A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019!
"Gripping and timely." --People
"The YA debut we're most excited for this year." --Entertainment
Weekly
"A book that knocks you off your feet while dropping the kind of
knowledge that'll keep you down for the count. Prepare to BE slain."
--Nic Stone, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin and
Odd One Out
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?
