Scan barcode
looseleafellie's review
dark
reflective
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Cara works at a company that sends people to alternate universes to collect data. You can only travel to universes where you’re dead, so Cara is the ideal candidate for multiverse travel. But when one of her few living alternate selves dies mysteriously, Cara begins to unravel a conspiracy that threatens the multiverse.
My favorite book is This Is How You Lose the Time War, and I picked up The Space Between Worlds because it seemed similar. It’s a short-ish sci-fi book with alternate universes, sapphic yearning, and evil organizations to thwart.
However, The Space Between Worlds is more character-focused and contained. I loved how none of the characters — including Cara — are all good or all bad, especially when their alternate selves come into play. The book explores how your background and relative privilege can shape your personality and motivations, even if you’re technically the same person, which was very interesting. The romantic tension between Cara and Dell weaves throughout, but as a side plot to the main story.
Even in 330-ish pages, the world drew me in. The setting is grounded in the neighboring cities of Ashtown and Wiley City: one an impoverished community of survivors, the other a high-tech utopia (for those who have citizenship). While I expected a wider scale, the focused setting strengthened the book by allowing for exploration of the themes in a confined space.
One drawback of the short length is I found the ending a bit rushed. When I had 30 pages left, I thought, “they have to end all this in 30 pages?” I still enjoyed the ending, but would have liked extra time to sit in the emotions and feel things out more.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and I think it’s great for fans of This Is How You Lose the Time War — or people who like character-focused stories about alternate universes in general.
CWs: Gore, violence, death, domestic abuse, classism, and mentions of drug addiction, homophobia, child neglect, and suicide.
My favorite book is This Is How You Lose the Time War, and I picked up The Space Between Worlds because it seemed similar. It’s a short-ish sci-fi book with alternate universes, sapphic yearning, and evil organizations to thwart.
However, The Space Between Worlds is more character-focused and contained. I loved how none of the characters — including Cara — are all good or all bad, especially when their alternate selves come into play. The book explores how your background and relative privilege can shape your personality and motivations, even if you’re technically the same person, which was very interesting. The romantic tension between Cara and Dell weaves throughout, but as a side plot to the main story.
Even in 330-ish pages, the world drew me in. The setting is grounded in the neighboring cities of Ashtown and Wiley City: one an impoverished community of survivors, the other a high-tech utopia (for those who have citizenship). While I expected a wider scale, the focused setting strengthened the book by allowing for exploration of the themes in a confined space.
One drawback of the short length is I found the ending a bit rushed. When I had 30 pages left, I thought, “they have to end all this in 30 pages?” I still enjoyed the ending, but would have liked extra time to sit in the emotions and feel things out more.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and I think it’s great for fans of This Is How You Lose the Time War — or people who like character-focused stories about alternate universes in general.
CWs: Gore, violence, death, domestic abuse, classism, and mentions of drug addiction, homophobia, child neglect, and suicide.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, Blood, and Gore
Moderate: Domestic abuse and Classism
Minor: Drug abuse, Homophobia, Child abuse, and Suicide
nquinlan's review against another edition
dark
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Violence, Abandonment, and Physical abuse
Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Drug abuse, Drug use, Death of parent, and Classism
Minor: War
whichwitch's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Violence, Physical abuse, and Blood
Minor: Drug abuse and Suicide
genizah's review against another edition
adventurous
fast-paced
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence and Domestic abuse
Moderate: Death of parent
Minor: Homophobia and Drug abuse
emily_mh's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
This was SO GOOD. So many people have loved this book and I really hoped I could be one of them, and I am! It has such such a great combination of plot, character, and theme, and the writing style was great: it was filled with some wry observations that either make you see things in a new light or perfectly put into words how you might already think about something.
The story was gripping right from the off. It’s the kind of plot where you don’t really know where things are going to go, but not at all in a bad way. There are intriguing twists and some great pacing. I will say that the ending felt a little rushed, though.
I really liked the MC Cara, who embodied the reluctant hero trope. She goes through ethical dilemmas throughout the book, torn between self-preservation and her moral compass. It was interesting seeing her perspective on these dilemmas, seeing the thought process behind her actions. Moreover, in Cara (and other characters) we see a key theme played out: how different circumstances (as seen on alternate Earths) can lead someone to become a different person. Cara gets to observe how one event happening, or not happening, could have impacted her character. And through this Cara questions if the opposite cannot also be true, that is, if different circumstances can have no impact on a person’s development, because there are people and situations we will always be drawn to due to our nature. This was really fascinating to think about.
Another great theme was this idea of “the space between worlds”, an idea that crops up in so many places within the novel. For example, it is a physical liminal space when Cara is traversing, but it is also the space which Cara occupies as an Ashtown-born person working in Wiley City. The theme embodies how Cara feels more at home in the space between worlds than she does on said worlds themselves.
I also thought the romance was a great touch. I loved the mutual pining and how oblivious Cara was with the whole thing. I do wish I had gotten more of an idea as to why Cara and Dell were attracted to one another; we are shown that they are, but I wanted to know the why.
Overall this was a fantastic read and I’m excited for the potential companion novel!
