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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
informative
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
The cool thing about this being the third in the YA hacktivist series is this has the benefit of hindsight in both the real world divergence from its fiction, as well as the events of previous books also having aged for a while. The result, I think, actually augments the previous books for me because I did feel they were slightly idyllic—but I read them this year, not when they were published. And this book confronts those notions while also nurturing, through a different tactic, the same ethos found particularly in the first book. Where kids were educating each other on how to not be surveilled and technology was in a place where they could pretty much mask themselves. Today, that’s not really the case. If you’re under targeted surveillance… it’s pretty much over. You’ll slip up at some point. It is not a final solution, or even a realistic one; doubly so for the average consumer.
But the techniques and reasons to shirk the surveillance state exist still, and perhaps for even more reason, because now the people who read these books when young, as the author mentions in the afterward, are now working in tech sector jobs and can Vote! This storyline reflects the growing up and changes the world of Marcus has undergone, but it centres the mmm… not quite villain who pops up in the last two - but morally compromised and the opposite in rhetoric to Marcus, pretty much. This was the exact right book for this series and really works to retrofit the previous books, as we get a duel timeline situation with her past, as well as the moral quandaries she still navigates.
She’s smart, she’s not too far from other girls but certainly badass. And she’s got the viewpoint I think many people in the sector will have doing her work, so her obstacle and quandary is very relatable. Again, though, the writing is certainly YA and as such feels like it explains things very well, but often repeatedly—or more like… dumbed down after it just explained something. It’s a technique you’ll be familiar with if you’ve read the previous books. There will be a technical explanation that has good information design and then the person who already understands the thing clearly, starts explaining it for a laymen. This sometimes is really helpful and sometimes really annoying. Together with the basic writing style, the character work and themes shine through, but the prose always feels, at its best, unobtrusive.
But the techniques and reasons to shirk the surveillance state exist still, and perhaps for even more reason, because now the people who read these books when young, as the author mentions in the afterward, are now working in tech sector jobs and can Vote! This storyline reflects the growing up and changes the world of Marcus has undergone, but it centres the mmm… not quite villain who pops up in the last two - but morally compromised and the opposite in rhetoric to Marcus, pretty much. This was the exact right book for this series and really works to retrofit the previous books, as we get a duel timeline situation with her past, as well as the moral quandaries she still navigates.
She’s smart, she’s not too far from other girls but certainly badass. And she’s got the viewpoint I think many people in the sector will have doing her work, so her obstacle and quandary is very relatable. Again, though, the writing is certainly YA and as such feels like it explains things very well, but often repeatedly—or more like… dumbed down after it just explained something. It’s a technique you’ll be familiar with if you’ve read the previous books. There will be a technical explanation that has good information design and then the person who already understands the thing clearly, starts explaining it for a laymen. This sometimes is really helpful and sometimes really annoying. Together with the basic writing style, the character work and themes shine through, but the prose always feels, at its best, unobtrusive.
adventurous
fast-paced
Masha Maximow is a smart girl who is working for Xoth Intelligence. This is an InfoSec company who can provide individual, companies, states and countries with the tool they need to monitor and spy on their staff and citizens. She is currently in the country of Slovstakian working with the Ministry of the Interior to upgrade their systems to enable them to spy on their citizens with the best software that Xoth is prepared to sell a former Soviet Bloc country.
She learnt her trade of surveillance and providing the tools of oppression by slipping through the darker shadows of the internet in the virtual battlegrounds of Iraq, and now she is highly paid and very very good at her job. Rather than chill out in a five-star hotel in the evenings, she hits the streets and finds the leaders of the public opposition to the right-wing goons in the government and teaches them every thin that she knows on how to fight back against the oppressive surveillance. Insider knowledge does help sometimes…
Then she gets caught.
He boss at Xoth considers her compromised and she is swiftly sacked. The hotel room that she stays in that night is normally rented by the hour, but she needs to lie low before leaving the country. She is woken in the middle of the night by the sound of a car crash, it was one of the Finecab automated taxi’s wrapped around a planter. She is just dozing off and hears another crash. Another cab crash, The feeds on her phone showed the usual riot and overly heavy police response and then lots of photos and videos of cabs being deliberately run into the protestors. She realised that this was the work of the company that she had been working for not long ago. She had to leave the country as soon as possible.
