SURVIVE THE DOME

In the wake of the tragic police killing of Black single father Jerome Thomas, protests erupt all over Baltimore.

Gay Black teen Jamal is heading to his first protest to take pictures that can bolster his college applications. Unfortunately, the governor sees the growing civil unrest as a different opportunity: She isolates the city under an experimental dome that blocks both physical movement and electronic communication and arms an already aggressive police force with weaponized bodysuits. First-person narrator Jamal, an aspiring photojournalist, must team up with tan-skinned, curly-haired Marco, a less-than-forthcoming teen hacker–turned–love interest, to somehow put a stop to this nefarious plan. Jamal initially approaches the protests as an extra-credit project but sees an opportunity to do more: “This is the chance of a lifetime. I can change the world and change my life.” The book commits itself to mining a political subject embedded in contemporary issues of racial injustice for the purpose of spectacle. It’s unclear what the Dome’s technology offers in terms of hypersurveillance, militarized policing, state-sanctioned violence, and community isolation that isn’t already prevalent in the real world, but this reimagining of the police state does accelerate Jamal and Marco’s relationship in ways both rewarding and trite. Ultimately, this is a story about important relationships developed through hardship and tragedy.

A speculative thriller about personal growth that deals with all-too-real traumas.