Survive The Dome

Survive the Dome

by Kosoko Jackson
Setting: Baltimore
Genres: Young Adult Fiction / Dystopian, Young Adult Fiction / LGBTQ, Young Adult Fiction / Social Themes / Prejudice & Racism, Young Adult
Published on March 29, 2022
Pages: 352
Format: eBook Source: Library

The Hate U Give meets Internment in this pulse-pounding thriller about an impenetrable dome around Baltimore that is keeping the residents in and information from going out during a city-wide protest.

Jamal Lawson just wanted to be a part of something. As an aspiring journalist, he packs up his camera and heads to Baltimore to document a rally protesting police brutality after another Black man is murdered.

But before it even really begins, the city implements a new safety protocol...the Dome. The Dome surrounds the city, forcing those within to subscribe to a total militarized shutdown. No one can get in, and no one can get out.

Alone in a strange place, Jamal doesn't know where to turn...until he meets hacker Marco, who knows more than he lets on, and Catherine, an AWOL basic-training-graduate, whose parents helped build the initial plans for the Dome.

As unrest inside of Baltimore grows throughout the days-long lockdown, Marco, Catherine, and Jamal take the fight directly to the chief of police. But the city is corrupt from the inside out, and it's going to take everything they have to survive.

Survive The Dome is a near-future dystopian story about the ghettoization of a community of color in Baltimore through high tech means.

A protest against the killing of a Black man by police is used as an excuse to test The Dome. A force field encases a large area of the city. Police with mechanical body suits are deployed to enforce martial law. No one unauthorized can get in or out until the people in charge decide that the citizens are cowed enough.

The story was intriguing but had some of the aspects of YA novels that feel so unrealistic to me (besides the whole dome thing). There are three teenagers who save the day fairly easily when there is a whole network of adults who appear to be ineffectual.

I thought the best parts of this book were the interactions between law enforcement’s families and people trapped in the dome. The family members were so concerned for their police family members because they thought they were going into a war zone against people who wouldn’t hesitate to kill them because that was the story that they had been told. The people in the dome they met weren’t monsters but they couldn’t extrapolate that to the idea that maybe they had been lied to overall.

This is a fast YA sci fi read that looks at differences in power and how that can be turned against people.