Publisher’s Blurb:

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.

My Take:

I read a good amount before I started blogging, but once I started writing about books I really started to pay attention to what makes up certain genres and tropes… the good, the bad, and the ugly. So when it came to reading Firebreak, my mind immediately went to other books I have read with secondary or sometimes primary settings in massive multiplayer online games. Here are some of the things I was cognizant of: strong attention to both primary and secondary world, the conflict between the worlds and the connection between the two (usually something in one world depends on the actions in the other), etc…

Firebreak is well-written. Mal’s inner monologue followed my thoughts almost exactly… We are both definitely sceptics! Ha! She doubts everything. The purpose of the game. The true motivations behind the mission she’s been sent on. Everything! This linked directly with the pacing and quality action sequences in-game. And I like the direct connection between rations, their performance, and that thing called FAME!

A couple things slowed my reading down a bit… I wanted a clearer view of the primary world. It didn’t feel like it could stand on its own which I think is important to set up the fulcrum between it and the game. What is it that links the two so strongly?

I also had a bit of an issue with the opening scene. Mal is off in VR trying to gain 1000 daily kills that will move her up the leaderboard. But off in the distance she sees what may be one of the game’s ‘heroes.’ She has a decision to make: get her kills or try to get some footage of this rare bird, the recluse super-soldier who may hold secrets to the game. It is a good action scene, but I feel it should have been more treacherous and risky. It felt too much like a “game”… Something was needed to connect it to flesh and blood outside of the game.

A mixed review for Firebreak by Kornher-Stace. Good pacing and driven characters power this narrative, but some issues within the genre create some flaws.

3 out of 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley, Saga Press, and the author for an advanced copy for review.

In FIREBREAK, by Nicole Kornher-Stace, the future is divided between to warring corporations. One of the only ways to scrape by is playing SecOps, a popular online war game where users are trying to crack the top of the ranks and then cash in on their performance and notoriety. Mallory and her best friend Jessa are mildly successful at the game and stream their online play daily. When they stumble upon one of the celebrity supersoldiers in the game, they are offered a new job to continue looking for and interacting with other celebrity supersoldiers in the game. But as quickly as that offer comes up, Mallory's world starts crashing down around her and she doesn't know who to trust and who to ask for help. Along with Jessa and her other roommates, Mallory has to not only figure out how to survive, but look for a way to make the world a better place in the process.
The dystopian future that Korner-Stace is not only plausible, but a logical place where to the world could be heading, where corporate dominance has power over government to the point that the business is the government. Mallory's universe, where she lives in a hotel room with many roommates and water is a expensive and hard to acquire commodity, quickly sets the table for what is going on in the real world. The book transitions between real-world and online world often, and Kornher-Stace does a masterful job of seamlessly travelling between the two. Without slowing down or feeling deliberate, the reader is introduced to Mallory and the other prominent characters in the beginning of the book, but the right amount of action is mixed in so it doesn't feel like the reader is just wading through the exposition before the story begins. As the book progresses, the stakes get higher and higher until the point where I felt my pulse quickening in the last couple of chapters.
Techno-thrillers are a difficult beast of genre to write in. You have to create three dimensional, likable characters, designing a world that doesn't exist and make it believable, and devise a plot that is exciting and fun to read. In FIREBREAK, Kornher-Stace has done all three and done it quite well.

Well I loved this so much! It was so full of action - not only do we get exciting moments with the VR game, but we also have a great investigation of what's really going on in the real world. All of this builds up to make a truly epic conclusion.

This book is fundamentally about human rights. Most of the US is now underwater, and two corporations basically control everything. Mal has to share a room with 8 other people and lives in this old town where people can barely afford enough water to stay alive. The corporations are certainly doing some shady things with these operatives. I enjoyed learning about these nefarious things happening and how Mal tries to make things right, as well as stand up for justice and human rights.

There's also a great exploration of the power of social media. We have people who fund and subscribe to Mal's gaming feed, so this helps provide Mal with income and water. There's also the use of social media as a tool to get the truth out there, despite these corporations trying to block it. The VR game aspect was very well done! It's believable, and I think this should be easy enough to follow for non-gamers. I suspect this book will be compared to Ready Player One, and while it does have some similar aspects, I thought Firebreak was way better.

