LIVE FROM THE AFTERLIFE

“The revolution might be televised after all.”

This follow-up to Riot Act (2024) returns to 1991 and an alternate America that’s ruled by propaganda and fear. Axl is haunted by grief. It doesn’t help that Gigi, his dead friend and longtime crush, is also haunting him. After being murdered during a radical act of civil disobedience, Gigi lingers among the living—specifically inside Axl’s thoughts and memories. Existing in his head is no picnic: He’s so devastated by her death that he’s drinking himself into oblivion, and his steamy fantasies about her are consuming them both. Hanging on by a thread, Axl is determined to avenge Gigi’s death and incite a nonviolent revolution. He teams up with Orin, his nemesis (and Gigi’s ex), to infiltrate the tightly controlled TV programming of Bud Hill’s brutal dictatorship. Meanwhile, Axl and Gigi’s thespian friends risk their lives to create short films that Orin inserts into the regular broadcasts, using their art to challenge the regime. The story’s political premise remains compelling, and the 1990s setting is intriguingly off kilter, but this second installment doesn’t fully land. The interplay between Gigi’s posthumous narration and Axl’s inner monologue can be hard to follow, and the supporting characters feel flat. While the story has sparks, it lacks the theatrical charm and rich worldbuilding that made the first book sing. Gigi and Axl are cued white.

An atmospheric encore that fails to replicate the first book’s magic.