She ends up back home in San Francisco, but waiting for the flights means she has time to think about how she ended up in the InfoSec business and the first person that she worked for, Carrie Johnson. When she is back home she hooks up with Tanisha a friend from long ago who is involved with the Black-Brown Alliance which had its origins in the Black Lives Matter campaign. They spend a while catching up and Maximow realises that the group needs a full-time security person and offers her services. They head back to Tanisha’s flat and she falls fast asleep. She realises that she is being targeted when the alarm of her sounds. The phone is off, but there is a hacker trying to get into her phone. The log file terrifies her, so she goes to check Tanisha’s phone and realises that it has been compromised. Just how much is soon clear when she is picked up on a train and Maximow offers to go with her.
Life for both is never going to be the same again.
This world that Doctorow has imagined is set in the very near future, with most of the technologies that he is writing about either already with us or we are on the cusp of receiving them. It feels absolutely bang up to date with some of the things that are happening in the plot and subplots being very strongly influenced by current real-life events. It is set just far enough into the future to be a quite disturbing dystopia. I really liked this book, even though it is a terrifying read. If you think about the implications of a future of overly authoritarian states that he is predicting in here, then it is pretty grim.
I thought that the characters mostly felt fully fleshed out, Maximow, in particular, seems to be some flawed genius. Her two bosses at the InfoSec companies, Carrie Johnstone and Ilsa are two sides of the same coin really. Both super smart and ambitious they only have on thing in mind and that is to maintain power and influence in their company and over the population as a whole. I did find that it jumped around a bit too much between her present warp-speed life and the recounting of her previous life. Occasionally he moves away from the technical language that most will be able to follow and ventures deep into the silicon pathways. Where this book really wins though is presenting the stark future of the advent of mass and oppressive surveillance of the population at large and the choices that we have to make very soon as a society to curtail government and private sector intrusion into our private lives. This is 1984 in real life; your life. Oh, and read the two afterwords too; they should make you think.
There is a need to balance online privacy, everyday security and the ability to solve crime. But not at the cost of individuality, freedom and self-expression
She learnt her trade of surveillance and providing the tools of oppression by slipping through the darker shadows of the internet in the virtual battlegrounds of Iraq, and now she is highly paid and very very good at her job. Rather than chill out in a five-star hotel in the evenings, she hits the streets and finds the leaders of the public opposition to the right-wing goons in the government and teaches them every thin that she knows on how to fight back against the oppressive surveillance. Insider knowledge does help sometimes…
Then she gets caught.
He boss at Xoth considers her compromised and she is swiftly sacked. The hotel room that she stays in that night is normally rented by the hour, but she needs to lie low before leaving the country. She is woken in the middle of the night by the sound of a car crash, it was one of the Finecab automated taxi’s wrapped around a planter. She is just dozing off and hears another crash. Another cab crash, The feeds on her phone showed the usual riot and overly heavy police response and then lots of photos and videos of cabs being deliberately run into the protestors. She realised that this was the work of the company that she had been working for not long ago. She had to leave the country as soon as possible.
She ends up back home in San Francisco, but waiting for the flights means she has time to think about how she ended up in the InfoSec business and the first person that she worked for, Carrie Johnson. When she is back home she hooks up with Tanisha a friend from long ago who is involved with the Black-Brown Alliance which had its origins in the Black Lives Matter campaign. They spend a while catching up and Maximow realises that the group needs a full-time security person and offers her services. They head back to Tanisha’s flat and she falls fast asleep. She realises that she is being targeted when the alarm of her sounds. The phone is off, but there is a hacker trying to get into her phone. The log file terrifies her, so she goes to check Tanisha’s phone and realises that it has been compromised. Just how much is soon clear when she is picked up on a train and Maximow offers to go with her.
Life for both is never going to be the same again.
This world that Doctorow has imagined is set in the very near future, with most of the technologies that he is writing about either already with us or we are on the cusp of receiving them. It feels absolutely bang up to date with some of the things that are happening in the plot and subplots being very strongly influenced by current real-life events. It is set just far enough into the future to be a quite disturbing dystopia. I really liked this book, even though it is a terrifying read. If you think about the implications of a future of overly authoritarian states that he is predicting in here, then it is pretty grim.
