I was hooked the minute I read about Brittney Morris's debut novel Slay. A story about a teenage developer of an online role playing game, the murder of one of their players and infiltration by a troll? It sounded fascinating and I signed right up. The book couldn't have come at a better time too, for I was struggling to get into anything after reading Kathleen Glasgow's How to Make Friends With the Dark and Slay drew me in and entertained me from the very first page.

Slay is the name of the game that seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson has developed and it boasts over 500,000 users. It is a virtual reality game that is part-card-game, part-combat that celebrates Black excellence, history and culture. The game is admittedly slightly US-centric but focuses on aspects non-American Black culture too.

A central theme in Slay is the experience of blackness and how this differs between individuals. There are many diverse opinions in the book and the book highlights that although society likes to tell Black people how to act and what the correct experience of blackness is, it is up to each individual to define their future and to live in an authentic way. This is an incredibly strong message to be going out to young readers.

The events in Slay centre around the murder of a young player in a dispute over the game's currency. A media storm ensues, with the normal talking heads seeking the game's creator, declaring the game racist and calling for legal action.

It provides the perfect storm in which an online troll can flourish. This troll threatens the entire Slay community and puts everything Kiera has worked so hard for at risk. Can she protect her virtual world?

I thoroughly enjoyed Slay and was quite happy to have been drawn into such an engaging story. I enjoyed the tournaments and matches in the book, the descriptions of the Slay gameplay and the detail behind each of the cards. I also loved the celebration of what it is to be Black and the exploration of how different that experience is for people across the globe.

My primary criticism of the book would be that the game and developer side of the story needs a reality check. Slay is a complex virtual-reality MMORPG, has over half a million users, is run for free on six university servers, has two mods and depends on donations or cheap purchases of backgrounds and images for the various parts of the game. The logistics of running a game of this calibre would be astounding if you imagine that local Facebook groups require far more than two mods or they descend into chaos or that 6,000 employees at my company require more than six servers to do our work. It just doesn't add up and it's unlikely that a teenager managed this without considerable capital input.

In my mind, I got around this by suspending disbelief and taking Kiera at her word that there are virtual-reality kits that make this sort of stuff simple for tech-savvy teens.

I also thought the resolution of the events in the novel were a little too easy and fell too comfortably into the skill set of those who triumphed.

Despite these reservations, I enjoyed Slay a lot and give it an excellent four out of five stars. I cannot wait to see what Brittney Morris delivers next and hope that she doesn't make us wait too long.

I was unsure when I started this as I’m not a gamer, but oh my God the writing of Brittney Morris is so good it had me hooked and drew me straight into Kiera’s world and the game. It’s a wonderful book full of representation, a great plot, wonderful characters, amazing writing and my only criticism, it ended and I still wanted more, one of my favourite reads this year. Go out and buy, download or get from the library, it’s amazing.


Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

"Ready Player One meets The Hate U Give in this dynamite debut novel that follows a fierce teen game developer as she battles a real-life troll intent on ruining the Black Panther–inspired video game she created and the safe community it represents for Black gamers."

I knew from the outset that I would love this book, I absolutely adored The Hate U Give, but I hadn't read Ready Player One but had read Warcross by Marie Lu, which is similarly about gamers, so I knew this would be for me.

I found the beginning of this book to be really slow going and initially I found it hard to get into, but after the first couple of chapters I was really hooked. I really liked the way the author portrayed their characters, and they were really rounded and developed.

The blurb already told us exactly what the reveal was going to be, so it didn't come as any surprise, but I liked the way it was set out in the book.

I could definitely see the connections and relations to The Hate U Give, with the discussions of race and the perception of race. I thought it was beautifully done in Slay and didn't feel forced or fake, and felt very genuine and well researched.

The format of the game was really fun and immersive, and definitely made me want to play the game. It was fun to find out what the different cards were for the game and what they involved.

Overall, a really well written and enjoyable book, which I would definitely like to get in physical format.

