Sofia’s dad, Peter, disappeared 7 years ago and neither she nor her mother Clare ever knew where he went. Sofia, girl living in a Mid-Level flat, meets Julian (a boy from the Canopies) online, and he tells her about the Utopia Machine. The machine piques her curiosity and she sneaks into her mother’s lab in Biopolis, and ends up activating the Utopia Machine, which brings her into a parallel universe in which she gets to play Goddess and shape it to her will. But activating the machine also brings with it repercussions and Sofia finds herself a political fugitive.

I think the world-building in this book was pretty well done. I’m not that familiar with Singapore literature, but the use of mythologies and folk tales seems like a good starting point in a genre that I guess isn’t that commonly seen in SingLit: the young adult dystopia. The story fits in folk tales and narratives from the universe Sofia created, all of them nostalgically Southeast Asian. The book architecturally crystallises Singapore’s stratified society in the split of this speculated Singapore, split into the neglected Voids, the Mid-Levels, and the exclusive Canopies. I liked this book more for its critique of elitism and the myth of meritocracy than for the plot, which I’m afraid didn’t stand out to me so much, but I guess that’s the point. The disheartening thing (but also what I liked) about the conclusion was just how believable it was, this helplessness against a panoptic state that you can’t fight, that you can’t save everyone from, that the only solution is to run away. I think it’s worth the read if you’re into young adult dystopia, but it won’t be about empowered young rebels who topple governments because that’s not how it’s going to work here.