I absolutely loved the first book, so I was excited for this one. It was good to visit this world again, but this book leaned heavily into my least favorite parts of the first one.

A huge plot point was more magic than sci-fi and very confusing. I wish that part was a much bigger part of the book because it’s what I loved about the previous book. I wish the world building was a smaller part of the story to delve into how this “magic” aspect worked. It was just a few pages of stream-of-consciousness that l didn’t enjoy. This one felt disjointed and much darker. The author did say at the beginning that it was full of rage, and it was! I also devoured this book, so it wasn’t all bad, just not my favorite.

Review posts on March 13th, 2024.

THOSE BEYOND THE WALL is a stunning follow-up to THE SPACE BETWEEN WORLDS, building on many of the same themes of classism, racism, xenophobia, protection, abuse, and exploitation from a very different angle. It tells the story of an Ashtown runner trying to stop an existential threat from another world without being trampled by the city of Wiley in the process.

This focuses on Ashtown and its power structures through the perspective of Mr. Scales, a runner who is close friends with Mr. Cheeks and can’t stand former Ruralite, Mr. Cross. Scales is an engaging and somewhat unreliable narrator, using the idea of truth and stories in a metatexual way to complicate her tale, while engaging with the essence of what happened.

The main storyline is new, set up by events in the previous book, but at a distance of years, and with a different main character, which makes a huge difference to the tone and feel of the book. THE SPACE BETWEEN WORLDS established the idea that in order to travel between worlds, you can only go to a place where your doppelgänger is dead. This means that many white, rich (or even just middle-class) people in Wiley were likely to be alive on too many worlds to make good travelers. This meant that poor, brown, Ashtowners who had been exploited for generations were recruited to be travelers. In THOSE BEYOND THE WALL, Scales is differently concerned with power. She's not asking Wiley city for legitimacy or recognition. Her understanding of the give-and-take of power in relationships doesn’t shy away from the pervasive nature of power dynamics, and she's willing to manipulate the flow of that power as much as she's aware of it. Scales is a fascinating and mostly (but not completely) trustworthy narrator. She seems to be telling the story from the perspective of being at its end and relaying what happened, something not uncommon for first person narratives, though the way she omits, elides, or shifts around information means there's room for some future narrator to disagree with her telling.

I like how deliberately sex work positive this book is. It goes beyond the presence of the House, and the importance of Exlee, deliberately pushing back against the bigoted attitudes of the ruralites, and a former ruralite in particular.

THOSE BEYOND THE WALL can probably be read on its own, with the relevant backstory explained succinctly enough to make sense to anyone who hasn't read THE SPACE BETWEEN WORLDS, or serving as a welcome refresher to anyone for whom it's been a while. As a sort-of sequel, this gives updates and closure for many of the significant characters from the first book. For some, those answers are found in their deaths, but for many of them, this is the story of what happens when Ashtown has to protect themselves from other worlds, and from the classist xenophobes in the city who have benefited from and upheld an apartheid regime. The specific plot would make sense to someone who hadn’t read the first one, partly because it’s a completely different narrator with a completely different perspective on those events, which allows Scales to be an entry point for someone who knows nothing about the first book. However, the ending of THOSE BEYOND THE WALL provides closure to several things that are emotionally left open at the end of THE SPACE BETWEEN WORLDS. Getting those answers without having asked a question is much less satisfying than it would be for someone who has reason to care about those details. Also, now that I’ve read this, I need to go do a reread of both books in order, because characters who are very important here had different levels of importance in that first book, but I’m pretty sure several of them were present there, beyond the obvious ones like Nik Nik and Cara. Scales has a completely different relationship to Nik Nik than Cara did, in a way that’s fascinating but never let me forget that even the less abusive version of Nik Nik is soaked in death and violence. When looking at sequels, tracking changes in narrative voice has felt more and more perfunctory as I’ve read books that keep the same narrator across the series or have broadly similar ideological goals, such that they’re working in similar directions. This was not the case for THOSE BEYOND THE WALL. Mr. Scales is not the same person as Cara from the first book. They have such fundamentally disparate perspectives that they may as well have grown up in different worlds, even if they technically are from the same one. I’m pretty certain that this particular world is the same one where Cara and Dell made their stand against Adam, but even if I'm wrong about that it doesn't matter much for the experience of reading THOSE BEYOND THE WALL. By closely interacting with an all-consuming and abusive person at different stages of his life, both Cara and Scales were shaped by their relationships to Nik Nik in ways that left indelible marks, but he is so different with each of them that they're unable to relate to each other's experiences as if they were with the same person. Given all the parallel worlds, it probably isn't even technically the same man, but I'd need to do a much closer read (and maybe make a chart or spreadsheet) in order to be certain.

