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Attack Surface
by Cory Doctorow
This is the third volume of Little Brother series, but it can be read as a standalone. The first one, [b:Little Brother|954674|Little Brother (Little Brother, #1)|Cory Doctorow|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349673129l/954674._SY75_.jpg|939584], was nominated for both Hugo and Nebula awards in 2009 and was one of my most prominent reads of 2020 with my review located here. I read is as a part of monthly reading for January 2021 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group.
If the first two books had Marcus as the protagonist, here we follow Masha Maximow, who was mostly “on the other side” working to help to suppress hacktivists, but at the same time supplied Marcus with sensitive data in the second book.
This story starts with Masha working for a private company Xoth that helps an authoritarian regime of Slovstakia to identify and suppress protesters. The imagined country is a mix of both Soviet Union republics and former Warsaw pack countries with a hint of Arab spring protests (e.g. kebab is a local food). Sometimes the author contradicts himself – saying that it was a satellite state (meaning outside the USSR) and a former Soviet republic (i.e., a part of the Union), it uses Cyrillic alphabet and has a tendency to see Kremlin behind everything (therefore, not Russia). The surnames are mostly Ukrainian (security chief Litvinchuk, a protester leader Kolisnychenko), with also Romanian (Anton Tkachi). So, at least partially it is based on Revolution of Dignity, but also on more recent protests 2020–2021 Belarusian protests. Masha on one hand helps to install monitoring systems, on the other, to calm her conscience, secretly teaches a group of protesters to evade the monitoring.
As the story goes on, there are flashbacks about how and why she decided to join first Homeland Security and then a private contractor, where she worked under Carrie Johnstone, the one that supervised Marcus’ torture, which left him traumatized to this day. We see a story of a person willing to do good, but in the world, where goodness is blurry and often loses to needs of the moment. Masha is psychically abnormal even if she doesn’t recognize it.
A very strong continuation of the great edu-tainment series, which teaches how try to minimize the surveillance that is everywhere today.
If the first two books had Marcus as the protagonist, here we follow Masha Maximow, who was mostly “on the other side” working to help to suppress hacktivists, but at the same time supplied Marcus with sensitive data in the second book.
This story starts with Masha working for a private company Xoth that helps an authoritarian regime of Slovstakia to identify and suppress protesters. The imagined country is a mix of both Soviet Union republics and former Warsaw pack countries with a hint of Arab spring protests (e.g. kebab is a local food). Sometimes the author contradicts himself – saying that it was a satellite state (meaning outside the USSR) and a former Soviet republic (i.e., a part of the Union), it uses Cyrillic alphabet and has a tendency to see Kremlin behind everything (therefore, not Russia). The surnames are mostly Ukrainian (security chief Litvinchuk, a protester leader Kolisnychenko), with also Romanian (Anton Tkachi). So, at least partially it is based on Revolution of Dignity, but also on more recent protests 2020–2021 Belarusian protests. Masha on one hand helps to install monitoring systems, on the other, to calm her conscience, secretly teaches a group of protesters to evade the monitoring.
As the story goes on, there are flashbacks about how and why she decided to join first Homeland Security and then a private contractor, where she worked under Carrie Johnstone, the one that supervised Marcus’ torture, which left him traumatized to this day. We see a story of a person willing to do good, but in the world, where goodness is blurry and often loses to needs of the moment. Masha is psychically abnormal even if she doesn’t recognize it.
A very strong continuation of the great edu-tainment series, which teaches how try to minimize the surveillance that is everywhere today.