So very, very, good. But not for the usual reasons I call book "good". This book will make you want to do something, even if its just exploring the world of privacy, encryption, and the technologies that strengthen them (and weaken them). It might make you want to go out and join and Occupy protest. Or get involved in campaigning for an independent political candidate. It might make you consider starting to use TrueCrypt to protect your personal data. It might make you finally get around to figu...

The book is nice, same basic plot as its predecessor - Little Brother. But it is less scary and less original - exactly because it has a similar plot. It also lacks a climax at the end. I am not the guy that wants every book to end like some western movie with the hero riding toward the sunset with the beautiful girl, but I still want the story to have a real end. I suspect the reason it lacks a climax is intentional, because the story is supposed to be motivational and as a result of this "rea

Homeland was a book I hadn't really planned to read as part of my "finish up my unfinished series" project for the year. I enjoyed Little Brother, but I wasn't itching to see where the story went from there. At the last minute, I decided to add it to the list, and now that I've finished it, I can say that I made the wrong decision. I should have gone with my first instinct and left it well enough alone.That's not to say that the book is bad; it's not. It's actually quite readable, compelling, an...

I should never start a Doctorow book in the evening because I will surely be up all night alternately reading and pacing and Googling and despairing and hoping.This sequel to Little Brother is splendid. The technology bits make me frightened and determined to learn more. The story is gripping, the people (with the possible exception of Carrie because I just can't believe in that much evil- for my own tenuous sanity, I mean) are real and wonderful. The quiet defeat of Marcus' parents is heartbrea...

HomelandI was very excited to read this and I was well aware that I would compare this to Little Brother constantly. Little Brother blew me away and any novel so closely related to it in scope and theme would have a hard time passing scrutiny.The first chapter didn’t quite pull me in. I understood that it was supposed to set the tone, that the freedom of the Burning Man festival was intended as a stark contrast to the oppressiveness and bleakness of the ‘real world’ waiting back of Chicago. I fo...

This is the second volume in a series set is modern day alt-reality USA. The first book, Little Brother, was written as a standalone and was nominated for both Hugo and Nebula (as well as other SFF awards). I’ve read it in 2020 and really enjoyed the story and the style, here is my review. The third book, Attack Surface, is a part of monthly reading for January 2021 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group and I decided to read this one first.The story is set a few years after Little Brothe...

Another book of ideas, to be read after Little Brother, its predecessor. Same criticism of character development, and as before, it is often more than a little preachy, putting the protagonist and his family in the middle of the many difficulties of the 2008 recession, compounded by the logical results of Marcus' activities, his father's loss of his security clearance, etc. Most ironic, and sad, is the afterword by Aaron Swartz who has since been hounded to suicide by Federal prosecutors, and th...

This is a "Young Adult" novel so although it is well written, there is a healthy dose of over-explanation (as you might expect). I might be showing my age here, but it did irk me that Marcus (or Doctorow) felt he could trust the reader to get the oblique "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" reference but needed to explain a quote from "2001: A Space Odyssey" to death.While Little Brother was concerned with the "war on terror", Patriot Act and Guantanamo, the background to this novel is the Occu...

I must say that, after reading -and greatly enjoying- Cory's first book in the series, Little Brother, I found Homeland, the sequel, a little disappointing.The plot and the main theme are more or less the same as the previous novel, following Marcus Yallow and his friends in their fight for freedom and civil rights. But, if both the goal and the message are highly remarkable, the plot simply isn't.Don't get me wrong, it's a nice, enjoyable read. But it can't be compared to the previous novel.It

I took too much time getting to the sequel to Big Brother and I feel slightly ashamed. I loved seeing Mikey older and stressed out, feeling the gestalt of a world that had gotten darker and watching him barely scrape by.Burning Man notwithstanding, which was both familiar and amusing, the main action and plot of the novel was full of Deep Message. Not bad, I don't mind that kind of thing, personally. But fortunately, the novel was so full of technogeekery and informaticofuckery that it nicely si...

