Slay

This book is fire. For character arcs to work, the main character has to start with a flaw and then fix it by the end, but Kiera, a gaming programmer, is confident about her skills from the beginning.

I love that she knows exactly what her game is about, and she’s not about to let the outside world redefine it incorrectly. The flaw, in this case, is the world’s perception of her game. Today, the gaming world is still heavily male-dominated, so this book about a girl loving her craft, which, in turn, reinforces her confidence, is always high on… show more.

Billed as Ready Player One meets Black Panther, Morris takes the reader on an immersive, nuanced story about what it’s like to be a BIPOC girl gamer in the bigger—and, let’s be honest, often toxic—world of online gaming. I am not interested in gaming at all, but I couldn’t put this book down. I love books that take me deep into cultures and show the varied—and sometimes conflicting—voices inside that space. Morris is unapologetic about the realities of Black Americans, but she takes the conversation one step further by exploring Black culture from around the world. Obviously, it’s perfect… show more.

Representation matters in popular fiction, and few pop stories showed that better than Marvel’s Black Panther film. Slay is often described as "Black Panther meets Ready Player One," and it's easy to see why. Ready Player One had a brilliant game creator who modeled his world after the culture he was raised on, Slay has similar elements, but in this unique novel the creator of a popular VR game is an African-American high school girl just trying to create a space for her and others like her. Steeped in Black culture in a way that feels accessible but… show more.