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A review by abby_ace_of_books
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
4.0
Once again, a book has fallen victim to not meeting Abby's extremely high expectations, and it's not the book's fault.
I picked up The Space Between Worlds because I thought it was a multiverse murder mystery and it sounded super cool. As it turns out, I just assumed it was a murder mystery based on the description and then got mad when it wasn't, so my opinion on this book isn't completely fair and I'm going to try to be as unbiased as I can because of that.
I haven't really read multiverse books before, so I was a bit scared going into it but the worldbuilding was actually fairly easy to follow. There are infinite universes, yes, but only 380 or so are similar enough to Earth 0 to be traveled to, and only if a person is dead in the universe they want to visit. The book mainly takes place in Earth 0 and Earth 175 (although there is backstory in 22). Most of Cara's other selves are dead and I assumed she would be trying to figure out why, but instead, it was mostly political rivalries and corruption within the company. The story had potential and the worldbuilding was cool, but it felt very slow to me and I also found the ending to be unsatisfying. The problems are sort of resolved, but it just felt like a lot of build-up for something that never came.
I also had mixed feelings about the characters. Cara is a very stubborn main character and I thought her backstory was very neat, but I didn't love her personality at times. As a "sorta" love interest, I found Dell to be a bit bland just because she was so aloof and we didn't get a reason until almost 30 pages from the end. There were also 8 different "Niks": Two Senior Niks, three Nik Niks, and 3 Adraniks (except one has a different name). Admittedly, I think the Adranik and Nik Nik dynamics between each universe were probably my favorite part because there was a fair amount of tension behind each introduction to a new character because I had no idea if I could trust them or not.
I think that The Space Between Worlds is a neat sci-fi book, but personally, I don't know if it was for me.
3.5/5
I picked up The Space Between Worlds because I thought it was a multiverse murder mystery and it sounded super cool. As it turns out, I just assumed it was a murder mystery based on the description and then got mad when it wasn't, so my opinion on this book isn't completely fair and I'm going to try to be as unbiased as I can because of that.
I haven't really read multiverse books before, so I was a bit scared going into it but the worldbuilding was actually fairly easy to follow. There are infinite universes, yes, but only 380 or so are similar enough to Earth 0 to be traveled to, and only if a person is dead in the universe they want to visit. The book mainly takes place in Earth 0 and Earth 175 (although there is backstory in 22). Most of Cara's other selves are dead and I assumed she would be trying to figure out why, but instead, it was mostly political rivalries and corruption within the company. The story had potential and the worldbuilding was cool, but it felt very slow to me and I also found the ending to be unsatisfying. The problems are sort of resolved, but it just felt like a lot of build-up for something that never came.
I also had mixed feelings about the characters. Cara is a very stubborn main character and I thought her backstory was very neat, but I didn't love her personality at times. As a "sorta" love interest, I found Dell to be a bit bland just because she was so aloof and we didn't get a reason until almost 30 pages from the end. There were also 8 different "Niks": Two Senior Niks, three Nik Niks, and 3 Adraniks (except one has a different name). Admittedly, I think the Adranik and Nik Nik dynamics between each universe were probably my favorite part because there was a fair amount of tension behind each introduction to a new character because I had no idea if I could trust them or not.
I think that The Space Between Worlds is a neat sci-fi book, but personally, I don't know if it was for me.
3.5/5