I loved the theory of this book, but the reality didn't quite live up to expectations. Some of the practicalities just seemed a bit unrealistic (how has Kiera managed to build this game from scratch when she says she has no coding experience?!). But the political message is really great and it touches on a lot of important issues.

DNF
I really wanted to love this but had to DNF.
First of all, it is super unrealistic. I'm also not enjoying the writing and some of the things said are surprising me and not it a good way.
Was hoping it would be a Ready Player One for girls but not for me.

I tried giving this a decent go but I had to DNF at 25%.
I couldn't warm to any of the characters, the writing felt simplistic and didn't make me feel inspired to keep reading and I couldn't make sense of how a girl (still in school), had managed to develop a VR game with virtually no funds, on her own, and keep it a secret from her friends and family. It made no sense and the descriptions of the game play were confusing and I completely lost interest because of this.

I was looking forward to reading this because I like video games, but it was just one big eye roll for me.

I wasn't 100% sure how much I was going to enjoy this book, not because it didn't interest me but because I am not a gamer and I know very little about video games.

Morris writes so well that at no point did I feel like my lack of gaming knowledge counted against me. I always knew what was going on and I never felt that my lack of interest in video gaming made SLAY an any less enjoyable read.

I've said before that 5-star reviews are the hardest to write and that's equally true here.

If you've spent any amount of time on my blog, you'll probably know that contemporary (especially contemporary YA) is one of my least read genres. The fact that I've rated this one five-star should say a lot.

The world-building within world-building in this novel is incredible. Not only are Kiera and her family, her school life and her relationships vividly described and completely believable, Morris has also created an incredible world within SLAY (the game) itself.

Days later, I'm still have convinced that I could pick up a controller and load-up SLAY myself, or that I could put it into Google and come up with results. In this respect, it's quite similar to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: even though the media was created entirely for the novel, it feels 100% like something that already exists. I loved the gameplay with the card system and, even is a non-gamer, I completely understood the rules involved in the duels and how the things going on within the game related to the real world characters we were following.

Kiera has to be one of the best characters that I've read recently. She's incredibly well-written and multifaceted. Morris manages to fit an awful lot of relationship dynamics within the space of this novel: we have Kiera 's relationship with her sister, her best friend, her best friend's brother, her boyfriend, her parents and her co-moderator. There are also relationships between all of the supporting characters which feel fully fleshed out too.

SLAY deals with some very serious issues including cyberbullying, safe spaces, racism, cultural appropriation and feelings of alienation. The fact that Morris has managed to discuss all of these while fitting in the level of world-building and character development (without ever making the novel feel like it's about anything other than the story itself) is incredibly impressive.

SLAY is a fabulous book and I'd recommended it to gamers and non-gamers alike.

Unfortunately I can only give a 1 star rating for this book as I DNF’d it. This was mainly due to the fact I am not the target audience for it. A lot of the references passed me by and that is probably as I haven’t had the experiences of the audience this would be targeted at. I got around 20% of the way in and although the main character was interesting to read about, when it got to the players playing their cards in Slay, some meanings flew over my head. I think young black teens will love it, as as this is completely aimed at them.

Thank you NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read something way out of my comfort zone.
Kiera is an honours student and seems pretty certain where things are going. But she has a secret that she doesn’t feel comfortable sharing. She has designed and co-created a digital world where members can form a community...a game called SLAY.
In this world, black game players don’t have to worry about online trolling and racist abuse. The moves they can use are part of black culture, and Kiera sees this as her safe space. Somewhere she can explore who she is, without being worried she is being judged.
Though the game seems to have come from a well-intentioned place, events somewhat take over and it’s clear Kiera has been a little naive. A young boy who plays her game is killed in real life and at the heart of his killing is an in-game dispute. Kiera feels responsible, and so many voices start to point the finger.
An interesting way to explore race and attitudes to race. I didn’t really get all the gaming talk, but the issues it examined were definitely compelling.
There’s no easy answers to some of the questions posed in the book, but it serves as another attempt to initiate discussion.

