Burn down, rise up by Vincent Tirado

Teenagers have gone missing in the Bronx neighbourhood. Raquel is drawn into the mystery when her mother, a nurse, is infected by the mould transferred to her by teenage fugitive Cisco. It seems that Cisco was drawn into some kind of game, he broke the rules, and now he is running for his life. Raquel, her best friend Aaron, and her secret crush Charlize, all become caught in the web of the nightmarish world of the Echo Game, a game set in the underground train system, where monstrous creatures track them down and overcome them with mould and rot.

It seems like the futuristic world of some kind of video game, yet has clear links to historic events of the past. It's a past that not many might now be aware of – how in the 1960s-70s the Bronx community was devastated by the racist urban planning that destroyed the homes of Black and Hispanic people, to create the Cross-Bronx Expressway, with bridges built to provide access to the cars driven by middleclass white families whilst denying access to the public transport buses used by poorer ethnic groups. The tenements of the South Bronx became dens of poverty and crime, rendering buildings so undesirable that they were abandoned or burned. A recent documentary Decade of Fire has exposed the era of the 1970’s fires that consumed the South Bronx. It is this history that author Tirado references in his horror world of the Echo Game.

The ‘Falsas Promesas’ chant of the zombie-like Passengers in the Echo Game can be heard in the YouTube video by John Fekner about the false promises offered the South Bronx. It is a thread that Tirado picks up and repeats throughout his novel. Burn down, rise up is a very dramatic story, filled with excitement and tension, and written in a way that will appeal to young adult readers of sci-fi fiction and players of action video games. It also exposes a history that most would probably prefer to forget. Whilst there is some unevenness of tone, I think most young adult readers will be easily drawn into the action, and find it a riveting read until the last page.

Themes: The Bronx, Ghettos, Horror, Science fiction, Racial discrimination, LGBQTI+.

Helen Eddy