I really loved Mal. We've got some own voices representation with Mal being asexual and aromantic, so that was nice to see. She's an orphan of the war as well and could have become one of these soldiers. I really liked seeing her reflect on this! She's a bit antisocial and doesn't always know how to talk to people, but she's a good person. I liked how there's not really a romance here with the focus instead being on friendships and bonds between people. Jessa is a good and loyal friend who stands by Mal, and I really liked their friendship.

In terms of these supersoldiers, I really liked uncovering their real identities and comparing them to how they act in the VR game. 22 and 06 are certainly quite mysterious, but I loved seeing their humanity as the book progresses.

I thought this was fantastic and would highly recommend it! There are some content warnings for things like torture, gas attacks, water rationing, and injustice.

I received a copy of this for review from the publisher via NetGalley - thank you! All opinions are my own.

My video review can be seen on my channel (around minutes 14:43-18:24 of this video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm2_Z5E7vRo

Listen y’all, I love a good story where there’s a VR game that decimates the line between escapism and survival, and Nicole Kornher-Stace gives the reader exactly that at the beginning of Firebreak. Mallory (Mal for short) is a streamer in a popular war VR game and earns most of her meager pay—both for in game items and for real life water rations and food—through one of her multitude of gigs, one of which is streaming with her close friend, Jessa. After capturing footage of a beloved NPC modeled after real life supersoldier heroes in the corporate war, Mal and Jessa receive an unbelievable offer that catapults them into a twisted web of secrets, oppression, and corporate greed.

This novel hits on so many of my favourite dystopian sci-fi tropes while keeping it fresh and engaging; in particular, I love well done plot lines that interweave trauma and transhumanism, and this book definitely fits the bill. More importantly, aside from the twists and turns of this page turning novel, it was so refreshing to read a story where platonic relationships were given all the gravity and value of romantic ones. Mal is aromantic and asexual, and this book gets the elusive ‘no romance’ tag with the bonus of being a book I loved and will freely recommend. Her relationship with Jessa resonates so powerfully on page, as well as her relationship to another character later on in the novel.

Firebreak was a much needed breath of fresh air in my reading life as well as a return to a beloved comfort zone. If you liked Ready Player One but wished it was way less White Dude Power Fantasy and 80s pop culture references, replaced with a heaping side of Black Mirror and a realistic dystopian portrayal of near future America, this is a book you should check out posthaste.

Thank you to Gallery/Saga Press and NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Pitched as <i>Ready Player One</i> meets <i>Black Mirror</i>, <i>Firebreak</i> is set in a near future U.S. that has devolved into two corporation-nations battling for control of whatever land hasn't flooded. It follows Mal as she works multiple jobs in a gig economy trying to survive.

Dystopia in media isn't usually my thing and my gaming experience is pretty much limited to Animal Crossing, but I saw the main character listed as aro/ace and knew I had to give this a try, and I am so glad I did.

I loved Mal! She is not a Chosen One. She is prickly and socially awkward and just trying her best to do the right thing and stay alive. I loved her grumpy/sunshine ladybromance dynamic with Jessa, and I loved that her platonic crush on 22 had all the intensity of a romantic crush when all she wanted was to be his friend because honestly <b>same</b>. That being said, the neither "aromantic" nor "asexual" appears explicitly in the text (the closest it gets is an instance of Jessa saying Mal "doesn't do that" in a conversation about sex), and while that detract from the representation for me, I know that might not be the case for others.

I also really loved the world Kornher-Stace created. From the corporation-nations to water scarcity to the Twitch/Patreon like virtual reality element being Mal’s main source of income in a nearly 100% gig economy, it all felt eerily possible and provided a good backdrop for conversations about corporate greed, celebrity, and what it means to be a "good citizen". The gaming elements were also really well explained and I really liked the way the VR interacted with the “real” world.

Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed by the last 25% or so of the book. The plot started to feel a little predictable and while it was still emotional, I wasn't as gripped as in the first 75%. And I wanted more of 6 and 22, though I understand why there isn't more of them.

That being said, I found this to be well-written, fast-paced, and thoroughly entertaining though quite bleak. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who likes sci-fi/dystopia or is looking for good aro/ace rep and am looking forward to rereading my finished copy!