You don't have to be a gamer to understand this book. This book is one of those where jargon does not matter. The subjects being discussed do and with this story it touches on so many issue prevalent black teens today and for gamers as a community.

A well thought out and structured novel that never loses it's pace, with relate able and likable characters this book is a great read,

Firstly, SLAY is phenomenal! I’m not a gamer (unless a Crash Bandicoot, Advance Wars and Zoombinis phase counts?!) but I loved Brittney Morris’ presentation of Black gamers, the wide range of Black people from all areas of society who game, and the reality of online gaming for Black people in terms of the racist abuse they frequently encounter. Having a young Black woman as the developer of an online world as rich as Slay is EVERYTHING! This is definitely one for Black Girl Gamers.

SLAY shows the relationships that Black women and girls navigate - with Black men, our families, our white friends - safe spaces, tokenism, forced representativeness, the coded language used to describe black “issues”. In SLAY, Brittney also begins to explore how rich and vast the African diaspora truly is (chapter 16 - ughhh) and the Slay cards are a genius way of doing this; I love the “twist out” card and I’m looking forward to seeing a “scotch bonnet” card (definitely an attack card) and a “trouble mek di monkey nyam pepper” card (absolutely a hex)!

SLAY the novel is the same as Slay the game: a celebration of Black culture in all its myriad forms. In her novel, Brittney shows that diversity within blackness is more than just shade range.

I not sure it’s completely appropriate for me to give a review of this book. However, I enjoyed the writing, plot and characters.
I was teaching in an all girls school with a population of students who would love this book that would help them feel represented.

Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC of this novel!

Guys. I love SLAY. The writing is impeccable and the storyline is thought provoking. I really enjoyed reading about not only a girl in STEM but a POC in STEM. The conversation about race mixed with VR gaming is original and sure to resonate with loads of people.

I enjoyed the cast of characters presented - the protagonist feels real and relatable. We've got a diverse cast of characters in terms of personality and race and I think this complements and acts as a foil to the main character in such an elegant manner.

Even though this is a contemporary, there is a bit of a thriller aspect to it - will SLAY get shut down? And who is Dred, this person who wants to sue?

The book asks very important questions and as a reader, you learn a lot outside your own culture. The book teaches other POCs and non-POCs about black history and culture in a way that doesn't sound condescending or like a lecture - teaching history through playing cards was an amazing tool.

Simply: this book is great. If you don't read it, you're missing out.

I had to DNF this book. It was just so bad. I read Warcross by Marie Lu a little while ago and when SLAY came by on Netgalley I knew I had to read it. It was definitely not as good as Warcross. Warcross got 3 stars from me, SLAY gets only one.

Writing style: I couldn't get into the style the author uses to write in. A children's book has more complicated sentences than this.

Characters: It's supposed to be a book about a black girl but you could have told me it was about a dog and I'd still believe you. The characters are flat, they don't have any characteristics that jump from the page and the only thing that indicates the MC is black is the dialogue she has with her boyfriend and sister.

World-building: the game the MC has made is just not plausible. There's so much that goes into a VR game that you can't make unless you have millions of dollars at your disposal and a high school girl doesn't have that kind of funds. There's only one other mod, a Facebook group with only a couple of people in it has more than 2 mods, so it's not possible that a game that is played by thousands has only one mod.

Potential: This is the author's debut novel and I'm sure she'll take the (I'm) possibility of what she's writing into more consideration when writing her new book. This story sounded amazing, but it really didn't live up to anything.

I really wanted to give this book a chance. When I first started it, I already despised the writing style, it just really isn't for me. So I put the book down and gave it some time before I opened it again. The second time around I still didn't like it. At the third try I just got so annoyed with the impossibility of this book and I had to DNF it. This book is not for me, but I'm sure others will like it just fine.

This book had a great premise and I love the representation in this book.

However, there seemed to be an overuse of hyphens, I'm not sure if this was intentional or just a big error with the review copy. The representation of relationships and some characters felt like it could have been improved.

