In a near-future world on the brink of collapse, a young woman born into servitude must seize her own freedom in this glittering debut with a brilliant twist; perfect for fans of Station Eleven, Karen Thompson Walker, and Naomi Alderman.
In fifty years, Myrra will be free.
Until then, she’s a contract worker. Ever since she was five, her life and labor have belonged to the highest bidder on her contract–butchers, laundries, and now the powerful, secretive Carlyles.
But when one night finds the Carlyles dead, Myrra is suddenly free a lot sooner than she anticipated–and at a cost she never could have imagined. Burdened with the Carlyles’ orphaned daughter and the terrible secret they died to escape, she runs. With time running out, Myrra must come face to face with the truth about her world–and embrace what’s left before it’s too late.
A sweeping novel with a darkly glimmering heart, The World Gives Way is an unforgettable portrait of a world in freefall, and the fierce drive to live even at the end of it all.
Title : The World Gives Way
Author : Marissa Levien
Format : eBook (overdrive)
Page Count : 380
Genre : sci-fi / mystery / dystopian
Publisher : Redhook
Release Date : May 1, 2021
Reviewer : Hollis
Rating : ★ ★ ★ ★.5
Hollis’ 4.5 star review
This probably won’t be a long review because I’m still kind of absorbing this read but.. wow. This surprised me in so many ways and I’m definitely feeling some aftershocks about the impact of the whole experience.
A lot of moving parts go into making a world work. It is a monstrous, exquisite machine.
I went into this expecting a cat-and-mouse mystery thriller set in space but while that’s not a wrong description, it’s very much only one small part. And not the best way to indicate the vibe of this book, either, which is less of a thriller and more of a slow moving collision of characters and themes. Because in so many ways this is haunting, introspective, enraging, stunning, and sad. Levien’s writing was so compelling, so lovely, and somehow she put all these different things into this book (which is a d e b u t, by the way) and made it work. And then gave us that ending. Which, I mean, yeah, of course I cried. Pretty sure I was getting the weepies by 91% and that was before I even knew the final line of the book.
The world owes me nothing, he thought, certainly not a perfect ending.
Even though this isn’t getting a five star, it has some of those qualities. Again, the writing? Wow. The little interludes? Devastating in their matter of factness. And the world? It reminded me of something from Interstellar, helped by the fact that this is sci-fi, but the mythology around it, what they had forgotten, or lost the context for, it was all just so clever, so seamless, and I could envision it so well. Not the least because of the dystopian societal structure was so familiar and, well, sadly typical. But the feel of it all? Still felt new, and fresh, and.. yeah, I might be jumping the gun here after only one book but Levien might be jumping right onto my auto-read author list.
Highly recommend.
A Take from Two Cities 