A futuristic world comes to life as Hana, a 12-year-old gifted at building bots, dreams of the ultimate honor: being "meshed" to the multiweb. While looking for spare parts at the local junkyard, she stumbles upon a girl with a secret, and Hana's life is turned upside down. She learns that not everything is as it seems at Start-Up (the elite tech school she attends) and that meshing may not actually be safe. Liu's plotting and characters shine as Hana and her friends unravel Start-Up's less than savory mysteries, with students falling sick to malfunctioning technology. Hana brings to the world of STEM a strong, determined character who is intent on figuring out the academy's intentions so she can keep her community and loved ones safe. In the midst of eerie accidents, strange codes, and ominous omens, all woven into a high-stakes tale through a variety of prose styles, Hana must figure out what's going on and use her skills with technology and problem-solving to save the entire society.

In the near future, corporations secretly run governments, and most teens and adults use neural implants that allow them to be online at all times. Twelve-year-old Chinese American Hana can't wait for next year, when she'll finally be old enough to activate her neural implant just like her mother and older sister. After Hana is chosen to study at the prestigious Start-Up school, she learns about a new process that will fast-track her date for being meshed to the multiweb. At Start-Up, Hana meets new friends--Japanese and Jewish Charlene, who goes by Chuck, and Latinx Tomás--who each have their own personal motivations for succeeding. The trio compete against other students in virtual reality challenges that test their ability to use boosts, or digital enhancements that provide artificial intelligence, strength, or sensory awareness. Suspicious events at the school coupled with warnings from others trigger Hana to investigate. This smart science-fiction thriller envisions a technologically advanced future America in which Chinese culture plays a prominent role and which is still grappling with concerns like climate change, classism, and monopolies. In addition to these larger timely issues, Hana navigates complex family dynamics (among other things, her father died one year ago, and her grandmother has dementia) and burgeoning friendships in this layered work that invites critical questioning of reliance on technology. A suspenseful glimpse into a dystopian America dominated by technology. (Science fiction. 9-12) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.