A review by rikerandom
Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace

5.0

Originally published on RikeRandom - find the full review and others there.

Content notes for Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace: violence & gore, death, kidnapping, violation of bodily autonomy, abuse

Detailed content notes:

Spoiler

The city of New Liberty is wrecked by corporate civil war – there are numerous descriptions of violence, various bioweapons and their effects, lots of shots being fired, explosions exploding and overall quite a bit of blood and death
The corporations also care little about the rights of their “free customer-citizens”, their main marketing strategy is keeping everyone dehydrated, and the above violence also includes brutal push backs against peaceful demonstrators
Kidnapping is a central aspect of the story, as is child abuse and there is on and off page torture

Representation: This book is all about the friendships! The prota is aro/ace, there’s no romance in sight but amazing platonic relationships, including a great friend-crush (that evolves into so much more); also, there are several non-binary side-characters

In a future where the US is owned by two rival companies, the government’s main interest is how many sales they can get.

What does it take to be a hero? Mal knows that she isn’t a hero. She’s just one of of the people who lost their home and family in the corporate civil war, lucky enough to be staying in a hotel room with eight other people instead of the camps. She’s holding down four jobs and just trying to get by. Her dream? Becoming one of the few gamers who can live off streaming their adventures in Best Life – a multiplayer virtual reality game based on New Liberty and its civil war. But with three other jobs and power curfew, it’s basically impossible to even make the scoreboards, let alone climb to the top.

What does it take to start a revolution? When Mal, who, despite all her struggles, is still very much an upstanding citizen, conforming to the rules of corporate government, witnesses something she can’t ignore and unearths a stunning secret, she realizes that she has to do something, anything really, to try and make things right. What follows is not just a fun and action-filled adventure but more than that a critical look at current trends and developments and what they could turn into.

[…]

Overall, Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace was a great book, exactly to my taste and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. The gaming aspects of the story felt super realistic (unlike a lot of other sci-fi video games), I liked the characters and I especially liked the harrowing near-future setting and its excellent world-building. Also, having an officially aro-ace main character and tons of awesome friendships and platonic crushes instead of weird insta-love romances is definitely a big plus in book!