Coldwire by Chloe Gong Review

For decades, the world has been caught in a cold war between two powerful nations: Medaluo and Atahua. The Medan orphans who live in Atahua suffer the cost. Their enrollment at Nile Military Academy is mandatory. Either serve as a soldier, or risk being labelled a spy.
 

Eighteen-year-old Eirale is one such orphan. Having recently graduated and joined NileCorp's forces, she's doing well for herself - until Atahua's most wanted anarchist frames her for assassinating a government official and she's given a choice: cooperate with him to search for a dangerous program in Medaluo or go down for treason.
 

Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Lia is close to her own graduation when she's paired with her academic nemesis for one final assignment. But when they are ordered to infiltrate Medaluo in virtual reality, Lia quickly realises there is much more at stake than her school ranking.
 

As Eirale and Lia tear through Medaluo on separate courses, the two start to suspect they are pieces in a larger conspiracy - and the closer they get to the truth, the closer their worlds come to a shattering collision.

Cyber warfare, citywide virtual reality recreations, AI applications, political and immigrant conflict, cadet academy and post-grade school placements, Chloe Gong’s novel Coldwire has a lot of fascinating elements going on. Marketed as a YA cyberpunk dystopian series debut, this book is full of excellent ideas with a story that mixes action with deeper social commentary. Though it possesses excellent material in theory, unfortunately the messy handling of its world-building and an assortment of storytelling shortcomings hold Coldwire back from being the exciting book by all accounts it should be.

Set in a futuristic, technologically advanced world, the story has a dual-perspective presentation. Eirale is a contracted NileCorp soldier who is part of a response team firmly situated in Downcountry, aka the physical real world. Eirale’s team is assigned to capture an anarchist figurehead Nik Grant who is seen as a threat to both the country of Atahua as well as the NileCorp organization, a private business turned political asset who has developed a virtual reality recreation of the real world referred to as Upcountry. Meanwhile cadet-in-training Lia Sullivan attends the Nile Military Academy, a government mandated requirement for all orphaned children or wards from the opposing country Medaluo. The last stage of her training whose results determine her placement and post-academy position, is a field assignment where she’s mysteriously paired with her academic rival Kieran Murray to locate or determine if a NileCorp developer gone rogue is alive in Upcountry. Two different agents of different backgrounds and affiliations are tasked with gathering intel and surveillance in both the virtual and real-world versions of the opposing country Medaluo, whose history, assignments, and very lives intertwine.

Simply put, Coldwire is an ambitious book that has a very complex world that’s speculative fiction in concept while aesthetically cyberpunk scifi. I won’t go into too much detail for the sake of being even more wordy than my typical reviews, but this book is conceptually a creative take on the dystopian genre but modernized and fine-tuned for a 2025 and onward readership. Some elements of the story have pretty obvious real-world inspirations, the conglomerate NileCorp and its recreated virtual reality world is a likely take on Meta’s attempt with Metaverse as well as the company’s expansive partnerships in the business and government sectors. The cold war-esque international espionage and infiltration attempts are like a callback to the US/Soviet schemes, though Atahua and Medaluo share much more in common with the US or other Western White-dominated countries and Asian countries respectively, perhaps more specifically China (more on that to come). Unrestricted AI development and the story’s bilateral international relations, xenophobia, and political differences are hot topics that are highly relevant and noteworthy. These are great narrative elements that are well-integrated into both Eirale and Lia’s story conceptually, key word conceptually.

While both characters have different tasks in Medaluo, one in the virtual Upcountry and one in the real Downcountry, they go on similar adventures that are a mix of scavenger hunt for clues and mini heist missions across several foreign cities. As Upcountry is designed to be a near identical recreation to Downcountry, their paths and experiences in the different cities are visually quite similar, especially due to Gong’s narrative decision to have many seemingly non-essential activities like eating, sleeping, and energy retained in virtual reality. When it’s focused on the book’s techno-thriller soldier activities, the story is quite snappy and entertaining, well-suited for its intended YA readership. I found the book to be at its best when it stayed on-topic and let Eirale and Lia run through the Asian-inspired cityscapes, using high-tech assistance and guidance tools for added style.

