I give very few books 5 stars, but this is one of them. It was great, action packed, and immersive fiction. This book feels like the best of Ready Player One, Hunger Games, and Divergent, if you were a fan of those books you will love this dystopian novel. It’s a quick read with a complex, if not reluctant, heroine.

Note: I received a ARC from NetGalley for review of this book.

Remember how you felt when you read Hunger Games or The Martian? That wonderful feeling that this is a great book you want to share. Firebreak is impossible to put down. Mallory lives in a dystopian world, sharing a hotel room with eight other young adults who survived bombings that killed their families a dozen years in the past. They work multiple jobs to afford water and play an on-online battle game where if they can livestream with a superhero type celebrity they may earn enough tips to maybe buy enough water to avoid kidney failure. After one amazing encounter, Mallory and her teammate each wake up to find 25 gallons of water in their accounts and the offer of a sponsor the flings them into a mystery involving a grand conspiracy. Outstanding!

This is a solid book about resistance and group action. Set in a dystopian world where two enormous corporations that control everything including water, housing, and food are always at war, a professional gamers and gig workers uncover the secrets of one of the corporations and decide to make them public. While the characters were basically just names and had no real development or even descriptions, the story is compelling and the tech believable enough for the setting to make this an enjoyable read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Galley Books for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars

In the year 2134 two major corporations, Stellaxis and Greenleaf, each control half of the remaining 45 states of the USA that haven't been lost to rising waters.

Mallory is a young woman who was orphaned as a child due to the fighting between the two companies. Mal lives in a hotel room with eight other orphans and has multiple menial jobs. Her main job streaming on Stellaxis' war game with her friend and roomie Jessa. The two women meet one of the 12 super-soldiers in the game which leads to a job offer to find a missing child. There is more the super soldiers than anyone expected.

It took me a bit to get into the rhythm of the book and then I was hooked. I liked Mal as a MC a great deal. She is kind and generous even when she has almost nothing. I love her willingness to fight for what is wrong and to help others. There is a wonderful friendship between her and Jessa.

The underlying theme of exploitations of the masses for profit and to control them is so relevant today. Everyone in old town works to pay for water and food and it is impossible to get ahead. It also helps to mask who the real enemies are.

Highly recommend Firebreak. I will have to go back and read Nicole Kornher-Stace's other books.

I would say it is more like Black Mirror than RP1. It has moments that will make you scratch your head and then go “what? What!!! Huh?”. Check it out.

Netgalley provided me with an advance copy of this book, and I'm very happy they did.

If you're unfamiliar with Kornher-Stace's work to this point (the very excellent "The Archivist Wasp" and "Latchkey"), you'll love this book because it's the tale of a professional video game player (and dog walker) in a dystopian landscape of war and water rationing. Mallory (aka Nycorix in-game) chases through her virtual open world in search of sponsors who keep her feed in credits and water coupons. Dotted throughout the game are the analogs of real-life supersoldiers, grown in vats and waging war on behalf of the government. Catching up to them means guaranteed viewers, which means more in the bank.

Until she meets two of them in the flesh, and realizes that what she thought she knew isn't real at all.

If you're familiar with Wasp and Latchkey, you just gasped. With good reason. Oh, yes. :makes shooing motion: Go pre-order it.

It's an amazing and heart-wrenching story about exploitation, and how those who do the exploiting have a vested interest in keeping folks at one another's throats so they don't recognize who their actual enemies are - and how deep friendship is the key to building the kind of community that can oppose exploitation.

It's amazing, and you should read it.