Book review: Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace (4.5⭐️ — releases May 4)

Read if you’re in the mood for...

➱ a futuristic dystopian world with Ready Player One vibes
➱ a badass female protagonist who’s so easy to root for
➱ a dark superhero story

Firebreak is set in a futuristic American city mired in a civil war between the two mega corporations who control everything — right down to your water, your electricity, and your brain implant and internet connection.

Mallory is a war orphan who, now a young woman, shares a converted hotel room with eight other people and live streams her gameplay in a virtual reality war game to get by.

When she stumbles onto a conspiracy involving the corporation-created supersoldiers who've become larger-than-life celebrities — and a rare beacon of hope both in real-life and in the VR — Mallory can't stand by and do nothing.

The book had some definite Ready Player One vibes — virtual reality escapism, extreme corporate overreach — but I actually thought it was better.

There was a lot more out-of-game, real-life action and that made the story feel so immersive. Mallory is just the most kickass main character, and she's so full of heart and grit. The writing was better, and the themes were even more thought-provoking and relevant than RP1.

Plus, I just could not stop turning pages! I was sucked into the story from the first line and it just kept getting better, culminating in a moving conclusion.

I think Firebreak has appeal for everyone; I'd say it's sci-fi lite —most of the science fiction comes from the dystopian and futuristic nature of the story. It's really about genre-transcending themes like friendship, celebrity, corporate overreach, making the hard choices, and doing the right thing — especially when the "right thing" is a gray area — and it's a perfect choice for readers who want to try out some accessible sci-fi.

Firebreak is one of my favorite books so far this year and I highly recommend it!

Many thanks to @sagasff and @netgalley for a free review copy!

(Posted to Instagram and Goodreads.)

Although the RPGlit subcategory of sf is not something I typically enjoy, I read enough to discern that unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy the use a protagonist who constantly narrates her every action and exposes her every thought to the reader, and fortunately, the true blue fan will absolutely enjoy this well-liked heroic lead.

Thank you NetGalley for an ARC.

Excellent world-building. I was skeptical that I would enjoy a book about gamers, but I love Nicole Kornher-Stace books, so I decided to give it a go. It was an interesting premise and I didn't need to understand gaming to get what was going on. I really liked that there was no love triangle or romance at all. Great for teens, emerging adults, reluctant readers, and fans of dystopias.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. Listen to the full review here.

I teach an apocalyptic worldbuilding class. In it, we discuss the ways the world might devolve, and the implications for the setting of a story. These include climate degradation, nuclear fallout, corporate hegemony, totalitarianism, constant civil war, and, more recently, a technocracy that uses surveillance technology to enforce class hierarchies.

Nicole Kornher-Stace took every single one of these elements, threw them in a blender, and made a surprisingly decent smoothie. Despite the oversized ambitions, the worldbuilding largely stays consistent and isn’t overtly distracting to the main plot lines.

The book still suffers, however, from undercooking other elements. The chapters alternate between action-packed and the two main characters reviewing said action, painstakingly giving us info-drops and over-explanations that we don’t need. Often, the plot is carried forward by convenience, and the women are inexplicably lucky at the most fortunate times.

Hilariously, this comes across as a YA novel except that the author stirred about 150 “fucks” into the mix. We don’t even get any creative swearing. It was like someone told her, hey, you have a half hour to turn this from PG13 to R, so she panicked and wrote “fuck” as much as she could.

My main frustration with this book comes from the MC, the 1st-person narrator who brings us along for this ride. She in an introvert, defensive, and ethical, both generous to strangers and annoying as shit to the people she is close to. Typically, I love a good asshole character much more than a savior. We enjoy these types of characters (Sherlock, Dr. House, Marcella, etc) because their brilliance and wit earn their prickliness. Mal doesn’t impress me at all in those regards. She also shows no character growth, as learning more information does not qualify as actually maturing or adapting.

The best near-future novels always have some plot points that are already incubating out in the real world -- Firebreak hits the mark for me. The main character Mal is underemployed in a gig economy, desperately trying to make ends meet in a world overtly governed by corrupt mega-corporations. The media plays a role in keeping the masses poor and uninformed. Climate change has resulted in most of the coastal cities being underwater. It feels very plausible, which always amplifies the impact in this genre.