I don’t know if this will be the last book, it feels like it could be, and I hope, for the characters' sakes, that what happens next isn’t exciting enough to require someone to be a main character ever again. That being said, I will happily devoured any and all books set in this world, as they are truly stunning.

So, I will preface this review by saying that I had absolutely no idea this was a continuation of The Space Between Worlds. This isn't just a book in the same universe, but an actual sequel and I do wish that the Netgalley summary had made that a bit more clear.

With that, I found this book very hard to enjoy and comprehend. It made it difficult for me to enjoy the reading experience. Maybe will pick it up again after reading the first book.

I greatly appreciate Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC of this novel. It is a sequel to the Space Between Worlds. There is no regurgitation of the events of the prior novel, so you may want to reread it first. I was confused for about the first 30% of the novel because of this.

The story is told in the first person from Mr. Scales, in a stream of consciousness style. This means there is a lot of extraneous detail and that the MCs somewhat self-destructive inner monologue is repeated throughout. The plot is meandering as well. I do not think the plot or the character of Mr. Scales is the point. Instead this story is about a victimized world that finds a new leader. The politics of the story were distracting because they did not make sense. Ashtown was a hyper-violent society that nevertheless recognizes trans rights and makes sure no one is feeling depressed. I understand this is sci fi but those things never go together. The author has a forward where she explains she was very angry from her recent activism when she wrote the book. That definitely comes through, but almost too well because I felt like I was reading a pamphlet or at a rally or on Tik Tok. The first book was so propulsive. This one feels more like a long rant with a particular point of view. The author can write but it didn't come through for me the same way this time.

So this ended up being a unique way to be introduced to the world from Micaiah's first book, as I had not read it yet, and wasn't expecting this to be a direct sequel (in that it focuses on characters from the world). That said, while that was a major detriment coming into this book, it still won me over hard, and now I'll be reading The Space Between the Worlds as one of my first books of 2024! I love the world that Johnson gave us, and the characters were all fucking fascinating, and watching this unfold was just a joy to read in the closing days of '23. Plus, big ups to anyone who quotes The Mountain Goats in their section openers. One of my first auto-recommends for books coming out in '24.

I loved ever minute of this story. The passion and anger of injustice bled from the pages. It hit hard on so many things. I felt it to my very core. I look forward to more from this Author in the future. I recommend it to any science fiction lover.

Didn’t know this was a direct sequel to The Space Between Worlds, which I should have re-read before diving into this and also should have re-read just because it’s a great book.

Those Beyond the Wall didn’t hit me like the first book did. Maybe it’s because The Space Between Worlds came outta nowhere for me and knocked me out, and maybe it’s because I had super high expectations because of said knock out.

But man. I didn’t vibe with a whole lot here. I didn’t care for the characters, I found the flow and pacing irritating. The multiverse mystery plot was a cool concept but was completely underdeveloped. It felt so often like the author thinks the reader is brainless and we need our hands held to understand basic concepts. And like, I get it. Some of us *are* brainless! But that meant that the narrative didn’t flow naturally for me.

I couldn’t put The Space Between Worlds down. I had to remind myself to pick up Those Beyond the Wall.

This was magnificent. I could not put it down.

This story is told beautifully. When I say I couldn’t put this down, I’m not lying. I read during every free moment at work, I skipped the gym, I missed a hangout with friends, and then I stayed up most of the night to finish.

At first, I couldn’t put this down because I wanted to know more about the world. Then I couldn’t put it down because I needed to know everything about the main character, and the author does a great job of peeling back that information layer by layer so that you cannot help but keep turning pages. I needed to know who they were to themselves and to others. Then the plot swept me away.

This book is white-hot rage. But not self destructive rage, and not rage that incapacitates. This is rage that spurs you to action, that brings people together, that forces a better future because death would be better than the status quo.

The queer representation on this novel is stunning. Queerness is not a source of heartache or trauma; it is the source of unadulterated, affirming joy. It made my heart sing.

