Kiera Johnson has a secret that is getting harder and harder to keep. By day she's an ace student and one of the only black teens at Jefferson Academy but at night she's the creator of a massively popular online role playing game called SLAY. SLAY is a haven for gamers who for years have endured racist abuse in other online formats. Kiera keeps the fact that she's the game's creator hidden from her parents, her sister, her friends and even her boyfriend Malcolm, who is passionate about fighting white oppression, one of those tools being, in his opinion, video games. However, disaster strikes when a teen in Kansas is murdered over the game's built-in coin system. The boy's family and the media demands a response from the game's elusive creator. Not to mention the fact that SLAY is labelled racist, dangerous and responsible for generating gang-like mentality amongst its players. Lawsuits are brought up, prison sentences are mentioned. Kiera is consumed with dread and panic. Kiera's only solace is her friend Cicada, one of the game mods who lives in Paris. Kiera has never met her but finds a kindred spirit and a calming presence while talking to her. As the walls start closing in and Kiera finds herself loosing a grip on her sanity, she must make an impossible choice: reveal herself to the world and lose the only escape she's ever had in her life or try a last ditch effort to save the game she and hundreds of thousands of others love. SLAY is a brilliant new novel for fans of gaming and for anyone struggling to be themselves, struggling to live up to the expectations of others. Kiera is someone who feels like she has to apologise for who she is, someone who intimidates her white classmates just because of the colour of her skin. Her white friends come to her for advice on how not to appropriate black culture which is exhausting, as if Kiera is the last word on everything that revolves around black history and culture in general. I loved the supporting characters, Malcolm, her boyfriend, starts out as a passionate yet angry man who studies white oppression and black culture fervently. This passion eventually descends into something troubling for Kiera, and she must make hard choices when it comes to her love of SLAY and her love of Malcolm. Her sister Steph and her parents are supportive, tough, annoying and worried about her. In short, they are very well written. Morris has created a very unique and believable gaming atmosphere in my opinion. Many moons ago I was a fan of Everquest and played it often. SLAY opened my eyes up to the racism, sexism and overall toxicity of online gaming culture. I did not experience this in Everquest but this is down to two things, I am a straight white male and I wasn't that huge of a player, it didn't consume my life. Reading SLAY prompted me to do some research into this and I see it is a huge problem. This is an atmosphere that teens I work with in the library are dealing with, some of them on a daily basis. It really brought something I should have known more about to the forefront and i'm grateful for it. I highly recommend this novel to ages 14+
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