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A review by podanotherjessi
Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson
4.75
This book picks up 10 or so years after the end of The Space Between Worlds. (I don't know where I heard this was more of a companion or a prequel, but that's wrong. It's definitely a sequel. You could definitely read it without having read the first and it would work as a standalone, but you'll get a lot more out of it reading in order.)
We follow Mr. Scales, a runner under the brutal leader of Ashtown NikNik. She's loyal, but she also has a secret - one only she and NikNik know. And she's present when one of her close friends dies gruesomely with seeming no cause at the exact same time as several people within the walls of Wiley City. She and the other runners must find the cause and then the solution, no matter how distasteful it may be.
This book puts you in the place of the villains from the previous novel and forces you to find sympathy for them. I never fully agreed with their methods or Scales's justifications, but I found myself grappling with questions of whether ends justify means way more than I expected. It's a book about community - healing and rehabilitation being most prominent among them. It's about trauma. And, continuing on from the last book, it's about privilege and how those who have been denied it may not be able to respond peacefully.
This book is much angrier than the last one. Johnson has a wonderful forward explaining how she wrote it at the height of protests over racial injustices and the value anger can have. It took me a while as I was reading to settle into that anger and embrace it, but Scales is an incredible character to follow. It was really illuminating to see this world through her eyes because she sees things very differently from Cara.
We follow Mr. Scales, a runner under the brutal leader of Ashtown NikNik. She's loyal, but she also has a secret - one only she and NikNik know. And she's present when one of her close friends dies gruesomely with seeming no cause at the exact same time as several people within the walls of Wiley City. She and the other runners must find the cause and then the solution, no matter how distasteful it may be.
This book puts you in the place of the villains from the previous novel and forces you to find sympathy for them. I never fully agreed with their methods or Scales's justifications, but I found myself grappling with questions of whether ends justify means way more than I expected. It's a book about community - healing and rehabilitation being most prominent among them. It's about trauma. And, continuing on from the last book, it's about privilege and how those who have been denied it may not be able to respond peacefully.
This book is much angrier than the last one. Johnson has a wonderful forward explaining how she wrote it at the height of protests over racial injustices and the value anger can have. It took me a while as I was reading to settle into that anger and embrace it, but Scales is an incredible character to follow. It was really illuminating to see this world through her eyes because she sees things very differently from Cara.