The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
(Hodder & Stoughton, 2022)
Reviewed by Jamie Mollart
The Space Between Worlds was a Sunday Times bestseller, the winner of the Kitschies Golden Tentacle award and a New York Times Book review editor’s choice, so the question I asked myself as I settled down to read it was ‘does it live up to the hype?’.
Firstly, it doesn’t feel like the sort of book that gets this sort of fanfare. The blurb suggests space opera and deep sci-fi, but it is far from that. It’s actually an intimate novel with a small cast, exploring identity, class and family. It might be set in effectively a high concept situation, but the situation is the background, not the driving force.
I like cerebral, character driven sci-fi, it’s my thing, so this mis-selling made the actuality of the novel a pleasant surprise for me rather than a disappointment. The log line is ‘380 realities, 8 chances for survival’ and it’s fundamentally misleading as to what book you’re going to get. It’s not the pacy sci-fi thriller this seems to suggest; it’s something much smaller and tighter than that.
In our future the Multiverse is real and is being exploited by the Eldridge Institute of Earth Zero, who are sending ‘traversers’ into the other versions of Earth to bring things back to enrich their version. Cara is one of these traversers, a select group of people who can travel to alternative realities. The rules of the multiverse only allow you to travel to versions of Earth in which ‘you’ have already died and Cara has conveniently died in most of them.
The future Earth we see is limited to two places: Ash Town and Wiley City. Wiley City is the aspirational capitalist dream where the ‘haves’ live, Ash Town is the burnt-out ghetto of the ‘have-nots.’ And at the core of the novel is the contrast between the rulers of the two. Ash Town has the enigmatic, but sinister emperor, Nik Nik, fighting ruthlessly to control his domain and better himself through violence. Wiley Town has the charismatic tech CEO Adam Bosch, the counterpoint to Nik Nik and the discoverer of the Multiverse.
When Cara is sent to a version of Earth on which a revolution is taking place, she begins to realise the narrative that Eldridge is selling is not entirely true.
There is much to love about this book: a strong, bisexual protagonist of colour; a multi-layered discussion on identity encompassing sexuality, colour, class and more; a taut narrative with a compelling authorial voice; a discussion on the allure of money and power to downtrodden and poor; the need for survival versus the desire for power; the dissection of family, particularly sibling relationships; all with the added complexity of different versions of the same characters across the multiverse.
There is a real swagger and energy about the writing; it feels like she enjoyed writing it, making this a very assured debut novel.
The characterisation is strong and in particular there is a wonderful dynamic in the relationship between Cara and Del, her handler. I found myself genuinely rooting for them and hoping they could overcome the barriers in their way in order to be together.
The slight niggle I have is that the potential of the multiverse is never really fully exploited. The fact that there are 8 places she can go is almost superfluous as most of the novel takes place in two variants of Earth. There's so much more potential with multiple Nik Niks and multiple Adams that feel like it could have been explored without expanding into the space opera that she clearly wants to avoid, that I wonder whether she intends to revisit the world she’s built, maybe through the eyes of other characters? And I have to say on the basis of this novel, I’d happily revisit it with her.
Review from BSFA Review 18 - Download your copy here.