I can understand the comparison to Ready Player One, but Firebreak is much grittier and way less nostalgic. The first half of the novel leans heavily on the virtual reality game that everyone plays, but it becomes essentially irrelevant as real-world action picks up midway through the book. Because of the way events unfold, it makes sense to not mention the game anymore, but I was disappointed we never revisited that part of the world. There were a few unexplained events, particularly related to the NPC AI (e.g why did in-game 08 know the name Elena?)

The zippy pacing is classically YA, which worked really well for the story. There were a few points where I was *sure* there would be plot twist, but they never mainfested. Any of the major "reveals" are more of a slow burn rather than anything truly shocking. Even though I was disappointed my "plot twist" guessing skills were thwarted at every turn, it worked well for the tone of the book. The slow snowballing of small realizations mirrors Mal's mounting exhaustion, hopelessness, and despair. It isn't all doom and gloom by the end, but it's certainly a diminished hope.

I received an ARC of this book and read it in one sitting on a rainy day stuck at home. It's got a lot of the things I enjoy in my sci-fi: dystopian future, video games, wars of corporate greed, genetically engineered characters... what's not to love? It had a "Ready Player One" vibe but this is a much better story (and a better written book at that). I look forward to more from Nicole Kornher-Stace. Highly recommended!

I loved the concept for this book—a dystopian society controlled by corporations reducing citizens to consumers. It's a world that's not far off, which makes it even eerier.

I loved the world-building in this novel. It took a little while to get into and understand New Liberty and the VR game world, but once I was fully immersed in both for a little while, it became easy to follow along and hard to put down.

Many of the characters are lovable, even the SpecOps, mainly 06 and 22, but I wanted more character development. We learn about Mal's childhood trauma and some of her backstory, but I wanted more. Instead, it feels like we hear the same part of her story over and over again. We also never really get Jessa's backstory. We know it's comparable to Mal's, but it ends there. It doesn't feel personal, and maybe that's intentional, but with Jessa as a likeable main character, there was an opportunity for so much more development. Same with their roommates, and, of course, the SpecOps. They are intentionally dehumanized, so much so that there's no attempt to humanize them beyond their personality, language, and maybe, if we're lucky, a name. Do they remember everything? Do they remember their families? The bomb? Being brought in for training and testing?

Some moments read faster than others, so I'd say it's a medium-paced read. But there are so many exciting moments and plot points that keep you invested in the story and the characters' lives, specifically Mal's life. It's action packed and becomes more violent than I initially anticipated. But I was hooked. Certain scenes felt overtly drawn out, but I think that's also because so much of the book is based on such high-intensity, suspenseful events that I was craving a continued escalation.

[spoilers ahead]
Part four was somewhat disappointing to me. There's such a big shift in the reality of New Liberty and the characters and their behaviours that it feels a bit jarring. Also there's so much back and forth—literally with the setting—that it becomes tiresome. A lot of things that happen in part four also seem convenient but not entirely believable in the story. And the ending felt incomplete. The cliffhanger with Mal's character is one thing, but the uncertainty surrounding New Liberty and the two major corporations left me unsatisfied. Not to mention it's unclear how much of the Director's confession is broadcast, how many names she got through, and if those names were lost when the stream was interrupted. We also never learn 22's name! Why didn't he share it with Mal? Why does he remain reduced to a number while 06, Kit, is at least named?

Overall, it was an enjoyable read with great characters and world-building.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I read this book back in 2020, in November, while I had Covid. It's a story about a gamer named Mallory set in a post-apocalyptic world that will be familiar to folks who've read Atwood or other writers who have posited the end-results of a totally unregulated market. Corporations own everything in this future. And it is a future that resembles the past, a past that has happened right here in microcosm in the early 1900s -- and one that feels like it really could happen tomorrow.</p>

Mallory, the main character, is by day a refugee, sharing a single room with about ten other people in a hotel which has been converted to house her and her peers. All of these folks were orphaned as children. Their lives are regimented -- each of them have embedded chips that show their company rations and credits. They get water rations once a day. They eat ramen and peanut butter crackers and somehow don't succumb to malnutrition. Mal does a lot of things to survive. She is a dog sitter, for one, and she picks up other odd jobs as they become available. She also plays daily in BestLife, a virtual reality battle that mirrors the very one that made her homeless. She and her best friend are supported by people who watch their stream in a system that reminded me a great deal of the modern Patreon -- so it seems a boon when she comes across one of the illustrious corporate super soldiers who also have a presence in the game. However, this near sighting sets off a chain of events that pull Mal into deep corporate intrigue, uncovering just how corrupt her world really is.

