Book review: THE SPACE BETWEEN WORLDS by Micaiah Johnson

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

The official blurb:

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 dystopian 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 what once made her marginalized has finally become an unexpected source of power. 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.

Why I loved this book:

The Space Between Worlds is a deeply engaging, thought-provoking book that tells a riveting story with a cast of captivating characters. While it explores some pretty common themes in speculative fiction, like travel between alternate universes and a post-apocalyptic society, what sets it apart and kept me turning the pages, are the unique angles and perspectives Johnson brings to these familiar themes. For example, the basic premise of what makes travel between worlds possible--that you can only travel to worlds where the other version of you is not alive--adds a layer of tragedy and desperation to the enterprise, and to the characters. The story's protagonist, Cara, is well aware that she did not survive in most worlds, and this knowledge impacts how she thinks about the world and herself. The rarity of her survival is what makes her singularly useful to the people she works for, but it also gives her a sense of survivor's guilt that goes even deeper than the reader initially realizes.

Cara is a fantastic protagonist, wounded and flawed, daring and capable. While she can be combative and willing to butt heads with pretty much anyone, the fact that she grew up in poverty (and with an abusive relationship as added baggage), means that she is very aware of what she stands to lose if she challenges the system. She is also refreshingly fallible. For all her strengths, she does not have it all figured out, and her miscalculations give her character a believable edge.

One huge source of tension and danger in the book, is that there are two crucially important secrets at its center: there is the terrible, deeply personal secret about herself that Cara is desperate to keep from everyone; and there is the larger secret that is being kept from her, about the nature of her work and the long-term goals of the Eldridge Institute. The way these secrets are ultimately revealed and how they influence the characters and the plot is one of the best things about the book.

Another thing I love about The Space Between Worlds, is how multiverse travel is exploited as a business by its inventor, rather than being treated as some kind of high-class science project. In the book, multiverse travel is used to collect data that can help advance the power and financial positions of people in the world where it was invented. It's reminiscent (at least for me) of how companies in our own world profit from data-mining people's social media and Internet presence, and how that data can then be used to influence society and politics on a grander scale. I like how this very familiar kind of greed and callousness is a driving force behind the multiverse-travel enterprise, rather than some outlandish "I want to rule the world" Bond-villain scheme.

Beyond the stellar cast of characters that show up in different iterations across the multiverse, the world-building in this book is also outstanding. While the society is set in a landscape, and a world, that bears many of the hallmarks of the post-apocalypse (being exposed to sunlight is dangerous, the environment is universally ravaged, etc.), the books doesn't wallow in how awful it all is compared to the past. Rather, the book delves into how Cara and the other characters, and the population in general, have found ways to live in this broken, changed world. There's a clear-eyed realism to it all as people go about living, rather than pining for a lost time they haven't even experienced.

 

Johnson's characters are complex and compelling no matter which world we encounter them in, and the book explores how even small changes--personal choices, accidents, good or bad luck, and minor variations in circumstances--can ripple through lives, causing fundamental shifts in how characters are shaped and how they shape the world in turn. Cara's relationships with some of the main characters in the various worlds are fascinating because of this: people who look and sound and sometimes even act like she would expect, end up having very different motivations, fears, and scars than Cara might have presumed.

Oh, and there's that whole business of the presence that lurks in the "space between worlds" that Cara traverses when she goes from one world to the next. There's a scene where "the rules" of multiverse travel are broken and someone (not Cara) pays the price for that transgression, and that scene absolutely blew my mind.

The Space Between Worlds is a science fiction treat. There's a good reason it won the Compton Crook Award. If you love science fiction, if you love an original take on multiverse travel, then this book is for you.

 

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#FridayReads for April 30th, 2021 - Gemworld special!

 

For this week's Friday Reads, my pick is Fran Wilde's Gemworld which comprises both novellas and short stories. I've been thinking about Gemworld lately because earlier this year, Fran Wilde tweeted that she has written a third novella set in this story-verse.

Gemworld is a place where gems are not just beautiful and valuable, but have powers and even minds of their own. In the old days, it was a kingdom where peace was

"...maintained by Jewels and Lapidaries, people bound to singing gemstones with the power to reshape hills, move rivers, and warp minds."