And the writing? It’s beautiful. This author is a shining star and I cannot wait to read more of her work.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine for this opportunity to read rate and review this arc which will be available March 12,2024!

Holy High Octane Dystopian Fantasy, Batman! If you are looking for a tough no nonsense POC female main character that handles her business and everyone else’s too then pick up this book.

I was beyond entertained. I was engrossed….. no consumed by this book. The author writes with such a flow that the words on the page feel like gritty spoken word poetry. I think I may have found a new author to devour.

I was really looking forward to this, but I didn’t personally enjoy the voice and it was really exposition heavy. Just not for me. I stopped after chapter 1 (5%) but definitely a solid three to four stars for the target audience and an easy five for the right readers. It has grit and angst, and the voice shines.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Those Beyond the Wall picks up about 10 years after The Space Between Worlds. There is an “upcoming apocalypse” that involves a number of familiar looking deaths. This story, while centered around Mr. Scales, involves almost all of the characters from book one.

Those Beyond the Wall was so good, I don’t even know where to begin. I didn’t realize that this was a direct sequel to The Space Between Worlds, I just figured we were following a different Mr. Scales on a different Earth. So that was a very welcomed surprise! I loved Mr. Scales and her point of view. There was a fun shift from the first book where we see Cara’s disdain for Nik Nik to then seeing Mr. Scales complete devotion to him. This book had so many unexpected twists and I loved how everything was revealed.

We also see almost all of the same characters from the first book; Cara, Dell, Adam Bosch, Mr. Cross, Mr. Cheeks, and Esther. Cara and Dell being a part of this book was also a very welcomed surprise. I absolutely loved the first book and Cara is one of my favorite book characters, so to see her in any form would have been great! And I know it’s mentioned in the first book, but Cara and Dell being married with kids was great! I was waaaayyy too excited to read the few lines about their life.

Johnson also included an author’s note in the beginning and I think that it is integral to the story. Johnson writes about her anger and how it led her to write this book. I’m glad she included everything and I hope everyone takes the time to read it.

“Science fiction is an expression born from dissatisfaction with where the world is versus where the world could be.”

I'd like to thank the author, the publisher and Netgalley for a copy of this book. Those Beyond the Wall is a dystopian sci-fi novel. Scales is a mechanic and a fighter who gets caught up in a "who done it" murder plot. I felt like I'd walked in on a conversation while reading. I felt as if I was missing some key piece of information until I discovered this as in fact a sequel. This is the second book and to properly enjoy this book, one needs to have read the first. But even with that, it was still a good, albeit somewhat confusing read. I think I will read the first book and re-read this one. I will definitely read this author again.

Thanks to Net Galley for the ARC.

I read 'The Space Between Worlds' three years ago and enjoyed it a lot. Unfortunately I do not remember any of the details, and this was a problem for enjoying the sequel. Without the fresh context, there were some plot points that almost-but-didn't-quite-work, and some characters that felt shoehorned in. Characters were treated with reverence for just kind of being around, but no track was laid in this book for that and it just felt a bit 'off' to me.

It all still pretty much works, though. Some sections I thought were fantastic. My main annoyance was that the main character sometimes seemed unrealistically focused on her personal relationships given the extremely crazy stuff going on in the world around her.

Someone who enjoyed book 1 and has a good memory of it will probably love this book.

Some authors subtly recap the last book so you don't have to remember exactly what happened. Johnson absolutely does not do that. Maybe that's because this isn't a direct sequel (it takes place years later and with a focus on new characters), but you are left struggling a bit if you don't remember The Space Between Worlds.

Do I wish I had reread The Space Between Worlds before starting this? 100%. Did I still love it? Also 100%.

I loved the sweeping scope of this book and how it dealt with such big, meaningful themes. Johnson makes a statement with this book: it says important things. I loved revisiting this world and these characters. I loved the politics, but I also loved all the small relationships between people.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House!

So, I will preface this review by saying that I had absolutely no idea this was a continuation of The Space Between Worlds. This isn't just a book in the same universe, but an actual sequel and I do wish that the Netgalley summary had made that a bit more clear. I don't think you can read this one as a standalone. The timeline of this book is at least 10(?) years after the end of The Space Between Worlds and the plot is a direct offshoot of that. So about halfway through reading this I found out this was essentially a sequel, so I put it aside and bought and read the first book, which helped a lot.

