David Gibson's Reviews > The World Gives Way: A Novel

The Short Version: A dramatically ambitious debut novel about finding meaning in nothingness. A book that has all the right notes but is a little more music theory than a beautiful symphony.

The Long Version: I got to listen to the audiobook version of this novel thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Audio.

Myrra is an indentured servant on a spaceship flying to a new world. When they arrive in 50 years she’ll be set free, but until that time she works for the Carlyles. One night, the Carlyles ask her to take care of their infant daughter, Charlotte, and when they’re suddenly gone, Myrra is forced to reckon with what’s happened and where to go from there.

This was a weird and tough one for me. Most of the time I felt rather MEH listening to it, but when I looked at my notes and really thought on it, there wasn’t much of anything glaringly poor or wrong about this book.

The protagonists were both likable. They had layered stories that informed their actions pretty well. Their character arcs made sense and were nicely drawn, coming to sensible and satisfying conclusions.

The prose was well written, though the third person limited occasionally drifted into more of an omniscient tone, and there were moments with too much telling vs. showing.

The plot moved at a reasonable pace and given all the circumstances, each move made logical sense even if there were a few convenient plot twists.

I wanted to say that this book just never hooked me, but that would be inaccurate. The first few chapters were a firecracker start, and instantly establish life or death stakes. The ending too, was really something great. I feared for a lot of the book we were headed toward a fairy tale ending, but the author spared that injustice and wrote something tragic and beautiful instead.

So what went wrong? Sounds pretty awesome so far right? In the end, I think it was a lot of little things that nagged at me.

Considering the high stakes, the middle of the book sagged pretty hard. Myrra was on a journey of discovering meaning, and while it’s not like nothing happened, there was this feeling of “so what?” constantly cloying at me.

This book examines big topics and big questions, so there were a number of moments where the story felt melodramatic instead of profound, like it was close to something greater but was pushing too hard.

Myrra too was flawed in her construction because she did not seem flawed enough. She was an uneducated servant, and while she was ambitious and clever, she’s written essentially flawless. She has to improvise a plan once the Carlyles go missing, but every move works out in her favor and she’s always one step ahead. She seems too prescient at times as well and I couldn’t get behind her like I wanted to.

This is definitely not a book for die hard sci-fi fans as the sci-fi aspects are mostly window dressing and set pieces. Additionally, as Myrra travels to the new parts of the world, there are short chapters that explain the composition and construction of each region which was very clunky as a world building technique.

The narrator of the audiobook did not help in this situation either as far as I can tell. It may be because the last three audiobooks I listened to had pretty killer narrators enhancing the story, but here everything felt muted. Considering the life and death stakes, the moments of emotion were more foothills than peaks and valleys. The narrator did do a nice job differentiating character voices and each felt distinct and easy to track. Overall though I wasn’t pulled in by her.

I think there may be two things going on here that left me feeling differently than some other reviewers. First is that perhaps this book is a mirror of the reader. For the more glass half full crowd, the ones who find beauty in the mundane, this is a rich emotional journey and a sure fire winner. For the glass half empty group however, the entirety of the journey feels pointless and it’s a struggle to find the meaning Myrra is searching for. The second possibility is that those reading the book can put their own emotion into it whereas I was having mine filtered through an audiobook narration that did not convey the richness of narrative.

Overall a solid 3 out of 5. If you’re in a book rut and need a safe read that’s unlikely to bomb, this is a good choice. I definitely recommend a print or digital version so you can pour your own emotion into it. Again, do not recommend for hardcore sci-fi fans...I would expect this to come up short to that crowd.

Component Ratings
Idea/Concept: 4 out of 5
Female Protagonist: 3 out of 5
Male Protagonist: 3 out of 5
Pacing: 3.5 out of 5
Prose: 3.5 out of 5
Plot: 2 out of 5
World Building: 2.5 out of 5
Narrator Performance: 2.5 out of 5
Dialogue: 3.5 out of 5
Ending: 4.5 out of 5