Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

28 reviews

deetabz's review

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Medical content, Toxic relationship, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, and Murder

Moderate: Blood, Physical abuse, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Classism, Homophobia, Torture, Lesbophobia, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Religious bigotry, and Grief

Minor: Sexual content, War, and Racism

talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

adventurous dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Body horror, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, Murder, Violence, Domestic abuse, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Child abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Racism, Panic attacks/disorders, and Death of parent

Minor: War, Homophobia, Miscarriage, Addiction, Drug use, Drug abuse, Sexual content, Vomit, Child death, and Suicide

tangleroot_eli's review

adventurous challenging emotional reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

It's only March, but the books I read for the rest of 2024 will have a hard fight to unseat this one as my favorite of the year.

Johnson's worldbuilding is exquisite. I got attached to her characters within paragraphs of their introductions. Her portrayals of classism, racism, and colonialism felt like constant gut-punches. If Spouse weren't waiting to read it before we have to return this copy to the library, I might've flipped right back to the beginning and started reading it again the moment I finished it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Death, Domestic abuse, Murder, Physical abuse, and Classism

Moderate: Blood, Body horror, Gore, Child abuse, Addiction, Homophobia, Violence, Vomit, Child death, Confinement, Medical content, Racism, Death of parent, Deportation, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Kidnapping, Suicide, Gun violence, War, Suicidal thoughts, Religious bigotry, and Miscarriage

Graphic: Environmental degradation Minor: Whorephobia, Child labor

looseleafellie's review

dark reflective tense fast-paced

5.0

Cara works at a company that sends people to alternate universes to collect data. You can only travel to universes where you’re dead, so Cara is the ideal candidate for multiverse travel. But when one of her few living alternate selves dies mysteriously, Cara begins to unravel a conspiracy that threatens the multiverse.

My favorite book is This Is How You Lose the Time War, and I picked up The Space Between Worlds because it seemed similar. It’s a short-ish sci-fi book with alternate universes, sapphic yearning, and evil organizations to thwart.

However, The Space Between Worlds is more character-focused and contained. I loved how none of the characters — including Cara — are all good or all bad, especially when their alternate selves come into play. The book explores how your background and relative privilege can shape your personality and motivations, even if you’re technically the same person, which was very interesting. The romantic tension between Cara and Dell weaves throughout, but as a side plot to the main story.

Even in 330-ish pages, the world drew me in. The setting is grounded in the neighboring cities of Ashtown and Wiley City: one an impoverished community of survivors, the other a high-tech utopia (for those who have citizenship). While I expected a wider scale, the focused setting strengthened the book by allowing for exploration of the themes in a confined space.

One drawback of the short length is I found the ending a bit rushed. When I had 30 pages left, I thought, “they have to end all this in 30 pages?” I still enjoyed the ending, but would have liked extra time to sit in the emotions and feel things out more.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and I think it’s great for fans of This Is How You Lose the Time War — or people who like character-focused stories about alternate universes in general.

CWs: Gore, violence, death, domestic abuse, classism, and mentions of drug addiction, homophobia, child neglect, and suicide.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Blood, and Gore

Moderate: Domestic abuse and Classism

Minor: Drug abuse, Homophobia, Child abuse, and Suicide

genizah's review against another edition

adventurous fast-paced

• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence and Domestic abuse

Moderate: Death of parent

Minor: Homophobia and Drug abuse

emily_mh's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This was SO GOOD. So many people have loved this book and I really hoped I could be one of them, and I am! It has such such a great combination of plot, character, and theme, and the writing style was great: it was filled with some wry observations that either make you see things in a new light or perfectly put into words how you might already think about something. 

The story was gripping right from the off. It’s the kind of plot where you don’t really know where things are going to go, but not at all in a bad way. There are intriguing twists and some great pacing. I will say that the ending felt a little rushed, though. 

I really liked the MC Cara, who embodied the reluctant hero trope. She goes through ethical dilemmas throughout the book, torn between self-preservation and her moral compass. It was interesting seeing her perspective on these dilemmas, seeing the thought process behind her actions. Moreover, in Cara (and other characters) we see a key theme played out: how different circumstances (as seen on alternate Earths) can lead someone to become a different person. Cara gets to observe how one event happening, or not happening, could have impacted her character. And through this Cara questions if the opposite cannot also be true, that is, if different circumstances can have no impact on a person’s development, because there are people and situations we will always be drawn to due to our nature. This was really fascinating to think about. 

Another great theme was this idea of “the space between worlds”, an idea that crops up in so many places within the novel. For example, it is a physical liminal space when Cara is traversing, but it is also the space which Cara occupies as an Ashtown-born person working in Wiley City. The theme embodies how Cara feels more at home in the space between worlds than she does on said worlds themselves. 

I also thought the romance was a great touch. I loved the mutual pining and how oblivious Cara was with the whole thing. I do wish I had gotten more of an idea as to why Cara and Dell were attracted to one another; we are shown that they are, but I wanted to know the why. 

Overall this was a fantastic read and I’m excited for the potential companion novel! 

Rep: Black sapphic MC, Japanese-American sapphic LI, Ivorian-American SC 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, and Murder

Moderate: Death of parent, Gore, Racism, Drug abuse, Body horror, Drug use, and Addiction

Minor: War, Child abuse, Sexual content, Colonisation, Suicide, Gun violence, Religious bigotry, Body shaming, Medical content, Miscarriage, Vomit, Ableism, Pedophilia, Emotional abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Homophobia, Transphobia, Terminal illness, Rape, Fire/Fire injury, and Blood

Minor: nuclear warfare, volcano

cozyscones's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Classism, Death, Gore, Violence, and Suicidal thoughts

Moderate: Homophobia

Minor: Fire/Fire injury

erosabsens's review against another edition

adventurous dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Blood, and Domestic abuse

Minor: Homophobia

bookwormbi's review

challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This book is so surprising in so many ways, and I absolutely loved it

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail and Murder

Moderate: Racism and Domestic abuse

Minor: Lesbophobia, Homophobia, and War

lyzz's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I enjoyed this novel! I think I would have enjoyed it better if I was more experienced listening to science fiction/fantasy on audiobook. (This is also a genre I do not read a lot in general.) The narrator, Nicole Lewis, is spectacular and perfectly embodies the scrapiness of Cara.  The challenging part on audio for me was that the author does an excellent job of world building but you have to keep track of multiple dimensions and the same characters in different dimensions. If I could go back in time, I think I would have told me to listen to the book and then read the eBook to help everything stick in my mind. 
 
What I particularly liked about this book: 

• World building is imaginative and explores themes of racism, classism and homophobia.  
• I loved that the author let us explore this world before diving into the main plot. The plot unfolds slowly and this allows us to immerse ourselves in this world.  
• Interesting character development that is meaningful - especially in the Cara character.  
• There were some interesting support characters like Gene and Del that are also well-developed and contribute meaningfully to the story. 
• Cara's voice is strong in this book.  She is a bit sarcastic, humorous, pragmatic, a little idealistic, and scrappy.  I loved her.  

I do want to emphasize that I would 100% recommend this book to someone looking for a science fiction read.  I would caution them about listening on audiobook unless they have experience listening to SFF on audio and can follow a complex world with multiple characters.  I definitely think this is a book I'll reread to capture some of the details I missed this go-round.  

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Drug use, Physical abuse, Murder, and Drug abuse

Minor: Homophobia