A Son of the Rock

Hodder, 2022, 333 p. Reviewed for ParSec 4.

There are 380 parallel worlds which can be reached by Adam Bosch’s invention allowing travel between them. In all but eight of those worlds Caramenta’s doppelgänger is dead. That makes her valuable as only people with no counterpart in another world can traverse to it safely. As Cara puts it, that means trash people, poor black and brown people, since most wealthy scientists and the like are alive (and presumably, though this is not explicitly stated in the book, white.) Those other worlds are a resource tapped by Earth Zero – the only one with traversing technology. This is not recognisably our Earth and therefore nor are the other worlds Cara visits; but it could be descended from it. Civil wars occurred in its relatively recent history, as a result of which weapons capable of killing from a distance have been banned. The social organisation is very different, the environment harsh, the sun at its height all but deadly.

Bosch’s Eldridge Institute is in Wiley City, separated from Caramenta’s original home in the Rurals by mutual suspicion. In Ashtown, which Cara was desperate to escape, life is nasty and brutish and run by what is in effect a particularly cruel mafia style boss; or maybe his brother depending on the individual world. It’s the family business. Whichever Earth it is, these are men with whom Cara has a past. To ingratiate herself with him she had the name of one of them, Nik Nik, tattooed on her back. The comparatively cosy life in Wiley City is nevertheless still stratified – literally; the upper levels of Cara’s building are reserved for those with more standing in the Institute.

Traversers have built up a mythology where a Goddess called Nyame stalks the space between the worlds. Sometimes Cara can feel Nyame’s breath on her back as she shifts from one world to another and on the novel’s crucial traverse – to Earth 175 – she realises with horror the Goddess is crushing her bones. On 175, Cara’s dop, Nelline, is not dead. On 175, intrigued by that tattoo, its Nik Nik saves Cara’s life by putting her mangled body in a medical recovery pod. On 175, Cara begins to question all she knew about Earth Zero, especially when she meets Adam Bosch’s counterpart there.

And Cara has her own secrets. Her original name was Caralee, she is really from Earth 22 and had come across her doppelgänger from Earth Zero just after Caramenta died traversing from there, and, hearing controller Dell’s voice coming from her cuff giving the instructions to follow to get ‘back,’ Cara took the chance to replace her dop and escape her own Nik Nik’s violence. She has been living a lie ever since, treading a tightrope, all the while developing an overwhelming attraction to Dell, without knowing the crucial differences between herself and Caramenta. Only Caramenta’s (handily well kept) journal gave her any chance of pulling this deception off.

There is plenty more plot to be going on with, barely hinted at above, all mediated through Cara’s distinctive voice, self-questioning, thoughtful, loyal to those who treat her well but unforgiving to any who didn’t.

A scenario such as this might in lesser hands have produced nothing more than a pot-boiler but Johnson, while never neglecting the necessity for story, has taken the opportunity to treat with profound questions if you read closely. Questions about how personalities are formed; why we are who we are; what might have made us different; why we do what we do; not to mention highlighting the importance of close relationships.

In infinite universes there is a world somewhere in which you will like this book. Perhaps many worlds.

Pedant’s corner:- in the first chapter preamble; earth (Earth.) Otherwise; “releasing the heat from rising from the baked sand” (that first ‘from’ is redundant,) “on the worlds whose census list Nik Nik as emperor” (‘whose census lists’, or, ‘whose censuses list’.) “One less, I decide” (One fewer.) “‘Lay down’” (Lie down,) “inside of” (inside; no ‘of’, please) “pulling clothes out of the back of my closet that I haven’t worn in years” (syntax clanger. Why would someone wear a closet? – ‘pulling clothes that I haven’t worn in years out of the back of my closet.’)