A teen game developer finds herself facing an online troll after her Black Panther-inspired game reaches mainstream media and is labelled as exclusionary when a young Black boy is murdered over an online dispute. No one knows that Kiera Johnson, an honours student, runs the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY. So when her game’s existence is thrown out into the open, she must save her game while also protecting the safe community she has created for Black gamers.

SLAY comes to life when Kiera Johnson’s experiences of being a Black gamer means she is ostracised and faces continuously racist abuse. SLAY becomes her refuge where she can put aside her fears about college and whether her future with her boyfriend is the one and, simply put, slays in her self-made game environment. I loved the gameplay detail a lot. For some, it can feel overwhelming, but I loved the detail Morris put into bringing SLAY to life! The gaming culture is one of the book’s strongest point.

When word of SLAY leaks to the media, Kiera is devastated to see what was a safe space for so many people suddenly branded and portrayed in a negative light, this book is a discussion of the importance of space spaces, and they have the right to exist without being labelled racist.

In my opinion, the book struggles to make me feel like Kiera developed this game. I thought we’d get a better explanation to how she manages to run SLAY, a VR MMORPG, but we get so little that it made the reading experience disappointing. SLAY is Kiera’s baby, but to maintain a game like SLAY for years with no one in your family realising and only having two people moderating a game with 500k users doesn’t make sense. I would’ve loved to have seen Kiera actively working on SLAY rather than pushing it to the side and with little to show of her skill in game development. Also, the ending was rather disappointing as well, and a lot is glossed over, and not developed. So it’s a shame the side characters weren’t as impressive as they had the potential to be better. Kiera deserves better friends after everything she’s been through.

Overall, despite my own shortcomings with SLAY, Morris’s debut is a sweet love letter to Black gamer girls. SLAY is born out of Kiera’s wish to promote Black culture from across the diverse diaspora. Collectable battle cards are grounded in Black culture, each with a deep meaning and can kick ass on the digital playing field. SLAY was a good read, and I’ll happily check out anything else Morris will release in the future.

This book is amazing! Mash up Angie Thomas with Alice Oseman and you have Slay. Thought provoking in a completely different way, this book really makes you consider racial identity and racism in an upfront and challenging manner. The gaming element is part of that-not just a fantastic construct-as a white non-gamer it had never occurred to me that the virtual fantasy world could be just as divisive as the real one. An important book that asks important, eye opening questions but that is entertaining, gripping and emotive to boot. I ripped through it in one sitting and can't wait for more from Brittney Morris!

I really enjoyed this book, it was extremely thought provoking and insightful. I got to see a world I have never experienced and in doing so I found myself becoming educated. I think this book speaks to a lot of people and I am so glad it’s been written. We all need more books like this one and I am so glad that I got to read it.

Slay is told by Kiera Johnson a female, teen coder who has created her own game to provide a space where she can be truly herself. To enable the game to be a safe space for the black community that it is designed for you need a passcode to play. However the game becomes headline news after a tragic event leads to a young boy being murdered leading to difficulties in both Kiera’s personal and online life.

I really liked this book. I particularly liked that the book has a strong female lead who is coding video games. More of this please! The story line kept me engaged and I was invested in finding out how it all played out. I enjoyed the journey that Kiera took, showcasing that everyone has different views and opinions and it is important to learn who to trust.

I did find the writing a little clunky at the beginning (a little too much tell rather than show) however this did settle down after the first chapter or so. My other issue was the boyfriend character, I was not sure if I completely believed the way he acted.

However, with those minor quibbles I was still completely immersed and will be interested to see what Brittney Morris writes next.

IN SUMMARY: In this mixed bag of novel, where the video game logistics don't make sense and the characters are boring, SLAY falls far short of slaying.

MY THOUGHTS:

My biggest problem with SLAY is that the video game itself just doesn't seem plausible.