I thought that the characters mostly felt fully fleshed out, Maximow, in particular, seems to be some flawed genius. Her two bosses at the InfoSec companies, Carrie Johnstone and Ilsa are two sides of the same coin really. Both super smart and ambitious they only have on thing in mind and that is to maintain power and influence in their company and over the population as a whole. I did find that it jumped around a bit too much between her present warp-speed life and the recounting of her previous life. Occasionally he moves away from the technical language that most will be able to follow and ventures deep into the silicon pathways. Where this book really wins though is presenting the stark future of the advent of mass and oppressive surveillance of the population at large and the choices that we have to make very soon as a society to curtail government and private sector intrusion into our private lives. This is 1984 in real life; your life. Oh, and read the two afterwords too; they should make you think.
There is a need to balance online privacy, everyday security and the ability to solve crime. But not at the cost of individuality, freedom and self-expression
I started this book not knowing it was the 3rd book in a series and even without the context of the first 2 books, I think this is one of the best books I've read in a long time.
The book is a gripping thriller with lots of ethical questioning from the POV character Masha and her friends. The people she encounters in government and activist spaces are so well done that I feel like I know them. I also learned a little about tech and surveillance along the way! Honestly I can't recommend this book highly enough and I'll definitely be going back to read the first 2 in the series.
The book is a gripping thriller with lots of ethical questioning from the POV character Masha and her friends. The people she encounters in government and activist spaces are so well done that I feel like I know them. I also learned a little about tech and surveillance along the way! Honestly I can't recommend this book highly enough and I'll definitely be going back to read the first 2 in the series.
dark
informative
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
(3.5 Stars rounded up to 4 because of the series)
This was my least favorite book of the series. Not because it wasn't interesting, because it was interesting. But the style of the book seemed to switch up for this book and it didn't really seem to fit as well in the series. It just wasn't as narrative as the rest of the books I've read from the series, or as easily flowing.
This story is a look into one of the characters from the other books. Not really a minor character, but not really one of the main characters either. The character growth is superb, and the world is disturbingly familiar. And if you have read any Doctorow, you know he likes to share a lot of real-world knowledge in his books. This book is no different.
I read the audiobook version. The narrator was just ok for me. She did good with accents and giving the characters unique voices, but at times the cadence seemed choppy or staccato or something.
This was my least favorite book of the series. Not because it wasn't interesting, because it was interesting. But the style of the book seemed to switch up for this book and it didn't really seem to fit as well in the series. It just wasn't as narrative as the rest of the books I've read from the series, or as easily flowing.
This story is a look into one of the characters from the other books. Not really a minor character, but not really one of the main characters either. The character growth is superb, and the world is disturbingly familiar. And if you have read any Doctorow, you know he likes to share a lot of real-world knowledge in his books. This book is no different.
I read the audiobook version. The narrator was just ok for me. She did good with accents and giving the characters unique voices, but at times the cadence seemed choppy or staccato or something.
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Somehow Doctrow yet again has written a story that makes me want to put the book down and never look at anything with his name on it ever again in the first 10-20% and then has me entirely unable to put down by the end.
Interesting themes let down by poor writing, incoherent plotting and annoying tropes.
Masha is one of those female characters that is written like a parody of a Neal Stephenson character. She is frequently told 'you are so smart', reminisces about 'fucking teeny-boppers', has every man in the book hit on her (but don't worry, she is more than capable of outfighting even military men, which reads like pure wish fulfillment).
The plot barely hangs together with bad pacing. The characters are poorly-described and shallow. Overall, one to miss.
Masha is one of those female characters that is written like a parody of a Neal Stephenson character. She is frequently told 'you are so smart', reminisces about 'fucking teeny-boppers', has every man in the book hit on her (but don't worry, she is more than capable of outfighting even military men, which reads like pure wish fulfillment).
The plot barely hangs together with bad pacing. The characters are poorly-described and shallow. Overall, one to miss.
challenging
informative
reflective
tense
fast-paced