Little Brother By Cory Doctorow Release Date: Avaliable Now Tor Teen Ratings Action Romance Characters Overall Purchase on Amazon Purchase at Powell’s Find independent bookstores

Terrorists attack San Fransisco, and Marcus and his friends are in the wrong place at the very wrong time. Picked up by Homeland Security, Marcus is held and interrogated for three days, then released into a city filled with surveillance and security checks, all for "his own safety."

When he realizes that Homeland Security has stripped every bit of his personal freedom away, bugging his computer and watching his every move, he decides to take down the technology that is monitoring his life. But it’s not only monitoring his life, everyone in the city is under suspicion: Cars and RFID tags on transit cards log every citizen’s whereabouts, which serves to catch some drug-dealers or spouse-cheaters, but certainly no terrorists. And while the citizens of San Francisco know it’s happening, they all figure, "Well, it’s not happening to me…" Building a trace-free internet, Marcus rallies other teens in San Francisco to disrupt Homeland Security’s monitoring methods. This results in the government labeling the teens and their efforts as terrorists themselves, leading Marcus down a dangerous path of fighting fire with fire, to take back his city from a group who has far more control over whether he lives or "disappears" than anyone would like.

This book really made me think. It asked all those questions about security and surveillance that I’ve started to ask, but then decided the answers didn’t pertain to me. I’m not very knowledgeable about computer security or personal security. And personal freedom? Well, I like to think I’m free, but in this world, you’re constantly told that those freedoms are drifting away in favor of security. I’m a lot like Marcus’s dad in the book–it hasn’t happened to me, and if a few people get inconvenienced, then it’s all for the better good, right? Security at airports is obnoxious, taking off my shoes, putting things in small bags… but it’s so we’re safer, right? These are questions I always start to ask, begin to ponder, and then give up, knowing that I don’t have a good enough grasp of the situation to really finish out my thoughts. One of the neatest parts of this book is when Doctorow (through main character Marcus) explains different math principals that operate behind statistics and how well security really works. I learned a lot from this book and probably forgot just as much.

The downside of a book like this, though, is it makes me think too much! I begin to wonder if I should be doing something more with my computer, where there might be RFID chips, or what my cell phone might be telling the government. I always operate under the principal that the odds of that happening to me are so slim, I shouldn’t worry about it. But if my identity was stolen, if the government took my laptop while going through customs, if any of those things happened to me, I’d be angry. And I’d wonder what I could have done to stop it from happening. On the other hand, with any book like this, I can’t help but feel it’s over dramatized, that these things aren’t really happening. Honestly, I have no idea what is true in this book. The author speaks with such authority that I want to accept it all as fact or a likely continuation of what’s happening right now, but I also have a skepticism that makes me question everything I don’t fully understand or can’t see/touch/do myself. That’s the problem with writing any piece of fiction–the reader is left unsure where the line between reality and fiction lies within the book.

From a story point of view, I loved how conversational the book was and the way it read as if it was really a first hand account of real events. The realistic feeling can be a little creepy though, showing us a future that might be just around the corner. There’s a scene where the main character is waterboarded that pushed the line into graphic. But like I mentioned before, it’s hard to know where fiction and reality meet. If the author hasn’t been water-boarded, then it’s the author’s imagination and research into what it could feel like. I don’t think about these questions with a book I know is purely fiction, but when a book walks the line like this one, when all interviews make it sound like this is the likely outcome of current security measures, I feel like I have to question the validity and truth of every word.

The ending was also well done. I wasn’t sure how the book would be able to end in a realistic, yet satisfying way. It became one of those "the good guy is doing illegal things to beat the bad guys who are in charge and therefore defining good and evil to begin with" sort of books. I could tell it wouldn’t end with him running for Congress to fix it all or anything like that, so I wondered through most of the book what the outcome could be. I was also very glad it didn’t try any "Oh, well, real life doesn’t wrap-up, so the book doesn’t have to either!" strategies. Those always drive me crazy–good guys should win, bad guys be punished.

Ratings Reasons:
Action 5 - Very realistic, very fast-paced. The only reason it took me a few days to read this was because it was on my palm pilot. I actually ran out of batteries a few times and had to switch to my laptop.

Romance 4 - I was happily suprised to find romance in this book, and some pretty good teen romance at that!

Characters 5 - Again, realistic is probably my favorite word for this book. I know Marcus by the end, and this is an excellent example of how to write a first-person, conversational book. And the rest of the characters didn’t suffer for them all being through Marcus’s eyes, which can be a problem with first person.

Overall 5 - Read this book. At the very least, it will make you question things you’ve barely even heard of. I don’t know where the line of truth and fiction is, but every day we get technology that was fiction five years ago. For good or bad, this book will make you question the world around you and what is being done for your protection.

Extras:
Doctorow is every marketer’s dream. He is a co-editor of Boing Boing, (a news site/blog where the common themes, according to Wikipedia, include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney and politics) which created a built-in audience for him, and he’s done quite a few interviews and is very knowledgeable on his book’s subject. One very long and quite informative interview is here, from the Chicago Tribune. In general, the myspace page seems to have a good archive of info relating to the books, including links to a series of "do it yourself" articles on book related topics, like "How to block/kill RFID chips."

Doctrow’s also written some other books that I want to check out now, especially Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. This one is also avaliable for free on his site.

When the book first came out, there where a lot of readers who couldn’t find it. The idea that a book they might want to read would be in the childrens/YA section was foreign to them. "My editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, rang me yesterday to talk about a weird little phenomenon: people who were going to stores looking for my newest, Little Brother, were walking away unfulfilled because they were looking in the science fiction section, not the young adult section." -Cory Doctorow It was because of numours blogs reporting on this phenomenon, plus reading Boing Boing that first decided I needed to pick up this book.

Doctorow has put up multiple digital formats of the book on his website. This was the second pdf/ebook that I’ve read now on my palm pilot, and it worked pretty well overall. He also starts out each chapter with a dedication to different book stores that have influenced him throughout the years or done revolutionary things, including Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Nice to see them get a mention, instead of someone turning up their nose at a "big box store."

And I love this poster inspired by the book.

Parents: 13+, but for some kids I might push that up. I think this is an excellent book to use as a family read and discuss title. Certainly, it will make your kids question things, especially authority, but in the healthy way. Teens should be questioning authority–they’re past the age where they need to respect you so they don’t run out into traffic, but are also at the age where they need to consider if they should strip-down because an authority figure tells them they must.

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