Bookish Brews Snapshot
Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace
An orphan of the corporate war, Mallory works streaming the popular VR war game, only to find out that the supposedly “grown” celebrity super humans (which are intellectual property of Stellaxis) are actually stolen children just like her.
💫 Atmospheric 🏙️ City Life 🎲 Plot Twists 🤔 Thought Provoking
- Genre: Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction
Book Review
Action packed, anti-capitalist, compelling, emotional, and tense
Oh man, where do I begin? I really loved this book. When I opened it, I thought “man this is kind of long, I didn’t realize!” And then literally this book doesn’t slow down at any point. It is packed with amazing content. This is going to be a hard review, because it’s packed with so many different amazing things that I don’t know how well I can narrow it down! This book is easy to follow and fast paced, but delightfully anti-capitalist in a way that Ready Player One wishes it was.
Firebreak follows Mal, who lives with her 7 roommates in an old hotel room, living by the rules of the mega corporation, Stellaxis, amidst a corporate war stalemate. Mal and her best friend Jessa are mildly successful at streaming the wildly popular war VR game modeled after the real corporate war — the war that the corporations have monetized. Everything changes for Mal and Jessa when they get contacted by a mysterious sponsor who tells them that the super human celebrities, that everyone knows Stellaxis grew in a lab, are not lab experiments at all. They’re real war orphans, just like Mal and Jessa.
I have been reeling about this book since I finished it a few days ago. It was done so well, I’m really impressed. The first thing that I just can’t get over was how much action was packed into this book. Not just action, but how so much information about the plot was weaved effortlessly directly into the action. We learned everything we needed to know for the journey through VR battles, mysterious disappearances, rebellion and secrets whispered in the garden. It never slowed down, but it managed to give us so many intricacies of plot weaved in perfectly.
The most impressive part to me was how the VR was so perfectly a part of the story. It wasn’t difficult to follow whether we were in a digital world or the real world, even though they basically look exactly alike!! But not just that it was easy to follow the distinction (a huge feat in writing, I think), but I was most impressed that the virtual world and the real world paralleled each other so much. Not just in looks (that is blatantly stated), but in action! The real world of the book felt like a video game as well once the action was ramping up. Somehow Nicole managed to parallel the virtual world and the real world in so many ways while making the differences very clear the entire time. Incredible!
This book is filled with small moments that make big statements. It was absolutely stunning. From the corporations strictly owning the water supply but giving out brain implants for free, how important and life saving libraries can be, to the platonic M/F crush that Mal has for 22. I was truly stunned at how much care was placed in every bit of this book, every moment meant something, and I was really impressed the whole time.
Firebreak was truly incredible. It was everything I could have hoped for in a book. It was full of action but never missed a moment to make a statement on the important things. I’m truly impressed at what this book was able to accomplish without feeling weighed down at all. Absolutely wonderful!
Book Aesthetic
