Three years after Tally unleashed the mind-rain, Japan is running on a reputation econnomy. Whether you’re a neofoodie, techhead, mangahead, reputation bomber or kicker, you gain money and privileges based on your face ranking.

Basically, Westerfeld predicted influencers and people being paid because they’re instagram/tiktok famous. Decades before it happened! Amazing and really surreal.

Aya is one of the extras whose face ranking is below the millions, a major bummer since her older brother is in the top thousand. Aya is desperate to be famous and thinks that kicking (slang for making a viral video) about the secretive Sly Girls group meg-lev surfing is the way in.
But her big kick comes with the price of betraying the Sly Girls and ends up uncovering a bigger, even more dangerous story than Aya had ever anticipated.

Once again, Westerfeld creates a distinct, immersive world that is easy to understand even though the slang can get confusing. It helps that it is so like the world we live in today with people filming everything from their food to choosing outfits to performing dares and bashing others all to get more views. So Aya’s goal is understandable even though it is inherantly selfish as other characters call out her willingness to lie and betray people in order to get the story she wants.

There’s no privacy when you become famous yet when you’re invisible, your self esteem is at nothing and you’ll do anything to become worthwhile. You can’t enjoy life in either extreme. And that’s not even getting into when she nearly creates a hoax or fake news as we say nowadays. Seriously, it’s freaky how like today this book is.

Not that Aya is all bad. She’s only fifteen and you can understand her tumultuous feelings with the face rankings that make her feel anonymous and worthless. If she died would anyone care? What is her impact if she’s just an extra?

The other characters are decent enough as individuals who contrast and challenge Aya especially Frizz whose movement of Radical Honesty (he literally did surgery to remove the lying part of his brain) forces her to think about why she wants to be famous so bad. I also enjoyed Aya and Hiro’s sibling relationship that they clearly care for each other while never admitting it.

But it’s not just new characters, Tally and her friends return when Westerfeld shifts gears in Part 3 where Aya’s big kick connects to previous themes about the impact of the mindrain on the world with humans repeating the enviromentally destructive patterns of the Rusties and what the world can do to handle the increased population.

This was a fun companion novel filled with action and relatable themes that readers will compulsively read.

4 stars.