I enjoyed the heck out of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother- so when I saw that he had written a sequel, I was all about it-- this was a must-read, must-check out, must enjoy type of a book and yes, I'm aware of the irony as I've already broken my self-imposed moratorium for 2013, but hey, what's a Kindle for, right?
Homeland picks up after the events of Little Brother and we find our hero Marcus Yallow, his girlfriend Ange and their friends Darryl, Van and Jolu all struggling to get by. Life's gotten harder for them since the events of Little Brother. Marcus is unemployed- having dropped out of college when the debt became too much to handle. His parents have lost their jobs and are struggling to get by. Darryl is still recovering from the prolonged torture and interrogation he was subjected to by the government in Little Brother. Ange is going to college and things are still awkward between Darryl's gilfriend Van and Marcus (Van has a major crush on Marcus still.) At the Burning Man Festival (which I want to go to someday. I think I might upgrade that to the old bucket list.) Marcus and Ange are approached by hackers Masha and Zeb who have a treasure trove of Wikileaks style documents that they want Marcus to release if something happens to them. Predictably, something does happen and then Marcus is back in the thick of it once again, doing what he can against an increasingly authoritarian and oppressive government- though this time, he finds himself working for a state senate campaign and starts to wonder if maybe, just maybe, people can make a difference...
And no, I'm not going to spoil the ending. Any fans of YA Lit out there should get ahold of both of these books and give them a read-- though, ironically, it's the fact these books are YA Lit that makes them somewhat frustrating to read. I sort of wanted more from this book in terms of writing- I wanted better character development, less adverbs (can someone give me a definitive answer on those one way or the other? I was told 'adverb bad, no -ly words' and Doctorow peppers his book with them... or maybe that's just a stylistic difference) and in general, just plain more of a story than what I got- I kept having to pause and remind myself that it was technically a book aimed at teenagers so I shouldn't be quite so critical of it.
What I do like about these books is that they're jammed packed with super cool knowledge about interesting stuff that everybody- and I do mean everybody should learn about. These books make me want to quit my job and sign up for Code Academy full time and really learn programming, you know. They talk about hacking and practical, real life ways to protect your anonymity online if you really want too. (The afterwords in these books are a must-- and if you think it's bullshit, well then Google and see for yourself.) Things like 3D printing, building your own drones, parallels to wikileaks and privacy on the internet are all themes hard at work in Homeland- but with one, tiny catch.
If Doctorow has a fault, it might be that he's too idealistic. There's a lot of 'power to the people' type rhetoric that smells a lot like the Occupy movement to me. In general, I'm cynical and dubious about it all, increasingly so in my old age because really at the end of the day, I approach it from the other side of things and just assume that people want to be left alone. I know there's a group of hardcore techno-utopian nerds out there fighting for the free internet- that I'm a huge fan of- that, I'll take to the barricades for, but this 'people power' crap just doesn't do it for me. Change- especially in a country as big as this one is not going to be easy and there's the sad potential that if push came to shove it could be a very bloody affair indeed. If there's one irritating trend on the left I'd like to get rid of, it's this notion that massive protests are the way to go to get shit done. They look sexy as hell but revolutions live or die based on what happens the day AFTER we've all won change we can believe in or whatever-- revolutions, real ones, are boring.
And I expect they don't make for very exciting books, so if my objection is a quibble, I'll call it a minor one and say we're even, because if there's one thing that's very appealing about Cory Doctorow, it's his consistency. He's willing to slap around left and right when they're wrong about something and if there's one thing that this country is in desperately short supply of, it's consistency when it comes to principles like freedom and privacy and the right to assemble or protest. It's refreshing to read it in a book- I just hope we can see it in the White House and/or Congress someday as well.
Overall: This one felt a little sluggish in parts, but it's still thought-provoking stuff and worth a read- especially for YA Lit fans out there. *** out of **** (the massive amounts of real world information jammed in here get it the extra star.)
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