In addition to the action and science fiction elements, Coldwire has strong themes relating to national identity, political conflict, and more. Those of Medan descent in the book are very much akin to Asian Americans, Asian Europeans, sub in any combination of Western white-looking country. The xenophobia aimed at those that were orphaned or wards in Atahua are brought up on many occasions but is best represented by the compulsory draft into cadet training and later public or private sector service. It is revealed they are retained in Atahua and trained primarily due to their outward Madan appearance, making them perfect undercover agents of spy and infiltration. This is an interesting parallel in Western societies that honor and prize those of ethnic diversity only when they are useful or have intrinsic worth. The domestically upbringing with foreign appearance is also touched on when Lia enters the upcountry Medaluo for the first time where she contemplates what life would’ve been like being surrounded by those who look like her vs feeling alienated at home, yet here still feeling like a foreigner in the “home country”. There are also interesting discussions around the partnership or lack of separation between the government and private industry where one can dominate the other and the dystopian oppression of dissenting opinions. While Atahua is riddled with public opinions and protests, Medaluo openly exacts harsh government actions against others as well as strict 24/7 overhead surveillance. A complete citywide lockdown due to an avian flu outbreak (yes you can tell this a 2024-25 book) closely mirrors China’s martial law response to the Covid pandemic and shutdown of Wuhan. That’s also outside of the more familiar topics in the science and speculative fiction genre like AI use, virtual reality vs the real world, even light exploration of digital ownership of property space and immaterial possessions.

Unfortunately, despite how many good ideas are presented, the biggest issue with Coldwire is its inability to know when to add world-building details and when to let the action and story take center stage. One of the most common complaints in other reviews for this book is that it’s boring, confusing, or slow. The world Gong has imagined clearly has a lot of thought and detail put into its creation, but it feels she lacks the skill or understanding of how to explore that visualized world effectively. After an intense and exciting first chapter with Eirale, the book immediately follows it up with an excessive info-dumping introduction to Lia, the academy, the politics of Atahua, and her rivalry with Kieran. The content itself is fine conceptually, but the placement, manner of introduction, and juvenile descriptions of them completely break the tension and interest the book had going for it. At every turn or development, it feels like there’s little sense of pacing not because the story itself is boring, but because it keeps getting interrupted with giant blocks of world-building detail that go on and on, often feeling out of place or irrelevant either in the moment or frankly, to the story as a whole. Usually when I comment that a book’s world-building is poor, it’s usually due to having little thought, detail, or nonsensical elements that don’t make sense. Coldwire has the opposite problem where it simply has too much thought in all the wrong places, and though the ideas and themes behind them are creative and interesting, the exploration or discussions of them are not. The story feels like it has a perplexing and contradictory issue where it’s highly detailed and crafted, yet surface level in depth due to being disconnected from the Eirale/Lia’s actions or lacking the depth to justify their inclusion narratively speaking. That said, this is a series so it’s entirely possible that these details may have further purpose later down the line, but the criticism of the book’s reading experience still stands.

The other more subjective critique with the book’s presentation is its tonal conflicts and shifts between Eirale and Lia’s POV’s and narrative content. Both characters are clearly opposite foils from each other, likely intended to show different aspects of NileCorp from their different backgrounds, Eirale being an orphan with few options outside of the mandatory draft service while Lia is a daughter of a politician and wealthy family with many more opportunities. As a soldier stationed in the environmentally destroyed and gritty Downcountry vs Lia in the sanitized and idealized virtual Upcountry, the two perspectives are meant to show some contrast. However, I had a lot of issues with Lia’s chapters which suffered from many of the hallmark traits and debatable weaknesses of unpolished YA books. From the constant tangential flashbacks to her academic studies, to her rivalry and conflict with Kieran for valedictorian, a lot of her content felt very juvenile and out of place with the rest of the story. While certain flashbacks and memories were necessary for the book’s eleventh-hour plot twist and to give more context to Lia’s life, so much of her chapters felt like unnecessary school or teenage-related bloat that further slowed down the story on top of the excessive world-building details. The hardcover edition of this book comes in at almost five hundred pages and at least a third of it felt like it could’ve been cut. I also had the impression that the book was trying to hit certain marketable checkpoints that were frivolous like “rivals to lovers”, “enemies to lovers”, “just one bed”, “he falls first”; these elements are not bad on their own but the way they’re incorporated into the story is poorly done veering on cringy. On top of that, the overall writing style, narration, and tone feels at odds with the subject matter constantly, Gong’s storytelling approach and presentation decisions actively hindering the reading experience rather than complimenting it.

