Ay, no es amor... [The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson]

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.

If 90% of the story is spent trying to make me understand just how abusive one character was, how utterly cruel they were, it doesn't much help to then try and rationalize their behavior with their rough upbringing. Oh, they regularly brought you to the brink of death, but you know it's that his father was a cruel man? Ah, I understand. All is forgiven.

Micaiah Johnson's The Space Between Worlds promised an multiverse traveler uncovering a plot threatening the mode, so I expected big, conspiracy-level intrigue. But it didn't deliver. Loose sci-fi needlessly mixed with ambiguous spirituality? Did nothing for the plot. In fact what did happen was a trash character rationalizing her self-serving and obsessive behavior with a hope for some cosmic redemption. Shame, 'cause the cover was so pretty too.

The would-be romance felt underdeveloped when compared to the exposition we got for the nuances of the protagonist's relationship with her ex. Her desire, because more often than not it is describes as desire, for the co-worker reads a bit more like obsession. I didn't buy it and it felt needless. The obsession with the whiteness of the well-to-do city folk read really weird, especially to be coming from a Black female character. Routinely at that!

I thought the title would have applied more literally, but at best it most applies metaphorically. The big egregiousness that underscores the end stakes went unanswered, and maybe even forgive. All in all the book reads as some big introspective journey of self-forgiveness and realizing their are myriad choices to make, while also accepting you never change? I don't know. When I was in the story I was in it, though in the end it was a rush to nowhere. 3 stars from me.

The Space Between Worlds is set to be published August 4, 2020