The Space Between Worlds

unique, complex and stunning sci-fi masterpiece

Bewertung am 07.04.2025
Bewertungsnummer: 2460002
Bewertet: Buch (Taschenbuch)

"Maybe I’m not the only one who feels the tugs of my other lives. Maybe they hover over us, steering us, constantly." Caramenta has died in almost every world that there is in the multiverse. This makes her perfect for worldwalking (collecting data from those other worlds), because you can only travel to another world if you have died there. When Cara gets sent to Earth 175, she makes a multiverse-changing discovery. The complexity in this book is simply incomparable to every other book I've read so far. This book is not only great in a science fiction way, it also covered a lot of social criticism and even included a queer love story. And (as you can see), the quotes in this book are deeply moving and made me read it in a completely new way. Especially outstanding was the amount of plot-twists in this book. Every 50 pages, I was wondering how this book could possibly still go on and how the protagonist will get out of this. I think the following quote is the best way to summarize the core of this book. "I alone survive... again."

Multiverse adventure & sapphic characters

Bewertung am 22.01.2023
Bewertungsnummer: 1865014
Bewertet: Buch (Gebundene Ausgabe)

So, I may have to put Micaiah Johnson on my auto-buy list. In The Space Between Worlds travel within the multiverse has become a reality. The clou? You have to be dead in the world you enter. Since most of Cara’s other selves have died, she is a valuable asset to the ambitious company making it all possible. Her plan is to keep a low profile and eventually gain citizenship in a city that treats its citizens with the utmost care and outsiders as expendable. But as with all things capitalist and rich - there‘s trouble brewing. Let’s be honest, there was no way I wasn’t going to like this: the multiverse, sapphic characters including an mspec one, a snarky heroine … especially the last part had me cackling in scenes I probably shouldn’t have laughed in. I was still surprised by how much I liked it. A) it was a lot quieter than I expected from the premise, focusing a lot on topics like classism, and belonging. B) it had an extremely good start, repeatedly catching you off-guard and pulling the story into a very different direction than you originally thought. Unfortunately, I don’t think the strong start managed to follow through until the end - it fell a bit flat for me, everything being a little bit too smooth after a certain point. Still a great read, and I‘m excited for the companion novel(?) the author’s working on! On more thing: Since humans need certain conditions to survive, they only travel to worlds similar to theirs in this book. So we meet a lot of variants of characters, but not ones where they’re stones or something. (If you’re interested in *that* story, please watch Everything Everwhere All At Once. Also highly recommended. The stones will make you cry.) CN: physical abuse incl. domestic abuse, murder, gore (not generally throughout the story but people travelling to worlds where their other selves still live die a gruesome death)