Many thanks to NetGalley, Gallery Books and the author for the advanced reader’s copy of Firebreak in exchange for my honest review.
- Title: Firebreak
- Author: Nicole Kornher-Stace
- Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press
- Pub. date: 4 May 2021
- Series: none
- Pages: 416
- Source: NetGalley
- Genres: adult fiction, science fiction, LGBTQ, action & adventure, dystopian
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.
Content warning: blood, child abuse (past), child death, death, death of a parent (past), gun violence, medical content, police brutality, profanity, scenes of torture, violence
When I came across Firebreak, I was craving some good science fiction after reading a whole slew of romance and fantasy. Firebreak‘s absolutely gorgeous cover caught my attention straight away and the comparison to Ready Player One sealed the deal.
The story is set in a corporate, capitalist future where huge corporations like Stellaxis Innovations and Greenleaf Industries rule the world. Mallory is one of the countless orphans that resulted from the gory and ruthless corporate wars, living in Old Town in a cramped apartment with eight other tenants. When they aren’t doing jobs to earn enough water, food and resources, they are hooked on to the game SecOps.
Things start getting interesting when Mal and her friend Jessa get a mysterious sponsor who starts whispering about a missing young girl who might be connected to the SecOps in a shocking way. The story follows Mal as she navigates the virtual and real-world in an attempt to figure out the truth while staying alive.
Mallory as the main character is one of my favourite bits of Firebreak. She is initially the reluctant hero who gets entangled in a horrifying corporate conspiracy but she grows to an impressive level by the end of the book. I also found it interesting that the author revealed she’s an aromantic and asexual character though it’s never outright stated in the book. Personally, I haven’t read of any main characters that fit that description, but I found it gave the story so many more layers and depth!
Mal’s relationships are quite easy to keep track of. I loved her relationship with Jessa, her fellow VR partner and her real-life partner-in-crime. Their loyalty and the dynamics of their friendship were very simple but spoke volumes about how close and loyal they were to each other. I am very happy with how Mal’s circle of friends grew as the story progressed! I’m such a sucker for found families!
Lastly, the last remaining SecOps agents! I feel like I can’t say much since that would spoil a good portion of the story, so I’ll keep it vague as possible. I love them. I was surprised by how attached I got to these strangers along with Mal. They were the heart of the story, in my opinion, and I will read this book over and over for them.
I think Kornher-Stace was refreshingly ruthless with the storyline in Firebreak. I absolutely loved it! I love how she instilled heart into the story in the midst of the cold-blooded corporate warfare.
First, Firebreak‘s premise does not seem unbelievable at all. The future presented by the author was so believable, it is chilling. I love that Mal, an orphan who isn’t that different from anyone else in that universe, got involved in a deeper conspiracy by purely chance. We got to see the reality of an everyday person in that world warped by the realities that she uncovers, and that was pretty powerful to read about.
The story is told purely through Mal’s POV and I am glad it was. It gave a very streamlined plot and really got me to feel the emotions that went through an everyday citizen whose world is thrown upside down.
Ultimately, Firebreak‘s plot was way more intricate than I could have ever imagined when I started reading the first page! I am very impressed with the direction the author took this story in!
Firebreak has a good chunk of its story set in a VR game, and I found this a bit confusing at first. But I caught on real fast and totally loved it! The author herself said on Goodreads that she has written everything in a way that even a non-gamer can follow along, and I can personally vouch for that. I found it interesting how she managed to break down that world while not making it too big an info dump.
Kornher-Stace’s corporate capitalist world is very believable too. I was intrigued from the beginning because let’s admit it: world-building is one of the strongest aspects of a dystopian. It compares our current reality to a possibility that might spring up in the next couple of years or decades. I love the amount of detail the author had thought through and built on to project her version of this future on the readers. It’s an impressive feat and I love the story all the more for it.
The author’s version of a capitalist future is bound to leave the reader with a chilling after-taste when they are done reading Firebreak. It is a horrifying possibility that this book thoroughly and unbendingly exploits, and I am all here for it!
I love how the author built up the themes of community and friendship. There is a huge snowball effect that moved through the whole story, which brings together various people who might not have met otherwise, and builds relationships that left me in tears by the end of this book. Yes, literal tears!
And I think it goes without saying that when science is involved, so is ethics. The author used different people and their differing viewpoints to illustrate the abstract nature of ethical dilemmas, and, as someone who has studied medical ethics for years, I loved it!
How can I ever imagine re-reading this masterpiece without ending in tears? I’ll probably read it over and over again for the tears LOL! Firebreak was such an unexpectedly clever and spectacular science-fiction standalone! I would recommend this to anyone who loves good science fiction because it is possibly one of the best I have read so far!
Nicole Kornher-Stace lives in New Paltz, NY, with her family. Her two most recent books are the adult SF cyberpunk dystopian thriller FIREBREAK (Simon & Schuster/Gallery/Saga, 2021) and her middle-grade debut JILLIAN VS. PARASITE PLANET (Tachyon, 2021). Her other books include the Andre Norton Award finalist ARCHIVIST WASP (Small Beer Press/Big Mouth House, 2015) and its sequel LATCHKEY (Mythic Delirium, 2018), which are about a far-future postapocalyptic ghosthunter, the ghost of a near-future supersoldier, and their adventures in the underworld.
You can find her on Twitter @wirewalking, where she is probably semicoherently yelling about board games, video games, hiking, fictional representation of strong platonic relationships, good books she’s read recently, or her cat.
She is represented by Kate McKean at Morhaim Literary Agency.
Have you read Firebreak? Or do you plan on picking it up? Let me know in the comments below!
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2 thoughts on “‘Firebreak’ by Nicole Kornher-Stace: A Dystopian That Brought Me to Tears”
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Oh yay yay YAY! I won a copy of this one, but I hadn’t heard like, anything about it yet, so I am so happy to see your review, and even happier that you loved it so much! I am definitely putting it WAY at the top of my priorities list because it sounds awesome- and exactly my kind of book! Wonderful review!
OMG HOW LUCKY! You’ve won such a gem of a book! Can’t wait to see your review on it!!!!