space between worlds

I'm pretty sure this book came from the book sale at my local library. It didn't seem like anyone had even opened it when I picked it up (for a dollar or two!) so I assume it was a gift or something. you missed out, bro! Micaiah Johnson is a young author from the desert west, and The Space Between Worlds is her first book, from 2020. She has a new one out now, which is called Those Beyond the Wall.

Sci Fi is one of my go-tos but I don't often get the chance to read something new and great, and this was both. Johnson has created an alternative world, which may be in our future, or it may be in an alternate universe, very similar to ours. And we aren't alone. Johnson's protagonist, Cara, is a bridge between the world of poverty and oppression she was born into, and the shining white city on a hill where she is currently employed. She is also the bridge between the infinite worlds of the multiverse, playing the various versions of people and places that exist in each, but only tuned to a different frequency, Cara finds that she can learn from, borrow from, and interact with different versions of the people she knows, weaving their frequencies together in a song only she can hear, discordant though it may be.

There is also conflict within Cara, between the two parts of herself that struggle with wanting to be true to her roots in poverty, while striving to become accepted in the city she works in. To complicate her struggle, their are people she loves in both worlds, people she both wants to be with, and not disappoint.

The interplay and layers of realities and relationships, and how Cara finds her way between and around them, is what makes this story work so well. Classicism and prejudice are more ingrained, more ineradicable, in this world. And because that is so, its all the more grating and ruinous. The peoples that populate this world take it for granted; its a given, and that starkness is both an unflattering mirror of our own world, and heartbreaking in its despair. 

Johnson has created a world that is both hard to look at, and too beautiful to ignore, peopled by characters with similar qualities. I enjoyed this all the way through. Good for you Micaiah Johnson. 

Read this book.