hoggboss 's review for:

Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow

1.5

---

This book is about an extremely important topic, so it's a shame that half of it is written in that insufferable YA whedonspeak that seems to plague so many recent novels. The tone is just too casual and conversational and irony-poisoned for the subject matter it's trying to tackle, and it ends up unfortunately undercutting important ideas by being annoying and making me hate it.  The main character IS unlikeable and I think that's the point, but nobody else here is much better. You might like this book if you use reddit. The writing gets a little bit better and less annoying halfway in when things start getting serious, but it shouldn't take half your book to get me to care. 

And NO, you don't get a free pass on quoting 1984 just because you acknowledge that it's a cliche and have your character make a stupid witty comment about how much of a cliche it is. If it's a cliche and you know it's a cliche just don't include it, your book will be so much better off for it.