The World Gives Way (2021) by Marissa Levien

Book Review

The World Gives Way (2021)

by Marissa Levien

   This book caught my eye because it is a well-reviewed (NYT) work of genre fiction (science fiction) by a woman.  Added bonus, it has literary fiction cross-over potential.  And it was available from the library as an Audiobook with no wait, so, slam dunk for me.  The World Gives Way takes place on a cosmos crossing Generation Ship (second mention of this concept in two days on this blog, see Cloud Cuckoo Land for the other.)  Levien's Generation Ship is a luxe model, that sounds more like a cross between Las Vegas and Disneyland than the grim, bare bones structure depicted in Cloud Cuckoo Land.   Populated in equal parts by wealthy patrons who bought their way on and permanently indentured servants who have traded their freedom and the freedom of their children (and their children's children) for a ticket off the dying Earth,  The World of The World Gives Way is part post-scarcity economy part Handmaiden's Tale.

  Myrra, an indentured servant working as a nanny for a wealthy power couple, splits protagonist duties with Tobias, the child of two paid passengers who turned to life of crime, now working as a police investigator.  When Myrra's employers turn up dead and Myrra goes on the run, Tobias fears the worst, etc.  The hook is that the reason Myrra's employers commit suicide is because they know that the ship has suffered a hull breach and is in imminent danger of implosion.  Escape is impossible.

  That's the set up.  I liked parts of The World Gives Way, and other portions I found tedious, but there is no denying the inventiveness of the scenario, and Levien is an above-average writer, more like a writer of literary fiction than a genre hack.