FIREBREAK is a timely story because it asks some important questions. What is freedom? What does it mean to own your body when everything that goes into it from the food to the water to the microchip in your brain belongs to someone else? What does it mean to be a citizen in a world that is increasingly driven by consumption, in a world where easily half of interactions occur in virtual space -- a space so easily modified, a space where history can be rewritten? How does financial risk sometimes look just as terrible as a gun to the head? Kornher-Stace asks all these questions deftly, in singing, zinging prose.

Disclaimer: I received an advanced copy of this book through NetGalley

Mal is a streamer for a Virtual Reality video game in a dystopian future United States where two megacorporations have split the US between them and wage war over what's left. She stumbles upon secrets about the SecOps Operatives, genetically engineered heroes that are pop culture celebrities for refugees from the war between the corporations.

I really enjoyed this book, the way it portrays the relationships between Mal and her partner Jessa and between the operatives. There's a real message of "Your real friends and family are the people who've got your back" woven throughout the book. There's a lot of action and a lot of intrigue and the pace is pretty quick.

It reads to me like what Ready Player One could have been if it had done more of an exploration of the corporate-owned dystopia it envisioned.

This book has city wreaking mechs that are fought by super soldiers with swords and is fueled by the power of friendship. It's a great read.

Gaming. In a time with corporations running everyday life. An Accomplished player gets more than she bargains for and sets in motion a play she doesnot see coming. Scraping by ,living with eight others. She is a gamer who meets one of the most famous guardians of the game. With companies in control she doesn’t trust too many people. Trustin lands her in a dark hole that reveals answers she is sorry she started to ask. As she moves to save her life she reveals secrets that she hopes will keep her alive.

The year is 2134 and the United States is being controlled by two forever-at-war corporations. In the portion of New Liberty City governed by Stellaxis, water is being rationed and people are being arrested as terrorists for collecting rainwater. The one escape for its customer-citizens is the virtual reality game, BestLife. While there are various modules within the game, the war module is by far the most popular (and lucrative), especially since it allows players to interact with the elusive Stellaxis SecOps "soliders", many of which are no longer alive in real life. Our protagonist, Mal, and her team/roommate Jessa are approached with mysterious sponsorship that leads them down a rabbit hole and makes them question everything they know. In a world where corporations are selling their war through video games and merchandise commemorating their lab-created super soldiers, what's really going on?

Firebreak was the sci-fi, dystopian, cyberpunk thriller I didn't know that I was looking for. It's the type of dystopian novel that is a bit unsettling when you realize we're not all that far off from this type of situation. I'm not sure what I had expected from this before I started, but this wasn't it. The description describes this as Ready Player One meets Black Mirror, and I'd have to agree with that, but I also got a lot of Hunger Games vibes from it. This book is fast paced, ever changing and constantly had me on my toes. Although it didn't take much to predict the ending, it was still a wild ride.

I would highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys digging deep into conspiracy theories and loves playing battle Royale style video games.

Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace shows a dystopian futuristic America in which people are reduced to their consumer status, even more so than our current world. Water costs a dollar an ounce and a single quart is what is allotted to most consumer citizens for an entire week. A quart to drink, bathe, make food, flush the toilet. There is a constant war between Stellaxis Innovations and Greenleaf Industries, who fight for control over the remaining megacities that haven’t been drowned by water or destroyed by the war. Mal fights for her place, sharing a hotel room with eight other people, including her best friend, Jessa.