The protagonist, Kiera, is a hard-working student with high grades and a tutor who created and now maintains SLAY without her parents or anyone else knowing. I had so many questions that made it impossible to suspend my disbelief. Like how Kiera could afford to run and maintain SLAY for three years without her parent's knowledge. She tutors her friend in maths occasionally, but that would be nowhere near enough to maintain servers, run maintenance, buy assets, textures, designs, etc. How does she buy her VR gear? How can she afford a high-end PC? Or the multiple servers down in Paris that run the game? As far as we're made aware the game is free to play, and Kiera herself has no trust fund, and though her parents are comfortable we don't see them bequeathing her an allowance.

Probably more importantly, how does she have the time or the energy? Kiera developed and moderates the game, and it's implied that she creates everything herself (aside from one mod, Cicada, but I'll get to that). She builds the worlds and biomes, she programmes the code, she fixes the bugs and creates the cards used to duel. The duels are grandiose battles in stadiums - did she make all the animations, too? What about the sound effects? Modelling? Even if I accept the fact that she's a mastermind at everything game creation, that doesn't account for the fact that she's still a schoolgirl who has homework and studying and a social life. It's not possible that she manages all these things and gets to bed by nine-thirty.

Bearing in mind this is also virtual reality, so you have to add the development of synchronising motion control and tactile feedback and a stereoscopic display sensors.

Maybe she has people to help out? Well, no, because there's only one other mod, Cicada. How do you have a game played by hundreds of thousands of players only moderated by two people? My Discord server has thirty users and we have more mods than that! How do you manage chat functions and communication, card trades, marketplace, character customisation, complaints/ feedback? Forums? There's absolutely no weight behind the logistics of SLAY that makes it believable as an actual video game.

There's even a part where, as a huge duel is about to take place, all five hundred thousand of the accounts of SLAY suddenly become active as people tune in to watch. All for a game that is supposedly 'not mainstream'. Yeah, right. Club Penguin had over two hundred million accounts, and do you think all of those people suddenly decided to hop back online just as the site was being shut down?

This read like a very idealistic, almost romanticised portrayal of being a game developer. You can't click your hands and boom, "here's my game and thousands of players!". We never see Kiera put work into making/ improving SLAY that would at least assuage the doubts that she could be the game's developer, and we never see her genius level intellect come into play that could justify her wizard-level game creation skills.

Even outside the game there are moments that are hard to swallow. Most things happen just because, like Kiera grabbing a last-minute appointment with a lawyer, or all the high-level players being important in Kiera's life, or a fancy CEO offering them server space, or the right people showing up at the right time. The cast of characters weren't particularly memorable or interesting; I'd say Steph was the best and most level-headed, but I doubt I'll care to remember anyone else in this book. Even Kiera was rather watery in terms of personality.

The ending was unsatisfying. The boy has died and things happen and... that's it. Kiera's life changed monumentally, but it's entirely glossed over. I cannot even fathom that, minor spoiler, Kiera still wanted to give someone a chance of redemption after they posed as a white supremacist online and then doxxed her identity to the entire goddamn Internet. Like... are you serious? Does this even need to be said how ridiculous it sounds to think "they're not so bad" after they did that????

(This is when Steph, who had to talk Kiera out of it, got an upgrade to Character of the Novel...)

Sometimes I also thought the cultural politics of the novel were heavy-handed; it seemed to hand-hold you through on-the-nose explanations of black culture. Cicada is also roped into becoming a device to propel the discussion: one instance has her apologising that because she's half-black, she wasn't "black enough" to play SLAY, and Kiera kindly explains that that wasn't the case at all. I'm not black but as a mixed person, having a non-mixed person explaining that to a mixed person doesn't seem right at all...

I know I've stripped this novel apart, but it was sort of like popcorn; I couldn't stop reading. Ignoring the execution of SLAY, the game itself is brilliant. I loved that the cards echoed elements from black culture. I just wish more was done with it, you know? The characters needed fleshing out, and I would've liked to have seen Kiera show don't tell that she's the game's developer by seeing her actually developing the game.

WILL I READ MORE BY THIS AUTHOR? Yes. This is a debut, so far from perfect, but Morris has potential and I'll be glad to see what she comes up with next.