Genius

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY MAY 9, 2016

This exciting series starter from filmmaker and producer Gout follows the lives of three teenage geniuses: Rex, an ace coder and the son of illegal Mexican immigrants; Tunde, an impoverished, self-taught Nigerian engineering prodigy; and Painted Wolf, a middle-class Chinese girl with a talent for ferreting out corruption. Best friends who have only met online, they get caught up in the Game, an international competition run by 18-year-old CEO Kiran Biswas, "the biggest name in technology, cybernetics, futurism, and design." Painted Wolf discovers hints that Biswas's ostensibly humanitarian motives are suspect and that he may actually be working with a corrupt Chinese industrialist and a vicious African warlord. It's a fast-moving story that presents its protagonists with intriguing moral choices, and all three bring thorny personal problems to the contest, too. Maps, photographs, schematic illustrations, faux security footage stills, and other artwork further build out the teens' high-stakes, high-surveillance, and highly interconnected world, as well as their various technological innovations. The right sort of techie reader should be riveted. Ages 12 up.