I can’t help but think this book would have had a big­ger impact on me if I had read it before Obama was elected.  It’s a great overblown rant against all the hor­ri­ble things DHS has done in the name of pro­tect­ing us.  It’s a decently writ­ten book with mod­er­ately inter­est­ing geek char­ac­ters fight­ing the good fight and using wire­less to do it (sound­ing sus­pi­ciously famil­iar?).  So Cory’s hot­but­ton issues show more than a lot of other writers–I don’t really mind because I share most of those inter­ests myself.  I wanted to like this book more than I did, and I liked it quite a bit, but the res­o­lu­tion is what even­tu­ally made me put it in the “not sure” pile.  I’m going behind a cut to talk about more in case you don’t want the end­ing spoiled.

The end­ing made me angry because i couldn’t buy the knights-in-shining-armor end­ing.  Cory leads you right down the path of real­ity all the way up to and includ­ing tor­tur­ing his pro­tag­o­nist with water board­ing. And right before he breaks… hes’ res­cued, deus ex machina-style by the California State Troopers??  Seriously?   I felt a lit­tle dis­gusted by this, but maybe my cyn­i­cism wanted the more likely real­ity por­trayed.  As I tore through the book (it’s quite a page turner), I kept won­der­ing, how is he going to beat this?  How is he going to get out?  And I was mostly sat­is­fied with the idea of him escap­ing the city, and was sur­prised when he did a 180 on that.  I thought maybe I was in for the down­beat end­ing I was expecting.

Ultimately, no.  Cory’s a big­ger opti­mist than I am.  What I can decide is if that end­ing was the respon­si­ble thing to write for kids who would read this book and be inspired by it.  Fight your gov­ern­ment like that and most likely the CHiPs aren’t going to ride to your rescue.

Never trust any­one over 25.  And that includes Cory Doctorow.

Tagged as: books, Cory Doctorow, DHS, little brother, security theatre, SF