The POV-character is Mr. Scales--who showed up very briefly in The Space Between Worlds. I actually really liked her POV; she harbors a lot of anger and it makes her keep people at arm's length. In a way, she's similar to Cara except Mr. Scales clings to life with a fury that's almost admirable. There were a few moments in her narration where I was a little confused because she makes a few asides that don't seem relevant to the plot at hand, but mostly I enjoyed them.

Those Beyond the Wall is very character-focused. It seemed like the plot-related aspects really came to a head in the latter-half of the book while the middle focused on the character interactions. That's not to say that no plot happens during these moments. It just feels like it takes a bit of a backseat until closer to the end. Then things start to come together and make more sense. It really takes what I liked about the first book--the issues of class, race, sexuality, gender, and the rage that simmers just below the surface when encountering injustice, especially when it's met by apathy or outright disdain from those in power--is magnified in this one. It's definitely more of a raw experience because the focus is more on Ashtown and its residents than the Wileyites, which I really enjoyed. And the ending hit like a punch to the gut.

The one thing, though, that I didn't like is similar to what I didn't like in The Space Between Worlds. For all that there's a lot of character-interactions, I wish the romance was a bit more developed. I'll say it was better than Cara and Dell's in the first book, but it still didn't quite hit the right notes for me. It's not that I didn't like it. It's just that Mr. Scales and Mr. Cross are so at odds (mostly from Mr. Scales's side) that the transition from hatred to a grudging respect to a friendship to a romance didn't quite hit all those marks in a way that satisfied me.

Overall, I'd highly recommend this, especially if you liked The Space Between Worlds.

I really enjoyed this book, which is set in the same world as The Space Between Worlds but following a different main character, though the main characters from that book do make an appearance. I was a little put off by the acknowledgement in the beginning where the author talks about how angry she is, and how much that's a part of this story. I don't much enjoy being angry, and though important to understand, the kind of hopeless, unresolvable anger about racism isn't an appealing place to spend my free time. I was impressed by The Space Between Worlds though, which was very thoughtfully and intelligently written, and I forged ahead. Therefore, I can tell you not to worry. Though racism, elitism, and anger are very present, this is an optimistic story about overcoming preconceived opinions and righting wrongs. It's also a fascinating look at a future where the wealthy are protected in great walled cities and the poor are making the best they can of things in the harsh conditions outside the cities, which seems like such a likely scenario. Scales is a terrific main character. Deeply traumatized by the conditions of her upbringing, and events that unfolded in her teens, she has struggled to figure out how she wants to live. She's in a good place now though, having discovered she's a supreme physical combatant, and she enjoys her position as a mechanic for the law and order in her outside-the-wall city. Her relationships with the city dictator and fellow team members are complex and evolving. When people begin mysteriously dying, Scales is pulled from her behind-the-scenes roles as a support character into a leadership position, and she is strong, brave, and good. The ending is enormously satisfying. Highly recommend!

Five burning raging beautiful stars!! Wow this novel completely blew me away, again. It has been a few years since I read the space between worlds, but I do remember being shocked and awed by the world Johnson created and the depths to the characters and the story. This book managed to evoke the same feeling, which is no easy feat. And dare I say it was even better.

We pick up ten years after the events of the first book, with a new POV character but a familiar setting. There is a new threat to this reality, to wiley and ashtown alike, yet their existing tensions may doom them all. I do wish I had spent a bit of time re-reading the first book, since I forgot some of the side characters and should have figured out a few connections more quickly. Regardless – that did not detract from the reading experience. It is compelling, interesting, intense, and keeps you on the edge of your seat until the end.

Scales is an incredible character. She’s not exactly relatable in the normal sense of the world, but you can understand her motivations and choices as the book unfolds. This is a person who has been wronged, abused, and brutalized by the system, by her parents, by the people meant to be caring for her. She is angry – rightfully, righteously angry – and that infuses the way she understands and moves through the world. Yet through all that, she is kind, she is empathetic, she cares for people. And she uses her righteous rage to protect, not destroy.

Johnson does something immense here, managing to tell this story with heart and love and RAGE. Her author’s note at the beginning is absolutely essential to the story, and its worth it to sit and reflect on that rather than rushing through to the book. Her experience with police brutality, institutional violence, and months of protest is so clearly reflected in this book – and so important to the discourse. I still remember (and get goosebumps from) reading Le Guin’s essay on sci fi at the beginning of left hand of darkness, and I think this note accomplishes similar in the framing of this book.

