Rise of the Red Hand

A rare, searing portrayal of the future of climate change in South Asia. A streetrat turned revolutionary and the disillusioned hacker son of a politician try to take down a ruthlessly technocratic government that sacrifices its poorest citizens to build its utopia.

The South Asian Province is split in two. Uplanders lead luxurious lives inside a climate-controlled biodome, dependent on technology and gene therapy to keep them healthy and youthful forever. Outside, the poor and forgotten scrape by with discarded black-market robotics, a society of poverty-stricken cyborgs struggling to survive in slums threatened by rising sea levels, unbreathable air, and deadly superbugs.

Ashiva works for the Red Hand, an underground network of revolutionaries fighting the government, which is run by a merciless computer algorithm that dictates every citizen's fate. She's a smuggler with the best robotic arm and cybernetic enhancements the slums can offer, and her cargo includes the most vulnerable of the city's abandoned children.

When Ashiva crosses paths with the brilliant hacker Riz-Ali, a privileged Uplander who finds himself embroiled in the Red Hand's dangerous activities, they uncover a horrifying conspiracy that the government will do anything to bury. From armed guardians kidnapping children to massive robots flattening the slums, to a pandemic that threatens to sweep through the city like wildfire, Ashiva and Riz-Ali will have to put aside their differences in order to fight the system and save the communities they love from destruction.

Author: Olivia Chadha
Publisher: Erewhon Books
Published: 01/19/2021
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.06lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.80w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9781645660101
Audience: Young Adult


Review Citation(s):
School Library Journal 01/01/2021 pg. 75
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/0001

About the Author
Olivia Chadha writes novels and comic books for MG, YA and adult audiences. She has a PhD in literature and creative writing, and her research centers on the history of exile, precarious borders and boundaries, global folklore, and the relationship between humans, machines and the environment. Balance of Fragile Things is her debut adult literary novel. Rise of the Red Hand, her YA debut, was awarded the Colorado Book Award for Young Adult Literature. She is a contributor to the YA folk horror anthology The Gathering Dark, the desi anthology Magic Has No Borders, and STAR WARS anthology Return of the Jedi: From A Certain Point of View. When not writing she's searching for butterflies on a hike in Colorado. She can be found at www.oliviachadha.com.