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Reviewed by:
  • Want by Cindy Pon
  • April Spisak
Pon, Cindy Want. Simon Pulse, 2017 [336p]
Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4814-8922-5 $18.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-4814-8924-9 $10.99
Reviewed from galleys         R Gr. 9-12

If you don't have cash, and massive amounts of it, your life is going to be short and terrible in this futuristic Taipei where pollution is choking the 95% of those who can't afford fancy protective suits. Jason Zhou is one of the unlucky ones, but at least he's got friends and a mission that keeps him busy: take down the Jin Corporation, the biggest and most nefarious company around. When the group decides that an insider will yield useful information, Zhou reinvents himself as Jason, a wealthy Californian teen who lives alone in an apartment dripping with luxury, an endeavor [End Page 422] funded by a kidnapping for ransom. It is quite a shock when Jason realizes that the girl he kidnapped (whose memory he erased with an injection) is the girl he is now falling for, who is also the daughter of Jin himself, CEO of Jin Corp. Thus a tangled, emotionally complex romance/espionage/sci-fi plot is off and running. Jason Zhou is a decent person trapped in impossible circumstances, so he's an accessible everyguy whom readers will likely be rooting for, even as he makes many mistakes. Side characters are a bit flat, all blindingly loyal or unrepentant in their greed, but the core group is so compelling that it really doesn't matter. Sci-fi fans, especially those with any knowledge of the current city of Taipei, will find this to be a gripping, fast read that blends cultural elements, edgy tech, and a future coming out of a recognizable pollution-heavy current path.

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