Reviews with content warning for Murder - The Space Between Worlds

Reviews tagging 'Murder'

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

98 reviews

scenic92's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious 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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bookishwondergoth's review against another edition

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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.

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esimons18's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-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

3.75

Really enjoyed this read! The first 100 or so pages were slow, a lot of setting the stage, but then by part 3 I was hooked.

Awesome plot/concept!
Some characters lacked substance, despite their relevance
Queer love interest
Dystopian classism

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traa's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging sad tense fast-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

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jferguson1138's review

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious 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

4.5

4.5 ⭐️
The book is set in a post apocalyptic world broken up into city states of haves and have-nots. Cara is a traverser, someone who travels across multiverses to gather data and resources. The big restriction on that travel is you can only travel across worlds if your other self in that world has already died. This being a post apocalyptic setting, she’s found a number of dark ways to die and is able to traverse into most worlds.

This book goes places with this dark take on the multiverse. There are loads of moments where you think this is just gonna go off a completely dark cliff, but honestly it was kept… tastefully dark. Murders with a code of honor type thing.

There is a ton of character development all over the place and I found the ending able to tie together all the strings better than I expected. It was a really solid book. Nicole Lewis did a really good job narrating the audiobook, giving personality and nuance to characters.

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blackcatkai's review

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

CW: Body horror, Murder, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Classism, Blood, Medical content, Addiction, Death of parent, Toxic relationships, Suicide, Grief

me: i dont like time travel
book: how about parallel universes?
me: .... go on

seriously, i didnt know how i was going to feel about this book going in as scifi is really not my go-to genre but i kept seeing it around and then my spouse told me how good it was so i finally gave it a try. and oh did Micaiah Johnson have me ENTHRALLED. this was fun, funny, shocking, stressful, and just wonderful. the pacing was just a smidge bit off for me in parts, but i am so glad i read it and i absolutely will read the next book when it comes out, thank you.

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