P.S. light spoilers: I was really hoping for more Cara and Dell in my life. This book doesn’t have a ton of them in it, but there is some resolution at least! You learn just enough to satisfy you and not a lot more – though fingers crossed that means there’s more story to tell there??

In conclusion I strongly recommend this book to everyone. And it is definitely worth it to read the first one first if you haven’t.

Faced with a coming apocalypse, a woman must reckon with her past to solve a series of sudden and inexplicable deaths in a searing sci-fi thriller from the Compton Crook Award–winning author of The Space Between Worlds.

Excellent world-building and characters. I loved this so much, I cannot wait for more!

Micaiah Johnson has done it again. Those Beyond the Wall is an absolute five star read. I will be recommending it to every person who asks me about what book to read next. It is a story that continuously reminds us of the power of a story - of who and how we tell what happened and what becomes truth.

I read The Space Between Worlds in 2020 and I was obsessed with it. I think it was one of the few things in the first 6 months of the pandemic that I felt anything in a time when so much seemed broken. Johnson is one of the few authors I have ever read who can write about the multiverse without confusing the story line or falling prey to a plot hole. She creates stories that work flawlessly beyond the traditional format of a novel's pacing and plotting - you will never know where the story is headed, but you will be drawn into every word of it.

Those Beyond the Wall is brimming with intensity, anger, pain, love and hope. Johnson does not shy away from recognizing the multi faceted dimensions of her characters, and she shows how villains can be heroes, how love can be hate and vice versa, how we witness things, how we name things, and how we take different perceptions and face the difficulty to align that perception on a mass scale.

Johnson manages to write on the human condition and history and social justice and acceptance and hypocrisy and hatred that is so inextricably linked with both the fictional Mr. Scales, Nik Nik, Cara, Adam Bosch, Mr. Cheeks, Mr. Cross, Ashtown and Wiley City and the reality of America in 2020. She commits herself to writing sci-fi live the New Wave in the 1960s, seeing her story through a social justice lens that asks what the world could be, and could one of over 350 worlds ever get it right. Her novels are a tightly controlled exposition on the power of words and actions, and how the fictional settings, no matter what world, are our stories too, if we just pay attention to how they are told.

Johnson has a brief intro to the novel, in which she accounts for her agent recognizing her anger on the page. She created Those Beyond the Wall from her experience in the 62 day sit-in at Nashville, Tennessee's State Capital in 2020. I don't want to give any sort of limited summary about the plot of Those Beyond the Wall - there's absolutely too many layers to share without giving away too much, but I would encourage any reader to also read about The People's Plaza. TN Representative Justin Jones, who made international news when he and Representative Justin J. Pearson were expelled from the TN House for violating the Chamber's "decorum" when they joined protestors for gun safety after the Covenant School shooting in 2023, wrote a book on the 2020 sit-in, and I plan to read that next.

Johnson's bio says she is now studying American Literature at Vanderbilt, but I do hope we see another novel from her soon - her voice and her stories are a powerhouse, and the world would benefit from hearing more.

It pains me to rate this only 3 after how much I loved Johnson’s debut, but where The Space Between Worlds was a hot knife striking fast and true (to the point where you didn’t realize you were bleeding until that knife was already gone), Those Beyond the Wall was a wildly swinging baseball bat: it could deal real damage if it landed exactly right but without several targeted strikes it’ll only bruise.

The first half was chaotic, giving us a muddy picture of who Mr Scales is and what we’re going to be disrupting with the plot. (Meanwhile, if I was the type to annotate, the first pages of The Space Between Worlds would have been marked up all to hell.) Scales has a tendency to break the fourth wall and take a colloquial tone with the reader that feels like performance - keeping even us at arm’s length - so that when she begins to break down and reform, I felt less invested. I also spent a huge portion of the book trying to figure out what role of any Scales played in the last book, which kept me partially distracted from the plot anyway.

We get some really good and interesting moments at the 50% mark and in the last 25% of the book, but even those moments could create enough of a cohesive story to drive the book.

Johnson herself describes this book as “angry” - and that is the truth of it. It highlights oppression and violence and the impracticality of a bloodless revolution, talks about media martyrs and oppression and the myth of peace. And there are no “good guys” in this story, which feels more true than anything else.