There are two short stories at Beneath Ceaseless Skies:

• "Ruby Singing"
• "The Topaz Marquise"

And there are two novellas published by TOR.com:

• The Jewel and Her Lapidary - In my review from 2016, I said this:

This novella is both beautiful and devastating. As soon as I finished reading it, I wanted to read more: more about Fran Wilde’s gemworld, more about gems calling to people, controlling them, seducing them even from the mines beneath the ground; more about the people listening and speaking to those gems, binding them in settings and chains. It’s that kind of story: the kind of fantasy tale that shows you a dazzling glimpse of a different world, and leaves you wanting more.

• The Fire Opal Mechanism
  

 I love these stories and novellas so much, and I can't wait to read more from Gemworld.

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Book review: DRIVING THE DEEP by Suzanne Palmer

Driving the Deep by Suzanne Palmer

The official blurb:

As a professional finder, Fergus Ferguson is hired to locate missing objects and steal them back. But it is rarely so simple, especially after his latest job in Cernee. He’s been recovering from that experience in the company of friends, the Shipmakers of Pluto, experts at crafting top-of-the-line AI spaceships.

The Shipmakers have convinced Fergus to finally deal with unfinished business he's been avoiding for half his life: Earth. Fergus hasn’t been back to his homeworld since he was fifteen, when he stole his cousin’s motorcycle and ran away. It was his first theft, and nothing he's stolen since has been anywhere near so easy, or weighed so heavily on his conscience. Many years and many jobs later, Fergus reluctantly agrees that now is the time to return the motorcycle and face his family.

Unfortunately, someone has gotten to the motorcycle before him. And before he can figure out where it went and why the storage unit that held it is now filled with priceless, stolen art, the Shipyard is attacked. His friends are missing, presumably kidnapped.

Accompanied by an untrustworthy detective who suspects Fergus is the art thief and the sole friend who escaped the attack, Fergus must follow the tenuous clues to locate and save his friends. The trail leads them to Enceladus, where Fergus plans to go undercover to the research stations that lie beneath the moon’s thick ice sheet deep in a dark, oppressive ocean.

But all movement and personnel are watched, and the limited ways through the thick ice of the moon’s surface are dangerous and highly monitored. Even if Fergus can manage to find proof that his friends are there and alive, getting out again is going to be a lot more complicated than he bargained for.

Why I loved this book:

In 2019 I read, loved, and reviewed Finder, the first book in Hugo-Winner Suzanne Palmer's Finder Chronicles for B&N's Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog. I called it "a fast-paced, hugely enjoyable sci-fi adventure", and the same holds true for this sequel. Driving the Deep is a thoroughly entertaining, hellaciously fun and gripping adventure, with an awesome cast of characters, and powered by an excellent blend of real science and alien-infused science-fiction. 

 

As in Finder, we're in the company of space-faring Scotsman Fergus Ferguson, who was somewhat modified by mysterious aliens in the previous book and now wields certain electrical powers that can both be useful and terrifying. (Those powers come in handy several times in this book, and I am really, really wondering what they'll be used for in the next book.)

 

There are a lot of reasons why I love Driving the Deep and Finder. For one, there's the working class vibe of the people and the settings, reminiscent of movies like Alien and shows like The Expanse, fictional futures where we're not dealing with super soldiers, or ultra-rich geniuses, but various kinds of everyday, working people (and aliens), eking out a living in a world of powerful corporations and and planetary governments.

 

I also love Palmer's focus on communities, on groups of people working and living together. In Finder, we got to know the community and people of Cernee, a gigantic space station, and in Driving the Deep, we are immersed in the community based beneath the ice and water on Saturn's moon Enceladus. Fergus is there to find his friends the Shipbuilders who have been kidnapped by unknown assailants. But, to cover up his real objective, he has finagled a job for himself driving a transport between various stations below the icy waters. (There are some truly breathtaking moments involving the piloting of these transports, by the way, and the title, Driving the Deep is well earned.) Along the way, Palmer gives us delicious details, like, what people eat in this community, how they live and sleep and get around; why they've come there; what they do for fun, and so on. It's this level of everyday worldbuilding that really makes me love Palmer's fictional world.