Mal and Jessa are both parts of a duo fighting for fame inside a virtual game. Within the game, there are avatars called SpecOps, of which there are a dozen, of various numbers. These SpecOps are based real people. Well, real enough considering everyone thinks they were grown in a lab. They protect the city from Greenleaf and the warfare that wages in the streets and that protection translates over into the game, where people sight them and can interact with them. After Mal sights one of them in game, her and Jessa’s streaming channel blows up overnight and they are contacted by a woman named B. She tells them that the SpecOps are not lab grown after all, but are children who were stolen in the chaos of war and tortured and changed to become the operatives everyone worships. Mal can’t just let this happen, not now that she knows. She needs to use the power of her voice to spread the word and let everyone know that Stellaxis is even more horrible than any of them realized.

The story reminds me of Dredd, the movie at least. I haven’t read the comics. It’s a futuristic world, where there are megacities, which are then controlled by large corporations. There is a lot of crime, people are working multiple jobs to get by, and no one is truly happy. They are merely pushing through to stay alive. In Firebreak, they rely on the virtual world to find meaning and happiness, though many of them are stuck in the real world, working menial jobs to get even an ounce of water. I really liked that little detail, that water is so scarce people have water rations, small cups of water being all they have for a week or more. We’ve all been thirsty before. Parched. With that little patch on our tongue, so dry that even drinking water doesn’t make it go away. Imagine feeling like that all the time. Taking the tiniest sips of water because you don’t know if you can make this water last but you have to. You have to or you’ll feel so much worse later. This desperation for the most basic of resources spreads throughout the books and is a definite point of control for Stellaxis.

Mal is just like anyone else, fighting to stay alive and to eke out every bit of water she can so she can survive just a little while longer. She plays her game, tries to reach a kill count of 1000 within the game so she can make it to the boards and maybe get a few more ounces of water as a sponsorship or maybe some cool in game items that will improve her chances of making it further. She relies on Jessa to be the people person. Throughout the book, she comes a little more out of her shell and shows herself to be a caring person, giving her water rations to others, helping victims escape from the destruction of yet another battle between Stellaxis and Greenleaf. She’s pretty selfless and easy to like, determined to do what she can even if what she can do is hardly anything. She’s fighting against mega corporations with little to nothing more than her own voice but she still keeps fighting. It isn’t really character development so much as Mal showing us who she is and becoming a little more confident.

Everything is so hopeless. In the old town, almost no one has a real job. They’re left doing things like dog walking or babysitting or making money in game to survive. Most of them work several small jobs to do so and they’re still barely getting by. Even in the nicer part of town, there are huge mechs destroying everything, the people getting caught in the crossfire. Half the US is submerged in water and the rest of it is formed into these massive cities controlled by corporations. There is no good food and Mal seems to survive on coffee and cheap ramen noodles. And her weekly ration of a lemon so she doesn’t get scurvy. It’s horrifying, the picture they paint. Graphic and horrifying how little Stellaxis cares about the people populating their city.

It takes some getting used to, the writing. The author jumps straight into the story and I was a little confused in the beginning, trying to pick up on the terms being used so colloquially. I did so after the first chapter and everything flowed very easily from there, in a stream of consciousness style from Mal’s point of view. There were many drawn out battles and a lot of gore, both in game and in real life. About halfway through, we leave the game world behind and settle into the horror of the real world. The game was completely forgotten. Kind of strange, considering the emphasis on the game in the beginning. But the game was just the gateway to contact the SpecOps in real life, so it’s entirely understandable.

Mal is just the type of person to keep pushing even when everything is so dire and impossible to overcome. She pushes to find a solution, to save the remaining operatives and take them from Stellaxis’s control. That is her main goal, for now. But it spread into the wider goal of freeing everyone from their control. It’s too big. It’s too much. But that’s actually a good thing. It’s not like everything comes out okay. But there is a little bit of a hopeful ending all the same. Even amongst all the horrible things happening. There is something.

By the end, there is no straight answer to what happened as the exposition is interrupted by yet another explosion. But we have a grain of insight into what happened and that’s enough for my brain to extrapolate. Human experimentation gone wrong, pushing too far and having few successes. But it was too expensive, too much, unsuccessful to the point where it’s pointless to continue. It’s a classic story, seen over and over again in various different forms, particularly in popular super hero movies. This book turns it on its head, putting such things in the setting of a dystopian America and making the impact even smaller, making such a thing all the more horrifying. There is definitely a bigger story being set up here and I really would like to know more, though it seems unlikely that there is supposed to be another book, either a prequel or sequel.

