Alix's exclusive school is targeted by an anonymous group of vandals who turn out to be radical activists out to get her father, putting her and her family in danger. The group claims that Alix's powerful father helps corporations that knowingly allow innocent victims to die in order to make enormous profits from unsafe products cover up their wrongdoings, and they want her to help blow the whistle on his misdeeds.
This is an exciting, high-tech mystery-thriller in which orphaned activists go after the corporations that have contributed to the deaths of their families.
This is a character development story that puts us inside the head of a teen girl having her worldview completely subverted by a series of eye-opening epiphanies.
This is a book with an agenda that takes on some very serious, thought-worthy issues.
The first two, unfortunately, suffer some because of the last. The writing is preachy and repetitive at times as Bacigalupi works over and over to make his point in the hopes it sinks in. And, while Alix's growth is interesting, her actions and reactions didn't always feel realistic to me, but instead felt molded by the needs of the plot. And I write this as someone on board with the issues and rooting for her changes.
Nevertheless, it was an engaging, gripping read. 3.5 stars.
I thought everybody was moneygrubbing. Rich people just do it better.
. . .
It should have been filled with bats, Moses thought. Bats and the sulfurous stink of evil. Instead, it was sterile AC air and a tenth-floor view of other buildings that were just the same size. Modern evil. It didn't look like anything except another office building.
If you wanted to look at evil, it was just a bunch of suits and ties, a bunch of cubicles and computers, the quiet whirring of commerce. Evil wasn't anything. It was just business as usual.