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by Olivia Chadha (Author)
"Steeped in elements from real-life South Asian cultures, the worldbuilding is original and intriguing, incorporating dystopian and utopian elements along with current hot issues such as societal inequities, digital surveillance, and technology's impact on humanity. . . . [A] strong and intricate story." --Kirkus Reviews
This 2022 Colorado Book Award Winner is a rare, searing portrayal of the future of climate change in South Asia. A streetrat turned revolutionary and the disillusioned hacker son of a politician try to take down a ruthlessly technocratic government that sacrifices its poorest citizens to build its utopia. The South Asian Province is split in two. Uplanders live in a luxurious, climate-controlled biodome, healthy and artificially youthful forever. Outside, the poor and forgotten scrape by with black-market robotics, in slums threatened by rising sea levels, unbreathable air, and deadly superbugs. Ashiva works for the Red Hand, an underground network of revolutionaries fighting the government, which is run by a merciless computer algorithm. As a smuggler with the best robotic arm and cybernetic enhancements the slums can offer, her cargo includes the city's most vulnerable abandoned children. When the brilliant Uplander hacker Riz-Ali stumbles into the Red Hand's dangerous activities, he and Ashiva uncover a horrifying conspiracy that the government will do anything to bury. As armed guardians kidnap children, massive robots flatten the slums, and a pandemic threatens to decimate the city, Ashiva and Riz must put aside their differences to fight the system and save the communities they love.Author Biography
Olivia Chadha writes novels and comic books for MG, YA and adult audiences. She has a PhD in literature and creative writing, and her research centers on the history of exile, precarious borders and boundaries, global folklore, and the relationship between humans, machines and the environment. Balance of Fragile Things is her debut adult literary novel. Rise of the Red Hand, her YA debut, was awarded the Colorado Book Award for Young Adult Literature. She is a contributor to the YA folk horror anthology The Gathering Dark, the desi anthology Magic Has No Borders, and STAR WARS anthology Return of the Jedi: From A Certain Point of View. When not writing she's searching for butterflies on a hike in Colorado. She can be found at www.oliviachadha.com.