I enjoyed this immensely, especially the beginning and middle. The end sort of lost me for a bit there but it ended on a good note. Well, good isn’t exactly the word I should use but it was well written and intriguing, just not good for the characters.

I happily give this book four stars, easy. It kept my attention, was easy to understand after the important world building, and described the interpersonal relationships outside of the classic family structure very well. I did see that it had LGBTQ rep but it was not expanded upon enough for my liking. Mal might be asexual or aromantic, but those words were never used. She never expressed romantic attraction towards anyone, though she had a kind of crush/obsession with 22. The author does explain: “I prefer to write implicit aro/ace representation because I don't want to perpetuate any ideas that strong platonic M/F relationships in fiction are ‘only for’ aro/ace readers, but so far many such readers have recognized themselves in Mal.” Which I definitely appreciate! The clues are there for anyone who knows to look.

What happens in Firebreak relates to the real world, as well, in horrifying ways. Many people in this world have little access to fresh, safe to drink water. Even in developed countries like the US, the basic free water is full of chemicals and even lead in some areas. Other water options are expensive or inaccessible in other ways. The protests also directly mirror the real world Black Lives Matter protests of last year and the ones in Ferguson a few years ago, as well. This is very deliberate, I’m sure of it. It establishes a sense of community, not just among Mal and Jessa, and her roommates, but among the people as a whole, working against the system. It’s heartening at the same time as it highlights how helpless we can feel as lone people fighting against something so big we can’t even comprehend it most of the time.

This book would be great for anyone who liked Ready Player One by Ernest Cline or Warcross by Marie Lu. It reaches more depth than Ready Player One did, but it is, in part, based on a virtual game that then translates into the real world.

5 stars.

"Does it make it better, what she did, if she was only following orders when she did it? Fuck if I know that, either. "
This book was described as Ready Player 1 meets streaming and I have to say it hit ALL the marks for me. I really felt so immersed in this story from the very first line. Maybe it's seeing the "hustle and gig economies" crumple my friends, maybe it's the fact that collecting rainwater is illegal in many states under the guise of safety. Maybe it's the fact that over the last year I've seen more protests and the utter weight of feeling hopeless and realizing that swapping one corporate overlord for another isn't really a change. Maybe it's the fact that this book isn't too far from what's happening in the world right now.

But wow, I found myself seeing bleekness through all new lenses. If you're looking for a happy ending - I wouldn't go for this one. If you're looking to be entertained with pop culture references, this ain't the one. However, if you're looking for a book that covers what happens when corporation take control (it's slower and faster than you think) this is the one.

Mal, the MC, just wants to go through her life with her 3 jobs until she sees a truth that she can't ignore. It costs her everything. She goes from an upstanding (read: conforming) citizen until she fights back for what she believes in and while this book tries to end on a hopeful note, I only have to wonder for how long until a drone strike happens to take her out.

This boo gripes you from the very first chapter and refuses to let you go. I hope everyone reads this and realizes that action is necessary, but martyrdom is rarely as glorious as it sounds.

Marketed as similar to Ready Player One with a VR/dystopian setting, this book was that and more. Firebreak is pretty comparable to Ready Player One only in the fact that there's a massive VR element with a few changes like a streaming/ subscriber element. The real focus centers around a very realistic corporate greed, and this aspect is presented very well. We follow Mal, your average person who struggles to make ends meet, and she goes on a Neo-like Matrix adventure where she discovers a huge conspiracy of social control that's beyond everything she could've thought was real.

This is a really good book overall. It is well written, I loved the aromatic/ace rep, and even in its most depressing moments the realism was still poignant and meaningful. The chapters felt a little long at times, but if you're in the mood for a corporate rebellion in a very realistic near-future dystopia, I'd definitely recommend Firebreak.

Thank you so much Gallery/Saga Press and Netgalley for a copy of this eArc in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you for the opportunity to read Firebreak! I loved the post apocalyptic story. This is a futuristic story where gaming is currency to purchase basic essentials like water. I loved the platonic relationship and I'm always down to read about government take downs.