Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'

Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow

1 review

schnaucl's review

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adventurous dark informative tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I enjoyed it.  Not surprisingly, Martin doesn't think much of cryptocurrency except to the extent that it makes his forensic accounting job easier.  I hadn't really thought about the public part of the public key making criminal activity easier to trace.  The forensic accounting part was actually really interesting.

I did have two minor quibbles. 
I think Martin slept with every named female character he spoke to in person except for maybe two.  It wasn't a James Bond situation, where everyone thought he was god's gift, but it was still a bit much.

Second, although I take Doctorow's point about the IRS, it's not that they aren't perfectly aware of some of the ways that the wealthy avoid taxation it's that the last time they seriously tried to go after the very wealthy and get a comprehensive view of their assets and tax them appropriately (2009) the rich lawyered up and lobbied Congress and the IRS realized it was outmatched and hasn't tried it since, something I can't believe Doctorow isn't already aware of.   There's a fantastic ProPublica article about it called "The IRS Tried to Take on the Ultrawealthy. It Didn’t Go Well."  The article is highly recommended. 
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