This follow-up to Riot Act (2024) returns to 1991 and an alternate America that\u2019s ruled by propaganda and fear. Axl is haunted by grief. It doesn\u2019t help that Gigi, his dead friend and longtime crush, is also haunting him. After being murdered during a radical act of civil disobedience, Gigi lingers among the living\u2014specifically inside Axl\u2019s thoughts and memories. Existing in his head is no picnic: He\u2019s so devastated by her death that he\u2019s drinking himself into oblivion, and his steamy fantasies about her are consuming them both. Hanging on by a thread, Axl is determined to avenge Gigi\u2019s death and incite a nonviolent revolution. He teams up with Orin, his nemesis (and Gigi\u2019s ex), to infiltrate the tightly controlled TV programming of Bud Hill\u2019s brutal dictatorship. Meanwhile, Axl and Gigi\u2019s thespian friends risk their lives to create short films that Orin inserts into the regular broadcasts, using their art to challenge the regime. The story\u2019s political premise remains compelling, and the 1990s setting is intriguingly off kilter, but this second installment doesn\u2019t fully land. The interplay between Gigi\u2019s posthumous narration and Axl\u2019s inner monologue can be hard to follow, and the supporting characters feel flat. While the story has sparks, it lacks the theatrical charm and rich worldbuilding that made the first book sing. Gigi and Axl are cued white.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This follow-up to Riot Act (2024) returns to 1991 and an alternate America that\u2019s ruled by propaganda and fear. Axl is haunted by grief. It doesn\u2019t help that Gigi, his dead friend and longtime crush, is also haunting him. After being murdered during a radical act of civil disobedience, Gigi lingers among the living\u2014specifically inside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6597"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}