Ready Player One meets The Hate U Give in this dynamite debut novel that follows a fierce teen game developer as she battles a real-life troll intent on ruining the Black Panther–inspired video game she created and the safe community it represents for black gamers.
By day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and one of the only black kids at Jefferson Academy. But at home, she joins hundreds of thousands of black gamers who duel worldwide as Nubian personas in the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY. No one knows Kiera is the game developer, not her friends, her family, not even her boyfriend, Malcolm, who believes video games are partially responsible for the “downfall of the black man.”
But when a teen in Kansas City is murdered over a dispute in the SLAY world, news of the game reaches mainstream media, and SLAY is labeled a racist, exclusionist, violent hub for thugs and criminals. Even worse, an anonymous troll infiltrates the game, threatening to sue Kiera for “anti-white discrimination.”
Driven to save the only world in which she can be herself, Kiera must preserve her secret identity and harness what it means to be unapologetically black in a world intimidated by blackness. But can she protect her game without losing herself in the process?
I first came upon this book during RivetedLit's December Reads event, and considering how much I love The Hate U Give and my interest in gaming culture, I couldn't say no. But then I let it sit too long and expire. So when the Black Lives Matter movement resurged this spring/summer, I finally got my butt in gear and checked it out. And I'm glad I did.
First off, I feel like I need to preface this with some personal info: I am a cis white woman who grew up partly in Indiana, and partly in a suburb of Portland, Oregon. I am familiar with Bellevue, Washington, the city where the main character lives, but have not been there. I have not read Ready Player One, though I do enjoy video games and try to keep up with the industry news on YouTube. I have read The Hate U Give, though I wasn't reviewing at the time, so I'll be revisiting it shortly.
Besides being out of its age demographic (which hasn't ever stopped me before), I'm probably not who this book was written for. I'm not a minority of any kind, and the only hardship I'm facing from birth is sexism and misogyny. But I feel like I need to share great books when I find them, so if my recommendation can shine any more light SLAY, then it's worth a little awkwardness on my part.
SLAY, in its simplest form, is about a teenage girl trying to find her place in the world. While she has a lot of things going for her—intelligent, good education system, well-off financially, supportive parents—she also has to contend with the hardships of being Black in America. As many kids do, she's dabbled with video games, but after finding not an escape from her everyday life but an amplification of toxicity spurred on by the anonymity that online avatars allow, she decides to create her own escape. Her own game.
SLAY, the titular game of the book, not only provides an escape for Kiera but an outlet for her to be herself. There, she doesn't have to hide who she is inside a character who looks nothing like herself, but rather revels in her skin, her fashion, her roots. And then she decides to share it with others. And with the technical help of one girl she's never met, and numerous artistic contributions from others in the community, the game slowly becomes "a fabulous mecca of Black excellence in which Nubian kings and queens across the diaspora can congregate, build each other up, and SLAY."
I wish I knew a little more about the game in general. I mean, what we are told is breathtaking, very reminiscent of what trailers showed from Ready Player One in terms of an anything-goes type of Virtual Reality experience. And we are nowhere near that level of interactivity, or even framework in games at this point. If you've seen any VR games on current systems, then you know that walking IRL is non-existent so far, let alone jumping around doing acrobatics. The systems (and safety) just aren't there yet.
We're also not told much about the finances of the game. There's a currency, but it seems like it's experience based. There doesn't seem to be a buy-in, just a passcode required to access it in the first place. So is it Free-To-Play? I don't know much about the costs of video games, just that publishers seem to like to shut down servers on old games when they're not making 'enough' money to fund their upkeep. If the game is Free-To-Play but also doesn't have microtransactions (purchasing in-game currency, upgrades, or cosmetic items for real-world money), how are the servers kept running? The game just seems a little too good to be true.
That being said, it in no way diminishes from the overall message or enjoyment of the book as the majority read very true to life. The media coverage was depressingly believable, with them focusing on video game violence and calling up uneducated opinions on the game, instead of actively seeking out people in the know. Granted, some of that was due to the exclusivity of the game, but I'm sure there had to be any number of correspondents or anchors who could have requested access. They didn't even try. They just went after the low-hanging fruit of a quick headline/soundbite without doing due diligence. Like I said, depressingly true.
And that goes for the overall themes of the story, too. A lot about Black culture (in America and abroad) is highlighted and discussed, though very few definitive answers are given. As much as some would like to believe the opposite, there are no easy answers. And one person's answer might not be another's. Even in the finale of this book, there are issues brought up that don't really have a definite or satisfying conclusion. But perhaps that is by design.
A neat surprise I discovered was that Kiera is not the sole narrator, but instead various people around the world are given chances to weigh-in on SLAY and its impact on their lives. I wish more time had been given to each of them, though I understand the need for brevity. Still, I was especially excited with Q.Diamond's chapter, even if it ended on a less than stellar note. But again, I feel like gaining just the slightest peek into people's lives was all in service to the greater goal.
My takeaway from this book is that (much like its titular game) it seeks to serve as a gateway toward a larger discussion. In witnessing one person's story, you are then interested in others' stories, and can then enter the discord. Kiera seems open and even in her inner monologue tries to keep things inclusive as a whole, dismissing some of her boyfriend's elitism and exclusionary opinions as unhelpful. Morris even writes in her Author's Note,
Everyone has an opinion about how we as Black people should act and which of our accomplishments deserve respect. Writing SLAY taught me that the magic of Blackness is what we make it, that we define our future, and that we as a people deserve all the greatness our ancestors imagined for us.There may be no easy answers, and it may take a long time to reach them, but answers and actions are worth pursuing, and I, for one, hope to be a part of the process.
Overall, I hope I haven't been too vague in my praise of this book, but I also want people to experience this for themselves. I devoured this book over the course of 5 or 6 hours and could not wait to share it. I feel it's best read in a group or at least with others who would enjoy a discussion on the topics it broaches. It does deal with some heavy subject matter, but nothing I feel like couldn't be brought up in schools (heck, it's more than I ever got on these topics!). If you're looking for a contemporary book that celebrates Blackness while exploring some of the issues that America faces right now, then please grab this book, build each other up, and SLAY!
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