Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Hello again. I'm back for another book review. Yet again I'm going for a different genre. This one is a sort of post-apocalyptic book. The book is called Little Brother, and it was written by Cory Doctorow. The book starts out with a nerdy senior named Marcus. Marcus is super tech-savvy; he knows how to write computer code, can understand cryptology, taught his entire school how to fool their school board's monitoring of their computers, and even built his own computer from scratch.

This book actually takes place in the near future in San Fransisco and can be rather startling at some points. You see, Marcus and some of his friends skip school one day to play a new online game. Unfortunately, that same day, there is a terrorist attack on San Fransisco. The Department of Homeland Security arrests Marcus and his friends and tortures them and all of that jazz, thinking he is a terrorist. When Marcus is finally released, he comes back to find his city completely controlled by the DHS. The DHS are keeping tabs on everyone, so it reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984. Well needless to say, Marcus is not too happy with the DHS at that point, so he decides to oppose them at every turn. He hitches numerous plans to thwart them, all of them more ingenious than the last.

The book can be highly unrealistic at parts, I mean how many seniors do you know who have a complete grasp on cryptology, let alone can spell it? I will give Cory D. this though, he can make a story interesting. If you can get past all of the technical language, the book is actually pretty entertaining. 3.5 stars, and one thumb up.

~Drew W.