In Ashtown, a rough-and-tumble desert community, the Emperor rules with poisoned claws and an iron fist. He can’t show any sign of weakness, as the neighboring Wiley City has spent lifetimes beating down the people of Ashtown and would love nothing more than its downfall. There’s only one person in the desert the Emperor can fully trust—and her name is Scales.
Scales is the best at what she does: keeping everyone and everything in line. As a skilled mechanic—and an even more skilled fighter, when she needs to be—Scales is a respected member of the Emperor’s crew, who’s able to keep things running smoothly. But the fragile peace Scales helps to maintain is fractured when a woman is mangled and killed before her eyes. Even more incomprehensible: There doesn’t seem to be a murderer.
When more bodies start to turn up, both in Ashtown and in the wealthier, walled-off Wiley City, Scales is tasked with finding the cause—and putting an end to it by any means necessary. To protect the people she loves, she teams up with a frustratingly by-the-books partner from Ashtown and a brusque-but-brilliant scientist from the City, delving into both worlds to track down an invisible killer.
But the answers Scales finds are bigger than she ever could have imagined, leading her into the brutal heart beneath Wiley City’s pristine façade and dredging up secrets from her own past that she would rather keep hidden. If she wants to save the world from the earth-shattering truths she uncovers, she can no longer remain silent—even if speaking up costs her everything.
Add to your library to track progress and write reviews
The Space Between Worlds
2 books in catalog
Multiverse science fiction explores social inequality, trauma, and identity through high-concept parallel world travel where individuals can only visit dimensions where their alternate selves have already died. Author Micaiah Johnson introduced this premise in her debut novel The Space Between Worlds, establishing a setting where marginalized individuals with high mortality rates across parallel Earths become uniquely capable as multiverse travelers.
Her speculative fiction combines rigorous worldbuilding with critical examinations of class, power, and systemic exploitation. Johnson continued this narrative universe in her follow-up novel Those Beyond the Wall, expanding the scope of her setting to examine political and cultural dynamics outside the privileged city center.
Micaiah Johnson was raised in California's Mojave Desert within a Jehovah's Witness community. On her mother's side, she is a first-generation high school graduate, earning her diploma at the age of thirteen. She went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside, and a Master of Fine Arts in fiction from Rutgers-Camden. She later pursued doctoral research in American literature at Vanderbilt University, focusing on critical race theory, technology, death, and automatons.
Johnson's speculative fiction utilizes high-concept science fiction frameworks—such as multiverse traversal and artificial constructs—to analyze privilege, survival, and social stratification. In her work, parallel dimensions serve as structural allegories for colonization and power imbalances. Her writing features distinctive, resilient protagonists operating on the margins of society, whose lived experiences in harsh conditions inform their navigation of rigid political systems.