Rep: Black sapphic MC, Japanese-American sapphic LI, Ivorian-American SC
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, and Murder
Moderate: Death of parent, Gore, Racism, Drug abuse, Body horror, Drug use, and Addiction
Minor: War, Child abuse, Sexual content, Colonisation, Suicide, Gun violence, Religious bigotry, Body shaming, Medical content, Miscarriage, Vomit, Ableism, Pedophilia, Emotional abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Homophobia, Transphobia, Terminal illness, Rape, Fire/Fire injury, and Blood
Minor: nuclear warfare, volcanofin_pilot's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Violence, Physical abuse, Domestic abuse, and Deportation
Moderate: Gore, Classism, and Drug abuse
Minor: Racism
kristenreads's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Physical abuse and Death
Minor: Drug abuse and Drug use
trips's review
adventurous
dark
informative
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This book has an amazing premise that really hooked me in. The prose is beautiful and the worldbuilding is fantastic. Multiverse traversing is possible, and offers a variety of desirable information to gather from the multiple worlds. But the catch, you can't traverse to a world and survive if your counterpart on that world is alive. So people are hired as traversers who were born in, to put it bluntly, conditions where survival is bleak, because their counterparts are most often dead in many of the other worlds.
The first 50% of this book is a great read, I couldn't put it down. Unfortunately, I can't say as much towards the second half. The plot begins to meander as you can tell where the story is going and things get much slower.
It was also frustrating that there was what I was hoping to be a compelling relationship between Cara and Dell, but I personally didn't feel like got touched on enough. Cara thinks about Dell a lot but Dell isn't actually present with Cara all that much, so I didn't really feel the connection or chemistry between the two.
Overall this story has extremely interesting concepts in a world I'd be happy to revisit, it just fell flat for me in a few area. I would certainly look out for this authors next book!
The first 50% of this book is a great read, I couldn't put it down. Unfortunately, I can't say as much towards the second half. The plot begins to meander as you can tell where the story is going and things get much slower.
It was also frustrating that there was what I was hoping to be a compelling relationship between Cara and Dell, but I personally didn't feel like got touched on enough. Cara thinks about Dell a lot but Dell isn't actually present with Cara all that much, so I didn't really feel the connection or chemistry between the two.
Overall this story has extremely interesting concepts in a world I'd be happy to revisit, it just fell flat for me in a few area. I would certainly look out for this authors next book!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, and Violence
Moderate: Murder and Toxic relationship
Minor: Drug abuse
oriana095's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Murder, Violence, and Domestic abuse
Moderate: Physical abuse and Toxic relationship
Minor: Drug abuse, Addiction, and Child death
bookishwondergoth's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This wasn’t at all what I expected, but in a good way. I thought I was going to get a load of cool spacey world-hopping stuff. Whilst there was a little of that, it was mostly a really thought provoking examination of things like race, class, poverty, assimilation, code-switching and social mobility. Also Mad Max.
Cara is an excellent, flawed and deeply determined main character and I couldn’t help but root for her. She quite literally inhabits the space between worlds, not just by jumping between them, but also the city of Wiley and all its light-skinned, privileged wealthy inhabitants, and the darker-skinned, poorer inhabitants of Ashtown. Her confusion, guilt, disgust, pride and internalised classism is extremely well done; you can absolutely tell Micaiah Johnson studies this stuff, both at actual university and the university of life too.
All of the side characters, including the antagonists, were also really excellent.
The reason why I’ve rated this book 3/5 stars instead of 4/5 is that as a story, I was less interested in what was happening. It wasn’t exactly a struggle to read but I did still find it a little boring. And although there was a canonical reason as to why the worlds were all so similar, I would dearly have loved to see more unique worlds, and more numerous worlds on page in general. We primarily hang out on Earth 0 and Earth 175. Though Cara travels to other worlds, we don’t see much of her actually in them.
Overall this is a solid standalone about those who traverse worlds both in a science-fiction sense, and in a literal, social-mobility sense.
Cara is an excellent, flawed and deeply determined main character and I couldn’t help but root for her. She quite literally inhabits the space between worlds, not just by jumping between them, but also the city of Wiley and all its light-skinned, privileged wealthy inhabitants, and the darker-skinned, poorer inhabitants of Ashtown. Her confusion, guilt, disgust, pride and internalised classism is extremely well done; you can absolutely tell Micaiah Johnson studies this stuff, both at actual university and the university of life too.
All of the side characters, including the antagonists, were also really excellent.
The reason why I’ve rated this book 3/5 stars instead of 4/5 is that as a story, I was less interested in what was happening. It wasn’t exactly a struggle to read but I did still find it a little boring. And although there was a canonical reason as to why the worlds were all so similar, I would dearly have loved to see more unique worlds, and more numerous worlds on page in general. We primarily hang out on Earth 0 and Earth 175. Though Cara travels to other worlds, we don’t see much of her actually in them.
Overall this is a solid standalone about those who traverse worlds both in a science-fiction sense, and in a literal, social-mobility sense.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Death, Panic attacks/disorders, Death of parent, Grief, Classism, Violence, and Murder
Moderate: Abandonment, Drug abuse, Gore, Addiction, and Gaslighting
Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Gun violence, Terminal illness, and Infidelity