Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on September 14, 2021 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.
Walking in Two Worlds by Wab Kinew
Walking in Two Worlds is a young adult science fiction novella (or really short novel, it's on the border) by Indigenous author Wab Kinew. The novella takes the perspectives of two teens who come from peoples who have been the target of cultural and real genocide by their conquering/dominant nations - an Indigenous girl and an Uyghur boy - who struggle balancing their conflicting emotions between their cultures...and their different personas in real life and in a virtual reality game that has major prominence.
The result is a really solid and interesting novella, marrying a future VR-obsessed world like LX Beckett's Gamechanger to a story really based upon the struggles of Indigenous and other peoples, and is a very solid read, even if it has a few flaws in final act execution.
Trigger Warning: Suicidal Ideation.
Quick Plot Summary: In the virtual world, the Floraverse, Bugz is #1 - a woman whose 'Versona is not just physically attractive, but incredibly powerful, armed with weapons and creatures out of indigenous myth that allow her to destroy anyone in her path - like the misogynist right wing clan known as Clan:LESS, which hates her for daring to be a woman in their game. But what Clan:LESS doesn't know is that Bugz' power comes from the intersection of her indigenous heritage and how the game works, in a way that they could seemingly never replicate.
In the real world, Bugz is a teenage indigenous girl on a reservation who is taunted for her weight, and is picked on by other teens her age. She loves her family and revels in her indigenous culture, but feels incredibly frustrated when that culture's traditions force her as a girl to the side for no good reason. But there seems to be no changing either it or Bugz's online life, as good as it is.
And then come Feng, a Uyghur boy reeducated in a Chinese reeducation camp...before he was forced to flee China to his family when Chinese censors decided his online affiliation to Clan:LESS was a subversive activity. For Feng, Clan:LESS was a place he could be accepted when his own family failed him in childhood, not a group of hate - and so when he meets Bugz and her family, it throws everything for a loop. And for Bugz, the presence of this boy with his own persecuted heritage, a boy whose online persona threatens her own, it threatens to overturn both worlds in her life.
Thoughts: Okay that's a longer plot summary than I intended for a novella, so less thoughts, since I think most of them are contained in the plot summary - this is a book very much about its title, with both main characters walking in two worlds in more than one way: for Bugz, it's her real world and her virtual world but also her proud indigenous heritage and her identity as a modern girl who can see when traditions are utterly backwards and still be infuriated; for Feng, it's not just his real world and virtual world, but his existence as an Uyghur boy who has no understanding of that culture due to reeducation and being taken from his parents, while at the same time not being Chinese or North American in the real world, and thus being ostracized.
And these worlds are not wholly part, and that's what makes the story so well done. For example, Bugz' virtual dominance is helped seemingly by the designers of the game not having maps for the rez, resulting in it having strange glitchy properties that give her an edge. Feng's ostracization in the real world is what leads to him joining and excusing a right wing misogynist and racist clan in the virtual one. And trauma in one world leads to trauma in the other, making everything far more difficult, until the two characters in the end, when everything comes to seeming disaster, realize these worlds can be connected - both their good parts and bad - and pulled together to make them stronger.
There's one really annoying trope here of plot-induced pseudo betrayal, but other than that, this is a really solid and enjoyable novel, dealing with some really strong themes. Recommended.
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