This review contains affiliate links, which earn me a small commission when you click and purchase, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my small business and allowing me to continue providing you a reliable resource for clean book ratings.
Many dream of traveling among the stars as astronauts; on the Earth of this book, a brilliant scientist has figured out how to travel among the worlds of the multiverse. The catch is that “traversers” can only visit other Earths in which their doppelgangers have died; otherwise, they get severely mangled and die themselves. Cara was chosen as a traverser for the Eldridge Institute because she has lived in such dangerous circumstances in so many other Earths that a lot of her other selves have died, leaving her free to cross over. As it is, on Earth One, she only gets to live in the walled-off, climate-controlled, wealthy Wiley City because she’s been working for Eldridge for six years; her real home is in the desert wastelands of Ashtown, which lie outside Wiley City.
Working with her handler, Dell, a beautiful old-money inhabitant of Wiley City whom Cara longs for but knows she can’t have because of their class difference, Cara visits hundreds of other Earths to collect data and help bring back resources. She hopes to be able to continue working for four more years so she can become a citizen and stay in the city, but in the meantime, she feels she doesn’t truly belong in either the city or the sunburned wild west of Ashtown, run by a ruthless emperor, where her pious mother, stepfather and stepsiblings serve others in a somewhat protected area for the religious.
When the company learns that another of her “dops” has died, Cara gets sent to that alternate Earth, where things get complicated and she finds out some information that changes what she knows about her job and the company. She has to decide who she really is, what she truly wants, and what matters to her. For a young woman who has known danger her whole life (and seen it in hundreds of other similar lives), she has to face the most dangerous choices of all and face giving up the tiniest hope she has for some kind of happy ending for herself and those she cares about.
I am drawn to time travel and multiverse stories, so I couldn’t resist this one. It’s pretty intense, with lots of danger, rough characters and uncertainty. The action doesn’t slow down much. I appreciated the moments where characters got to show their softest, most human sides and when Cara found that in herself. It’s a good book about a young woman finding herself in a harsh world, where she’s experienced far too little kindness and love.
Rated: High, for 11 instances of strong language, plus more uses of mild and moderate profanity; sexual content includes a lot of references to there being sex workers in a rough part of a town, references to characters having sex but few details; violence occurs regularly throughout. The main character comes from a place that’s dangerous and has a lot of unsavory characters, and she and alternates have been abused and injured a lot of times.
* I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Click here to purchase your copy of The Space Between Worlds on Amazon.