Another thing I love about this book, and this series, is how Palmer deals with the presence of Artificial Intelligences and aliens. When it comes to AIs, there's the very helpful talking, thinking ship (built by Fergus's friends the Shipbuilders) we first met in Finder, and on Enceladus, Fergus encounters another AI. Palmer doesn't make these technological marvels the Big Bad. They are not bent on destroying humanity (at least not so far?). Instead, they're characters, just like the people, and Palmer gives them their own unique voices and personalities. I am definitely a sucker for good and decent (and often funny!) AI-entities like these.

 

It's a similar story with the aliens. There are lots of aliens in Palmer's universe: no longer do humans have to wonder if they're alone in the universe! But, like the AIs, they are not a monolithic force of homicidal, horrifying enemies. (The Asiig, the aliens who "altered" Fergus in Finder are mysterious and frightening for sure, but they're not your typical world-destroying menace.) There are many kinds of aliens in Palmer's universe, and they're important since it's very much thanks to alien technology that humans have acquired the ability to travel and live in space the way they do. Aliens work with humans in the solar system and elsewhere, and just like with the AIs, Palmer gives them all personalities, making them individual characters. They're part of crews and communities everywhere Fergus goes, and I just love how the books envision this future society that is in no way perfect or idyllic or a utopia, but where good communities and friendship, are a natural part of the world, and can include both aliens and AIs.

I love all these things and more about Driving the Deep, but the main attraction for me, is Fergus Ferguson himself. He's a hilarious trouble-magnet, for one. When he heads back to Earth at the beginning of the book to take care of some old, unfinished business, he barely has time to set foot on the planet before he's in deep, DEEP trouble. Over and over again, Fergus finds himself in a whole lot of awful trouble and has to think, fight, lie (or obfuscate), or sometimes just alien-zap his way out of it. Fergus is hugely likeable. He's quick-thinking, able to MacGyver himself out of a lot of bad situations, resourceful, and brazen when he has to be. But what I mostly love about him is the way Palmer writes him as a person who makes friends wherever he goes because he's just such a decent guy. Of course, he also makes enemies everywhere, and his showdown with a certain nemesis in Driving the Deep is pretty darn harrowing and spectacular.

 

There's a basic goodness to Ferguson, and to the world itself, in Palmer's books. Not to say that everyone is nice and good, far from it, but there's a really appealing basic belief that people can be worthy of trust and friendship, rather than some cynical grimdark world where everyone wants to shaft and shank everyone at the first opportunity.

If you're looking for some rollicking great scifi that kept me hooked right until the epic conclusion, then these books are for you. And if you get to reading right now, you'll be ready to pick up the third book, The Scavenger Door, later this year.

 

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My first #FridayReads post!

 

It's Friday, and every Friday I'll be sharing some reading recommendations here. It could be anything: a story, a novella, an issue of magazine, a novel... whatever's on my mind that week. So for this week, my very first #FridayReads, I'm recommending issues of two different speculative fiction zines, and a novella!

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Strange Horizons' Palestinian Special issue from March 29th, which includes short stories, poetry, reviews, art, and more by Palestinian creators. You can start off with Nadia Shammas's fantastic "The Center of the Universe", but the whole issue is packed with excellence.

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Fusion Fragment #5 is a fantastic issue of this spec-fic zine, and includes great stories by Vanessa Fogg, Jess Koch, David F. Shultz, and others. Zandra Renwick's story "Otherwhen" is one of my favourites from this issue: an unsettling, trippy, and highly original take on time travel. There's also Spencer Nitkey's terrific and powerful magic-in-space story, "Winter's Song", but really, this whole zine is well worth a read. You pay what you want, and then you can download the entire issue!

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The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg was just announced as a finalist in the novella category for the Ignyte Awards, and I loved this story so much when I read it last year and it's such a rich, beautiful story. Or, like I said in my review: 

R.B. Lemberg’s novella The Four Profound Weaves is a lyrical and gripping journey that begins in a sunlit desert full of sand and bones, continues into a city haunted by memories and ghosts, and eventually takes the reader into the the light-less depths beneath the earth. It’s a story that delves deep into themes like resistance, courage, and endurance.

