Back in May, I wrote about interdimensional travel in The Long Earth, which was triggered by reading another book about parallel worlds – The Space Between Worlds, by Micaiah Johnson. The basic premise to interdimensional travel in that book is that you can only travel to worlds where the parallel version of you is no longer alive, which results in the recruitment of people living on the edge of society, as they’re less likely to have stayed alive across the various worlds. This review was originally published in the August 1, 2020 issue of Booklist.
Micaiah Johnson makes her debut in science fiction with The Space Between Worlds, exploring parallel universes through Cara’s eyes. Cara is a traverser, a member of an exclusive team that can travel across the multiverse, but only to worlds where she has already died. Cara’s former life was in the wastelands outside Wiley City, where each day was a struggle to survive the runners and the environment; she still visits her family there periodically. In her new life, she travels to similar worlds to retrieve information for her employer, the Eldridge Institute, which they use to mine resources across the multiverse, allowing the environment of the local wastelands some recovery time. When a new world opens up to Cara, her life comes crashing down as the striking similarities between her multiple lives converge. Cara must draw from her experience across the multiverse, and navigate the mess her relationships have become in meeting multiple variations of friends and enemies. As her current and former lives become hopelessly entangled, Cara makes life-altering decisions that affect her and those around her.