"Steeped in elements from real-life South Asian cultures, the
worldbuilding is original and intriguing, incorporating dystopian and
utopian elements along with current hot issues such as societal
inequities, digital surveillance, and technology's impact on humanity. .
. . [A] strong and intricate story." --Kirkus Reviews
This 2022 Colorado Book Award Winner is a rare, searing portrayal of the
future of climate change in South Asia. A streetrat turned revolutionary
and the disillusioned hacker son of a politician try to take down a
ruthlessly technocratic government that sacrifices its poorest citizens
to build its utopia.
The South Asian Province is split in two. Uplanders live in a luxurious,
climate-controlled biodome, healthy and artificially youthful forever.
Outside, the poor and forgotten scrape by with black-market robotics, in
slums threatened by rising sea levels, unbreathable air, and deadly
superbugs.
Ashiva works for the Red Hand, an underground network of revolutionaries
fighting the government, which is run by a merciless computer algorithm.
As a smuggler with the best robotic arm and cybernetic enhancements the
slums can offer, her cargo includes the city's most vulnerable abandoned
children.
When the brilliant Uplander hacker Riz-Ali stumbles into the Red Hand's
dangerous activities, he and Ashiva uncover a horrifying conspiracy that
the government will do anything to bury. As armed guardians kidnap
children, massive robots flatten the slums, and a pandemic threatens to
decimate the city, Ashiva and Riz must put aside their differences to
fight the system and save the communities they love.