Additionally, when it comes to the mechanics of NileCorp’s technology and key moments in the story, there are quite a few odd conflicts or potential plot holes. Despite covering aspects like nutritional feed tubes to nourish users immersed in Upcountry for month-long stints, the characters still eat food and do daily activities that shouldn’t be necessary (but what about bodily waste? An odd if unpleasant oversight for how detailed other aspects are). These elements are explained away by a phenomenon called Wake Syndrome akin to disassociating or losing one’s touch with reality which theoretically works, but feels like a cheap explanation to facilitate the characters doing very YA/juvenile activities and outings. All of Lia’s chapters that worry about being caught, at risk of harm, even a serious scene where some of her friends are locked up in prison make no sense when the cadets can just log out of Upcountry at any time even though their assessment grade may take a hit; they’re never at risk of death despite the grave stakes the book makes it out to be unlike Eirale’s assignments in Downcountry/real life. To Gong’s credit, she’s come up with some kind of explanation for most of the bigger issues that come out but they consistently feel like cop-out answers to solve an issue that shouldn’t have existed in the first place with more careful or intelligent plotting.

I won’t go into the ending too much due to avoiding spoilers that are integral to the entire reading experience (this is the type of ending that upends reality and will encourage a second read-through), but it also felt quite messy and chaotic. The last hundred pages pick up substantially, but the pacing feels like it’s been cranked up on fast-forward and can be quite difficult for casual or younger readers to follow, which is a potential problem considering this is a YA book for young adult readers. For how much time and pages were spent dragging earlier, the ending almost felt like Gong hit a page cap limit and was forced to wrap things up quickly with little finesse despite wasting time earlier. Revolving around the mysterious Upcountry and a virtual-only city, there’s so little time spent in this key location that was foreshadowed repeatedly and the book’s climax explodes before it has time to properly build. The subsequent resolution, explanation and epilogue then fall into the same info-dumping that’s plagued the entire book, robs the intensity of what by all accounts should be a shocking and dramatic development. I think Coldwire could potentially be more enjoyable for those that don’t think too deeply into the book and some of its more perplexing aspects, but that goes against the novel’s dystopian presentation and thematic commentary that asks the reader to question everything, not to mention its complex ending that requires attention to detail to understand. All in all, while I found the general ideas behind the story and ending to be very good, perhaps even great, the handling and overall execution left a lot to be desired.

Full of intriguing concepts and well-intentioned international socio-political conflicts, on paper Coldwire should be an incredibly cool and interesting novel. Yet the consistently disappointing storytelling, unfocused narrative, and messy handling of key concepts seemingly drag down the story into a middling and quite disappointing reading experience. Though the story definitely has dystopian and technothriller elements to it, I often felt like the book was slightly mismarketed given that the virtual reality world was modeled on the real world, feeling far less cyberpunk, neon-lit, and SFF-based than I would’ve expected. While the world was well thought out to a fault, the plot within it felt simple, almost like an afterthought to the rest of the book. Most unfortunate though was upon finishing Coldwire, my takeaway impression was though inspired, the story and world simply got away from Gong and I wished the book had been handled by a stronger or mature author. Although I’m ultimately rating Coldwire a 3.0, its score is earned purely through its strong concepts and not from my personal enjoyment of it; that would’ve been more like a 2.0. And that’s a tragic lasting impression for such a creative story as well as the first entry in a planned series. While heavily flawed and not a complete disaster, I can’t help but think about what this book could’ve been, not to mention being conflicted on continuing with subsequent sequels.