Synopsis
An outsider who can travel between worlds
discovers a secret that threatens her new home and her fragile
place in it, in a stunning sci-fi debut that’s both a
cross-dimensional adventure and a powerful examination of identity,
privilege, and belonging.
Multiverse travel is finally
possible, but there’s just one catch: No one can visit a world
where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel
selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying—from disease,
turf wars, or vendettas they couldn’t outrun. Cara’s life has
been cut short on 372 worlds in total.
On this Earth,
however, Cara has survived. Identified as an outlier and therefore
a perfect candidate for multiverse travel, Cara is plucked from the
dirt of the wastelands. Now she has a nice apartment on the lower
levels of the wealthy and walled-off Wiley City. She works—and
shamelessly flirts—with her enticing yet aloof handler, Dell, as
the two women collect off-world data for the Eldridge Institute.
She even occasionally leaves the city to visit her family in the
wastes, though she struggles to feel at home in either place. So
long as she can keep her head down and avoid trouble, Cara is on a
sure path to citizenship and security.
But trouble finds
Cara when one of her eight remaining doppelgängers dies under
mysterious circumstances, plunging her into a new world with an old
secret. What she discovers will connect her past and her future in
ways she could have never imagined—and reveal her own role in a
plot that endangers not just her world, but the entire multiverse.
Review
This book is incredibly complex. Melding multiverse travel with allusions to race, class and privilege, there are so many layers to this novel that on skimming it, it's best parts go unacknowledged.
While sci-fi is a genre I'd typically visit for escapism, Johnson doesn't shy from making parallels between Earth Zero and our known world. Reading in lockdown, in a period where the pandemic has exacerbated divisions between rich and poor, whiteness and blackness, mobility and generational poverty, The Space Between Worlds made for sobering reading. Especially on reflection when I realise I don't think I have ever read a sci-fi novel which melds the contemporary ails of our time in such a multifaceted way
Some of the passages, especially when Cara describes the passage of time and what it feels like to traverse are stunning and the world building is immense. My only gripe was with some of the character names, which seemed strangely out of place. I couldn't help but draw spongebob comparisons whenever Mr Cheeks appeared, no matter how menacing he was.
Overall, The Space Between Worlds packs plenty of heart and emotion into an story of multiverse travel compounded by a legacy of inequality.
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