Reviews tagging 'Gore'

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

38 reviews

maryellen's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense 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? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Death of parent, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

sofipitch's review

adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

5.0

Loved this book, it feels nearly perfectly put together. It has interesting allegory and metaphors, lots of actual real world commentary, occasionally beautiful prose AND has compelling characters and an interesting plot. Lots of books only manage having one of those. Cara's journey, seeing different versions of herself and other people and how it changed her is so good. It is also a book that is comfortable with uncertainty, the mentions of pushes and pulls between science and religion or even if you can predict what will happen make it so good. It is so well crafted and nuanced both in thoughts and character creation. I do wish Dell could have contributed more to the plot, she seemed a bit stuck in her role of love interest in the story and I really liked her dynamic with Cara, I wish she could have done more (given she's on the cover also lol)

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, and Classism

Minor: Gore, Violence, and Car accident

talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

adventurous dark 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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Violence, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Child abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Grief, Death of parent, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Addiction, Child death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Homophobia, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Suicide, Vomit, and War

tangleroot_eli's review

adventurous challenging emotional reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

It's only March, but the books I read for the rest of 2024 will have a hard fight to unseat this one as my favorite of the year.

Johnson's worldbuilding is exquisite. I got attached to her characters within paragraphs of their introductions. Her portrayals of classism, racism, and colonialism felt like constant gut-punches. If Spouse weren't waiting to read it before we have to return this copy to the library, I might've flipped right back to the beginning and started reading it again the moment I finished it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Murder, and Classism

Moderate: Addiction, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Gore, Homophobia, Racism, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, and Deportation

Minor: Gun violence, Miscarriage, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Kidnapping, Religious bigotry, and War

Graphic: Environmental degradation Minor: Whorephobia, Child labor

prosenheim's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective tense 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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Sexual violence, Violence, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Addiction, Child abuse, Gore, Abandonment, and Deportation

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Miscarriage, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Vomit, and Lesbophobia

thenextbookdilemma's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense 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

5.0

Where do I even start with this book?

First it stretches your mind, as I think is always the case when parallel universes are explored. This idea challenges our very existences and always throws me for a loop

I, like many of you (probably…maybe?) have considered on multiple occasions the question of, how might my life have been different if X had gone differently, or if I hadn’t met Y, or if Z had happened ? Well, Cara knows the answer to that question in 372 different worlds. 

A very brief summary: This book is about multiverse travel. A woman has died on 372 different parallel universes and thus is able to visit them and gather data for her home earth. But soon she discovers that she is involved in something far more nefarious than expected. 

I LOVED this book. The characters and all their iterations were so interesting and human. The worlds were well-developed and captivating. There were multiple plot twists and a romance subplot that I adored. The writing was beautiful and impressive especially for a debut!

But this book also makes you think about who you are, and who you could have been. 

Would I be the same person if my circumstances had been different? Johnson says no, and I agree. We are not our circumstances, but we are not unaffected by them. Who might you become if your means of survival are not provided to you? How can we judge somebody who has to fight to survive, who lacks the same amount of security as we do? Who doesn’t know where their next meal or a roof over their head is coming from? It’s a reminder that the family you are born into, the class, the race, the place, is all just luck. And that very truth can be humbling or infuriating or devastating. I loved the way Johnson wove these questions of equity and classism into a gorgeous multiverse novel and I will long think about all the Emmas I could have been or perhaps, all the different Emmas I am parallel to this one. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, and Classism

Moderate: Racism

Minor: Addiction, Child abuse, Child death, Suicide, and Lesbophobia

schnaucl's review against another edition

adventurous dark 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? It's complicated

4.0

This wasn't quite what I expected.  I was expecting it to be set on contemporary earth or maybe the near future.   That was probably my fault for making an assumption and this misalignment of expectations may have influenced how I felt about the book.

The idea that travel is limited to a few hundred worlds because otherwise they're too dissimilar to the traveler's world (and that they can start closely aligned enough for travel but become misaligned enough to make it impossible) is interesting.   And it doesn't seem tied to the particular traveler, the present circumstances of the Earth as a whole has to be pretty similar.    Consequently, most people's circumstances are pretty similar from world to world.   It's certainly different from most alternate reality books where someone tries on various lives completely different from their own (only to realize the life they'd been living was the best one all along).   It does mean that big historical moments and conditions have to be somewhat similar.  For example, just as a world with nuclear war would take itself out of alignment, so would one with much greater  equality, where some of the biggest problems have been solved. 

There's also some romance to it, the notion that the same people come together across multiple worlds.  Of course, those relationships aren't always healthy sometimes they're quite toxic.  

But mostly, of course, it's about exploiting other worlds.   Obtaining resources the prime world can't (or won't) extract on its own.    And letting things play out on other worlds so they can decide what to do (or not) on their own.   It's not quite clear how the data the travelers retrieve is gathered, but I suppose that's a minor detail.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, and Murder

lbelow's review

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

5.0

This book packs a wallop. The constant tension of the plot kept me turning the pages, watching as Caralee grappled with her emotions and learned to see people as multifaceted, as deserving of love and empathy. In so doing, she learns to see herself in the same way, to stop thinking of herself as nothing and trying to prove she is something by way of a script other people have written. The settings come alive like characters themselves, but it's the people in the book and the choices they make in different realities that gripped my heart and squeezed. I cannot wait to read more from this author because this book was next level! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Cursing, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racism, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Grief, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

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.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Violence, and Blood

Moderate: Domestic abuse and Classism

Minor: Child abuse, Drug abuse, Homophobia, and Suicide

leannanecdote's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Infidelity, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Animal death, Vomit, Trafficking, and Alcohol