The Space Between Worlds
2015 • 336 pages

Ratings182

Average rating3.9

15

Cara is a person who can travel between worlds. Multiverse travel is only possible if your counterpart is dead, and Cara's life had been ended on 372 of the 380 possible and accessible Earths. That makes Cara a valuable commodity, as she travels between worlds and collects data for a huge corporation back on her home planet. During her travels, Cara learns some very important information, and she must return to her Earth and figure out what to do with what she now knows.

We get to know the people Cara knows on her Earth, and we also get to know their counterparts on other Earths, and that makes for a fascinating story. There are lots of if-onlys and tweaks and missteps and slight adjustments between the worlds, and it's these sorts of comparisons between existing worlds that makes a reader think of possibilities in her own multiverse.

This is random, but I loved the prayer to the dead Cara's sister offers in this book:
‘“Nelline, I am commending you into the arms of the earth, the preserver of all mercy. I am returning you to everlasting peace, and to the denser reality of the creator of all. Don't be scared. Don't regret. Whatever time you had, it was enough. Whatever you accomplished, it was enough. We will remember your good deeds for the rest of our lives. We will forget your wrongdoings forever. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for spending your time in the dirt with us.”'

September 25, 2020