BOOK REVIEW: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson is an original, unique debut novel about love, family, identity, destiny, multiple universes, societal collapse, and climate change. It’s in a genre that I would call “science fantasy” since it involves science fiction ideas like travel between worlds and the devastating effects of climate change as well as fantasy tropes like a goddess named Nyame who lives in the space between the worlds and the devolution of human society into multiple task-centered tribes.

The main character in The Space Between Worlds is Cara (usually short for Caramenta), a lesbian from a downtrodden part of the world called Ashtown. Cara is a “traverser,” someone who can travel between the 380 known copies of our Earth that can be accessed in the multiverse using technology which is basically akin to magic. Of course there are an infinite number of alternate Earths but we can only visit this arbitrary number because that’s how many we can detect that “resonate” with ours. Climate change and societal collapse have devastated our Earth so we use our access to these other Earth to supplement our access to resources. Human beings can only travel from one earth to another if on the earth they travel to their doppelgänger is dead. So, people who grow up in circumstances that make their survival very unlikely (i.e. they are most likely dead on the other Earth) are now incredibly valuable. Cara is dead on all but eight other Earths so there’s a lot of traversing that she can do safely from our world to 372 others. This makes her one of the most desirable traversers. The reason Cara is dead on so many Earths is that she’s the daughter of a drug-addicted mom and eventually became the paramour of Adranik, the violent emperor of Ashtown. However on our earth, referred to as Earth 0, Cara lives in the palatial Wiley City and works for the Eldridge Institute, whose brilliant but probably psychotic founder figured out the “technology” to send people between worlds. All we know is that when Cara is in the space between worlds she senses the presence of a godlike figure that traversers call Nyame and  when she wakes up after having travelled (the process involves loses consciousness) she has painful bruises all over her body.

The worlds that Johnson have created in The Space Between Worlds are all impacted by end-stage capitalism (Cara is only a resident of Wiley City because of her employment with Eldridge. She is eligible for citizenship in four years, but if she loses her job before then, she can be deported all the way back to the slum of Ashtown.); rampant climate change (outside of Wiley City, clean food and water are scarce, the air is metallic and on “bright days” the sun is literally strong enough to blind and burn you); and societal collapse (Cara’s adopted family have their own church, there’s another tribe or guild for sex workers called the House, and another for assassins called the Runners).

Ultimately the effectiveness of the book is sourced in the issues it raises about identity, family and love. Cara is in love with her “handler,” a woman named Dell who is a citizen of Wiley City and who has long-standing family wealth. The sinusoidal nature of the strength and intimacy of their relationship is one of the central plot points. Another main idea, which is likely to be more compelling to some readers, is the question of identity and the nature of destiny. Cara interacts with various people in her life on multiple versions of Earth, so she’s aware that her destiny is/was often death, but she also sees the same people, even those she thinks she knows intimately, having subtly different (and sometimes disturbingly similar) personalities and possibilities on different Earths. This raises the centrality of the question of destiny: are our futures predestined regardless of minor differences between scenarios? Do relationships outlast different realities? Can people change?

In some sense, The Space Between Worlds is a time-travel story. It’s contours and have the same shape of coexisting possibilities branching off from a single reality as a result of the ability to travel between Earths existing in the multiverse. Overall, I was impressed by the complexity and creativity of this debut more then I was enthralled by it. Apart from Cara, I didn’t really care what happened to the other characters, even the ones that Cara cared about. I feel like the setting of the story was more interesting than the plot occurring in it and I would have been interested in another plot imbedded in the same world (or worlds). As a science fiction book it barely works due to the paucity of included scientific elements. However, as a work of speculative fiction it is very effective, as the questions of how our world could have devolved into Cara’s Earth 0 are compelling. It’s clear that Micaiah Johnson is an author to watch and I will be paying attention to what she writes next.

Title: The Space Between Worlds.
Author: Micaiah Johnson.
Format: Kindle.
Format: 322 pages.
Publisher: Del Rey.
Date Published: August 4, 2020.
Date Read: February 20, 2021.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★☆  (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: B+ (3.33/4.0).

PLOT: B.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: B+.