Once safely in the hallway, I pull out my phone and open WhatsApp to find a new text from the game mod, Cicada.Ĭicada: You watching the tundra semifinals tonight?

There’s a battle tonight between PrestoBox, a master wizard from the Tundra, and Zama, a Voodoo queen from the same region. The second the bell rings, I’m out of my desk seat and bolting through the classroom door.

At night, I turn into the Nubian goddess most people know as Emerald. PLAYING THE GAMEīy day, I’m an honors student at Jefferson Academy. But can she protect her game without losing herself in the process? ExcerptĬhapter 1: Playing the Game 1. Even worse, an anonymous troll infiltrates the game, threatening to sue Kiera for “anti-white discrimination.”ĭriven to save the only world in which she can be herself, Kiera must preserve her secret identity and harness what it means to be unapologetically Black in a world intimidated by Blackness. No one knows Kiera is the game developer, not her friends, her family, not even her boyfriend, Malcolm, who believes video games are partially responsible for the “downfall of the Black man.”īut when a teen in Kansas City is murdered over a dispute in the SLAY world, news of the game reaches mainstream media, and SLAY is labeled a racist, exclusionist, violent hub for thugs and criminals. But at home, she joins hundreds of thousands of Black gamers who duel worldwide as Nubian personas in the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY.

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.īy day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and one of the only Black kids at Jefferson Academy. Prepare to BE slain.” -Nic Stone, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin and Odd One Out

“A book that knocks you off your feet while dropping the kind of knowledge that’ll keep you down for the count. “The YA debut we’re most excited for this year.” - Entertainment Weekly

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