Named a Best Book of 2021 by NPR • Harper’s Bazaar • CrimeReads • Electric Literature • Autostraddle • The Globe and Mail
In this thrilling story of survival and anger, a woman has her whole life turned upside down after speaking out against workplace hostility–and inadvertently becomes the leader of a cultural movement.
Eliza Bright is living the dream as an elite video game coder at Fancy Dog Games, the first woman to ascend that high in the ranks—and some people want to make sure she’s the last. To her friends, Eliza Bright is a brilliant, self-taught coder bravely calling out the misogyny that pervades her workplace and industry. To the men who see her very presence as a threat, Eliza Bright is a woman who needs to be destroyed to protect the game they love.
When Eliza’s report of workplace harassment is quickly dismissed, she's forced to take her frustrations to a journalist who blasts her story across the internet. She's fired and doxxed, and becomes a rallying figure for women everywhere. But she's also enraged the beast comprised of online male gamers—their unreliable chorus narrates our story. Soon, Eliza is in the cross-hairs of the gaming community, threatened and stalked as they monitor her every move online and across New York City.
As the violent power of the angry male collective descends upon everyone in Eliza's life, it becomes increasingly difficult to know who to trust, even when she's eventually taken in and protected by an under-the-radar Collective known as the Sixsterhood. The violence moves from cyberspace to the real world, thanks to a vicious male super-fan known only as The Inspectre, determined to exact his revenge on behalf of men everywhere. We watch alongside the Sixsterhood and subreddit keyboard warriors as this dramatic cat-and-mouse game plays out to its violent and inevitable conclusion in this thrilling story of resilience and survival.
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This book is unflinching in its observations about fan culture and difficult to put down, thanks to some high-action moments of conflict and violence—both real and pixelated—that really stick with you. It’s all packaged in Osworth’s exceedingly enjoyable prose and their smart, funny, diverse, flawed cast of characters.
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Kate Gorton, Autostraddle