Girl Gone Viral in SpecFic Buddy Reads

Aug 13, 2019 Lata rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-f-h, bipoc-author, x2019-read, bipoc-actor

The story follows this structure:
1) Nerdy, wounded/angry, shy girl takes centre stage and gains fame.
2) Girl works really hard with her two friends to become more famous and influential.
3) Girl makes mistake after mistake, sabotaging all of her relationships while gaining more fame.
4) Girl decides to own up and start treating her friends better.
The story is fast-moving, and while I could predict around when Opal was going to do certain things in service of her fame, and when she’d finally be ...more

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Jun 02, 2019 Emma rated it liked it

3.5 stars. I really enjoyed the first 2/3 of this, thought it. Was a 5 star read but I found the last third to be an anti climax and felt a bit let down and disappointed.

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Aug 17, 2019 Lindsay rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, young-adult

Writing near future SF is ambitious due to the speed of technical innovation, social change because of it, and the difficulty of predicting both. (Have a read of some of Charles Stross's articles on doing so for some of the reasons why; he's had to trunk whole books because real world events moved faster than he could write). Writing it with a YA bent, at what's essentially the leading edge of this type of social change is leaning into the problem. This book is a superb effort, even while it doe Writing near future SF is ambitious due to the speed of technical innovation, social change because of it, and the difficulty of predicting both. (Have a read of some of Charles Stross's articles on doing so for some of the reasons why; he's had to trunk whole books because real world events moved faster than he could write). Writing it with a YA bent, at what's essentially the leading edge of this type of social change is leaning into the problem. This book is a superb effort, even while it doesn't quite nail the ending.

Opal Hopper is a coder and data analysis genius at a STEM-focused high school. She's part of a small team competing in a social media competition on WAVE, the cutting edge mass market VR platform. The first prize includes a meeting with WAVE founder Howie Mendelsohn, the reclusive billionaire creator of the platform, and someone that Opal desperately wants answers from because her father was his original partner before going missing.

When her data analysis of some hacked data from a new face-tracking feature of WAVE leads to some surprising conclusions about people's social media habits, she becomes a surprise social media star with every chance to actually realize her goal. But in the process she has to put everything to the test: her friendships, her relationships and maybe her future.

I absolutely loved this book. Even just for the view into the lives of people who have been born into the IT age and thrive there, and what their relationships to technology, media and each other are like because of it. But this is far more than that, because it also talks about the future of politics as automation removes the livelihoods of many people and what the backlash might look like. The new Luddites presented here aren't even all that unsympathetic. And the look at social media here is also layered with nuance, particularly around looking past trolls to empathic response, but clearly identifying that there is manipulation going on at all levels.

I did have some minor quibbles (for a long-running social media show, Opal's thing seems really light-on for actual content) and while Opal does find out about her father and resolves that part of her story, so much else is left hanging, but with little room for a sequel. Overall, I'd give it 4.5 if I could, but I think the ending here lets it down just a little too much, so I'll round down. ...more

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Jun 02, 2019 Amanda rated it liked it · review of another edition

3.5 stars. Overall I really enjoyed this. It was a fast fun read but the last quarter of the book kept me from rating it higher. The last part felt like a rush to wrap up all the dangling plot points and most of them were unsatisfactory in the end.

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