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.

I loved the story, the world building and meeting the different characters. I felt completely immersed in the story and couldn't stop reading it.

Those Beyond the Wall came at me like a combination of Vonda McIntyre's The Exile Waiting and a "post-apocalyptic iconoclastic road warrior" novel from the eighties. (Though it might also be said to be a "post-apocalyptic iconoclastic road warrior novel as written by someone who is NOT a conservative, kinda racist anti-intellectual gun nut." That also works.) Our Protagonist is a mechanic/runner called "Mr. Scales." Our Protagonist works for the emperor of a community called Ashtown, which has repeated conflicts and well-justified beefs with the walled city of Wiley.

A number of mysterious murders both inside the city of Wiley and in Ashtown causes the emperor to put Mr. Scales on the case. (It turns out that Mr. Scales at one point lived inside the city as a citizen but ended up in Ashtown as a young teen. She's the best able to get into the city without a "day pass" and without being randomly attacked by the Wiley police force.) She's partnered with another runner named Mr. Cross who she has some history with. Extremely bad history with--but the only possible back up for Mr. Scales because he's white, and will be able to walk in without being asked if he has a permit.

This leads to a complicated story that is both about an invasion from an alternate universe and also about ruthlessness in the service of creating a better world. (Where it actually creates a better world.) This is an angry and violent novel, full of angry and violent people--but the violence here is cathartic rather than for it's own sake, or to glorify the idea of humanity being inherently violent. The anger is directed toward injustice and the cruelty of systemic racism.

Those Beyond the Wall is a fast-paced novel that packs in a lot of tension. (To the point where I ended up peeking at the end to make sure it had a relatively happy, non-horrific ending.) A significant theme that I found interesting was about the creation of stories and the use of propaganda to create support for civil justice actions. This theme has ties to the theme of "ruthlessness in the name of creating a better world," in a number of heartbreaking ways. Overall, I really enjoyed this novel which was a good balance between "thought-provoking" and "action-adventure with lots of boom for your buck."

This review is based on a galley copy received from NetGalley.

I do love a good dystopian vibe and I think this one was executed well. I found the writing to be easy-to-read and the story was engaging. I also quite liked the MC!

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Del Rey, and NetGalley for allowing me to read an early copy of this book!

I was fortunate enough to be able to read The Space Between Worlds as a . . .Read Now, I believe, and then I eagerly purchased a copy of it to own. Those Beyond The Wall I am more fortunate to read early, but I will have to wait to purchase this. I do think that being able to read it this month is extremely sharp, with a further anger of institutional racism in the United States.

It is difficult to not draw comparisons between the ways that governments have wrecked environmental destruction and denied shelter to those they ensured were in more-than-harm's way. It would be more difficult to not bring at least a name to any of them, or bring a name to many of the stories given-- all those Mr. Wills could be, the brutality of Wiley City guards, the inhumanity of those closing the gates and making murder on those who only are trying to survive. And the watchers, and those who are the only ones doing something, carving out their own.

Mr. Scales was a smaller character in TSBW, and it was incredible, to see the differences between herself and Cara. Cara is desperate, secretive, guilty, and ambitious. Mr. Scales? Mr. Scales is *angry*, loving, fiercely loyal, and extremely community-oriented. Her brother, her friend, her people-- and not in that order because of how much she loves all. A deeper, different look into this world's Ashtown from a Nik Nik-loyal runner, from one much closer to Nik without the trauma Cara had and with a far more positive view.

Ashtown is also about the stories-- what they say, how they mean, and why it matters. They do not have to be strictly truthful to have the understood meaning. They do not have to agree for people to know what happened. Three variations of the same story make it all true, because this is what people said, what people heard, and what they took from it, and how it set a fire in people.

Wiley City and Ashtown were not at peace. They never were, and Ashtown must survive without Wiley City killing them.