The easiest way to review Homeland is in relation to Doctorow's other YA novels. This one is not substantively different in style or content; he seems to be settling into a form that either works for you or it doesn't. He may not have an exceptional gift for style; his language, plots, and characters are all unremarkable, but effective. It seems that reading Doctorow's novels is like reading his blogs, which in turn appear to be not that different than sitting in his mind for a bit. And because

Is it too much to hope that this book lives up to the high-water mark of its predecessor?Apparently not. While there's a lot less action and/or humor than the first book, the general spirit of rebellion and justice remains, and it's still a most satisfying read. After all, Joss Whedon stated that he would like to make The Avengers 2 something "smaller" and "more personal" than the first. Doctorow seems to have followed a similar philosophy here. The book depends more on small moments than big, s...

This is the sequel to his awesome book, Little Brother. It is full of computer hacking heroes who battle covert government agencies that want to track citizen's every move. It had burning man festivals, homemade drones, fancy computer coding tricks(that I didn't understand), massive San Francisco demonstrations, evil police brutality, outrage over student loans and unemployment, independent politicians trying to change government, and a distinct love for wikileaks. It was definitely a call to ac...

Well crap. Once again Doctorow paints a pretty grim and believable picture of what happens when we allow our rights to privacy, autonomy and freedom of expression to be circumscribed in the name of "safety" and "protection." The most disturbing thing about the potential of this tale to become reality, is that many of the MOST disturbing plot aspects of the novel have already occurred, and even as the perpetrators get their hands slapped, their attorneys rewrite service agreements, that we click

At first I refused to believe this book was a YA novel, and consequently disliked it. I cracked this open as part of a book club assignment -- I hadn't read any of Doctorow's other fiction. I knew that the first book in this series, Little Brother, had been billed as a YA novel. But isn't that just something people say these days when they're vaguely embarrassed by their novel's enthusiasm for chase scenes or wizards?But no: this is a straight-up YA novel. It's written in the first person, it's

4.5/5 stars. I didn't think Doctorow could top himself in terms of perfectly blending social commentary with important issues that more YA readers should be looking at with "Pirate Cinema", but I was wrong. "Homeland", the follow up to the 2008 release, "Little Brother", absolutely blows everything else out of the water. And yes, while he gets a bit didactic in this and his other works, it's stuff we need to be reading. It's stuff that's firmly rooted in reality that is absolutely frightening, a...

If you loved Little Brother, you'll want to read this, too. It's the same mix: one teenage moral dilemma after another, blended with evangelism for freedom through cryptography.Since Cory Doctorow is a fellow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, I was irritated by his use of a sandstorm to literally blow his main characters into a tent containing three of the leading lights of the EFF -- and Wil Wheaton, the internet hero formerly of Star Trek: The Next Generation and eponym of Wheaton's Law.

I didn't realize going in that 'Homeland' was intended for young adults. I'm not sure if knowing that would have changed my opinion about it. The novel has what seems to be a consistent problem for Doctorow: all-pervasive narrative contrivance. The protagonist knows all the right moves, everything from how to whip up some delicious pho (Doctorow lets the reader know it's pronounced "fah," lest you think him one of those ignorant plebes who pronounces it as "foe"), beat a lie detector (practice p...

This sequel to "Little Brother" doesn't quite live up to its predecessor. At the end of LB, Marcus has gone from a somewhat cocky teen rebel to a wiser, scarred near-adult. He learns; he grows; he evolves. In contrast, Marcus ends Homeland in basically the same shape he starts in. It's a shame, because the writing in both books is good, if a bit tech-y in places.In any event, the book begins with Marcus and his girlfriend Ange having a great time at Burning Man. They run into Masha, a former bad...

Marcus was known as m1k3y when he was younger, a web protestor and advocate of human rights who exposed government corruption. In Homeland, Marcus is a young adult, just beginning life outside of university. He has all of the regular issues facing a young person – searching for a job, dealing with student loans, new relationships… but he also has had a new set of responsibilities placed on him. When two of his friends are kidnapped, they leave him with a huge document listing and proving a remar...