you’ve discovered what they could have become under other circumstances? I loved how time travel allowed us a better understanding of Esther, Mr. Cheeks, Michael but also of Cara’s herself. Alternate universes in this book are tools to help Cara face and heals from her traumas. Our better understanding and our discoveries of characters’ new facets like Nik Nik are paralleled by those of Cara’s who heals beyond her abusive relationship. Nik despite being abusive and violent is also a character who can be compassionate and good and it was really interesting to see morally-complex characters evolve without being whole-heartedly redeemed. Multiverse travels are the perfect sci-fi elements to create multidimensional, well-rounded characters with flaws without info-dumping on the readers and I found it really great. Thus, it allows us to meet complex and layered characters such as the cunning Adam Bosch on whom is cast a new light through multiverse travel.

I’m also digressing here, but I really want to mention I loved the way sex workers were portrayed through The House. It was really great to see sex work revalorized as a powerful institution, and a humanizing one, when we compared to our society and the images that mainstream media tends to spread of sex work, which is often dismissed and shame. In The Space Between Worlds, sex workers are respected members of the Ashtown community, and they are valued. I loved how through Cara’s mental health, Johnson draws a parallel between sex work and therapy, highlighting the fact that this is not always about sex or even bodies but about human contact and the whole idea of being cared for with concern and consent.

I want this review to stay as spoiler-free as possible, but I really want to talk about what drove me to tears at the end of the book. Cara’s arc did. I’m so grateful for authors who let their characters not only grow but thrive, without using shock value and unnecessary death. There is a more compelling way to make evolve a character than by putting them in harm’s way. Seeing characters reach peace and a sense of belonging is something that will always move me to tears as someone with traumas and deeply-rooted abandonment issues.

And when I was called to this Earth, yours was the first face I saw and I wanted you

Now off to the part of this review that will be the least professional: Dell and Cara. I’ve never read a book with this amount of YEARNING. It is the most intense relationship I’ve ever read about and the slow-burn was killing me. Dell is Cara’s watcher, the one who looks after her as she traverses between worlds. Except Dell is a wealthy Wileyites whereas Cara’s comes from Ashtown and is persuaded the girl she is madly in love with will never look her way because of her social status. The Angst. The Flavor. I cannot dive too much into what makes their relationship so special and so unique without giving away plot-twists and things that could dull your reading experience, but let me tell you: appearances are not what they seem and it was such an honor to lose my sleep over what first appeared to be the most tragic unrequited love story, only for it to become everything. Also, shout-out to Cara’s gay self trying to relate every situation and every thought to Dell in any way possible.

I wanted more of them and I would be, personally, very happy with a sequel filled only of domestic Caradell content. Their banter was gold, they deserve everything. To see them coming back to each other over and over, in the end, was so satisfying and gratifying even though their relationship and the sheer angst of miscommunication (here, masterfully executed as I generally despise this trope, because there are good spoilery reasons for this lack of proper communication) made me want from time to time jump into a supernova. They are soulmates and you will never see me stop screaming about them.

With this novel, Micaiah Johnson became an immediate new auto-buy author and I cannot wait for more poetic and striking books written by her.

It’s a morbid comfort, but still a comfort, to know that even on the wrong Earth someone carries your name.

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Have you read The Space Between Worlds? Did you love it? What are your favorites elements about this book? Also, who are the best literary soulmates and why is it Cara and Dell?

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