Reviews tagging 'Racism'

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

45 reviews

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

allindjesste's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

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

3.5

I read this book for a book club that I was in, and I found it to be a fascinating read. Not my favorite by any means, but I find the concept of turning something as aspirational as dimension traveling into grunt work for the poor that (mild spoilers)

the rich are actively trying to replace

to be deeply interesting. It's one of the things that I love about Afrofuturism. It's important to take these concepts that we are aspiring to and consider who it is being built off of and what the consequences of that are for society at large. This book does a great job of exploring that.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Xenophobia, Classism, and Deportation

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexual violence, Violence, Police brutality, Grief, Murder, and War

Minor: Sexual content, Death of parent, and Abandonment

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

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

raptorq's review

dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• 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, Physical abuse, Racism, Violence, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Body horror

Minor: Gun violence, Suicidal thoughts, Medical content, and Cultural appropriation

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

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 

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Content Warnings

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

Moderate: Addiction, Body horror, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Racism, and Death of parent

Minor: Ableism, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Homophobia, Miscarriage, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual content, Suicide, Terminal illness, Transphobia, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Religious bigotry, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, and War

Minor: nuclear warfare, volcano

fin_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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Deportation

Moderate: Drug abuse, Gore, and Classism

Minor: Racism

larbster90's review

adventurous 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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Police brutality, Medical trauma, and Car accident

Moderate: Addiction, Drug abuse, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Death of parent, Murder, and Classism

Minor: Gun violence, Sexual content, Dysphoria, and War