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Happy reading, and have a great weekend. 💗

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I'm a finalist for an Ignyte Award in the Critics category!

 

I'm extremely thrilled and proud to be a finalist for an Ignyte Award in the Critics category. Huge thanks to everyone at Fiyah and the Ignyte Awards for this honour, and also huge congratulations to my fellow finalists!

Voting is open to the public and you can go vote in all the categories here: vote for the Ignyte Awards.

More about the Ignyte Awards from the Awards committee:

The FIYAHCON 2021 Committee is thrilled to announce the finalists for the 2021 Ignyte Awards. The Awards seek to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre. To that effect, the committee feels that these creators, creations, entities, and perspectives from 2020 represent the brightest lights in speculative fiction’s future. We encourage you to seek out the nominees unfamiliar to you on this list, engage with their works of fiction or acts of community, and to use those experiences to inform your vote.

 

FROM: HTTPS://THECONVENTION.FIYAHLITMAG.COM/2021/04/22/ANNOUNCING-THE-2021-IGNYTE-AWARDS-SHORTLIST/

Book review: THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS by Stephen Graham Jones

 

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

The official blurb:

From New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones comes a novel that is equal parts psychological horror and cutting social commentary on identity politics and the American Indian experience. Fans of Jordan Peele and Tommy Orange will love this story as it follows the lives of four American Indian men and their families, all haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. Years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

Why I loved this book:

The Only Good Indians is a striking, devastating, grab-you-by-the-neck tale filled with gruesome deaths, a stalking horror brought to life by past misdeeds, and spectacular gore mixed in with sharp and jagged psychological horror. The last third of the book, when the vengeful creature is hunting down.... well, I won't say who, but you'll know who if you read it... is some of the most tense and gripping stuff I've read. I felt like I barely breathed for that part of the book.

Content warning, should you need it: there is violence aplenty in this book, and that violence is brutal and wrenching, and some passages I confess were hard to read (I am not great with gore even though I do love horror).

And oh yeah, SPOILER ALERT: pretty much everything goes to absolute hell for the four guys at the center of this book. It goes to hell in spectacular fashion, with such relentless and inescapable force that it occasionally veers into black comedy. One of the things I love about the book, and Stephen Graham Jones's work in general, is how it allows those moments of gruesome levity to shine through the horror and tragedy, like a glint of teeth in a bloody maw, I suppose.

The four men are not terrible-bad people. They are not cartoonishly evil. They did do a bad thing in their youth, and they knew it was bad, and it's haunted their thoughts since. When the book starts, that haunting presence is in the process of becoming a lot more real, though.

That everyday ordinariness of these men is one of the things that really makes this book work for me. There's a layer of extra horror added by the fact that they are not irredeemable a-holes, but regular guys who did something bad and then went on with their lives as best they could (with varying results). And when the ghost of their past misdeed takes physical shape and returns to wreak havoc in their world, they panic. They do stupid, ill-advised, and terrible things in an effort try to fix the situation. Of course, they only keep making it worse. Part of both the tragedy and dark comedy of this book is following these men as they keep fighting against the thing they helped bring into this world, trying to free themselves, trying to avoid retribution, and in the process (mostly) dragging themselves down further into the abyss.

I won't go into specifics about what exactly stalks these men through the book, but suffice it to say that something they thought was dead, something they thought they killed, has been born into the world again.

What else? Well, there's a dramatic and VERY high-stakes basketball game, there's a sweat-lodge ceremony that goes spectacularly wrong, there are innocent people and creatures caught up in the madness, there are haunting memories of hunting in winter, and devastating memories of trains, and there's that chase scene in the snow that just... murdered me. I also need to say that as a reader, one of the joys of this book is seeing small details pay off in satisfying, though often horrific, fashion as the story plays out.

I love this book for the way the everyday spirals into horror, the way guilt and fear seep into everything, and for the way it allows the characters brief moments of grace before it's all torn apart again.

Buy The Only Good Indians.