Fireblooms

Gr 8 Up–When Sebas moves to New Gault, a community run by an all-encompassing corporation called TECH, he feels out of place in many ways. After 17 years living with the Mexican side of his family, he’s now with his white mother who has cancer. At school, he’s the only kid who refuses to use TECH devices and all the perks that come with them. After all, using TECH would mean he’d be subject to constant surveillance and an allotment of a certain number of words he can say per month. Lu, a nonbinary Latinx student ambassador who takes Sebas under their wing, is certain that TECH surveillance keeps students safe from bullying, but Sebas isn’t convinced. As Lu and Sebas grow closer and Sebas becomes more integrated into New Gault, he must navigate his contentious relationship with his mother, his budding romance with Lu, and the pressures of TECH’s ubiquity. While Lu and Sebas’s slow-building relationship is thoughtfully rendered, as is Lu’s anxiety, the world of New Gault generates more questions than answers. Though it is a society built on overbearing surveillance technology, the story reveals very few downsides to word allowances and mandatory biosensors, which may be hard to swallow for teens. The story does not go into deep exploration of the themes it introduces, but an LGBTQIA+ love story with two Latinx leads is a welcome addition to teen shelves.