annieb123's Review of Firebreak

by Nicole Kornher-Stace

One young woman faces down an all-powerful corporation in this all-too-near future science fiction debut that reads like a refreshing take on Ready Player One, with a heavy dose of Black Mirror.

Ready Player One meets Cyberpunk 2077 in this eerily familiar future.

“Twenty minutes to power curfew, and my kill counter’s stalled at eight hundred eighty-seven while I’ve been standing here like an idiot. My health bar is flashing ominously, but I’m down to four heal patches, and I have to be smart.”

New Liberty City, 2134.

Two corporations have replaced the US, splitting the country’s remaining forty-five states (five have been submerged under the ocean) between them: Stellaxis Innovations and Greenleaf. There are nine supercities within the continental US, and New Liberty City is the only amalgamated city split between the two megacorps, and thus at a perpetual state of civil war as the feeds broadcast the atrocities committed by each side.

Here, Mallory streams Stellaxis’s wargame SecOps on BestLife, spending more time jacked in than in the world just to eke out a hardscrabble living from tips. When a chance encounter with one of the game’s rare super-soldiers leads to a side job for Mal—looking to link an actual missing girl to one of the SecOps characters. Mal’s sudden burst in online fame rivals her deepening fear of what she is uncovering about BestLife’s developer, and puts her in the kind of danger she’s only experienced through her avatar.

Author Kornher-Stace’s adult science fiction debut—Firebreak— is loaded with ambitious challenges and a city to save.

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Firebreak is a standalone dystopian near-future adventure story by Nicole Kornher-Stace. Released 4th May 2021 by Simon & Schuster on their Gallery/Saga imprint, it's 416 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats (paperback release scheduled for 2022). It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately; it makes it so easy to find information with the search function.

This is an enveloping, intense, well written powerhouse of a novel which delivered everything it promised me. I've seen lots (and lots) of comparisons from other reviewers with Ready Player One and it has only the most basic commonalities: much of the action takes place in a virtual world (but with very real real-life consequences), and there's a gigantic EvilCorp the underdog protagonist has to fight.

There's a lot of unvarnished social commentary here and I got flashbacks to Sinclair's The Jungle at several points. The author takes on late stage capitalism, corporate power dynamics, exploitation, economic corruption and manages to do so in the middle of a rollicking adventure buddy narrative which is blissfully free from romantic drama.

The author writes deftly and engagingly and I never found my interest waning. I was a little intimidated at the very beginning of the read over the length of the book, but I was gratified to see that there was no page bloat at all and I was never yanked out of my suspension of disbelief. It -is- a first person narrative which is challenging, but the author manages to avoid the "I did this and then this and then this happened" pitfalls.

It's a gripping and well told story. Highly recommended for fans of dystopian underdog adventures with strong protagonists. Four and a half stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Firebreak

by Nicole Kornher-Stace

Reviewed by annieb123 on Dec 14, 2021

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