Monday, February 25, 2013

Homeland / Cory Doctorow / 396 pages

This is the sequel to the New York Times bestseller Little Brother.  A few years ago, terrorists blew up a bridge in San Francisco and killed over 4000 people.  The DHS used this as rationale for severely curtailing the civil rights and using terrorist tactics themselves.  Marcus Yallow and his friends became embroiled in the mess that followed and Marcus was able to use his computer and interpersonal skills to halt the DHS tactics.  Now things seem to have changed again.  Overnight, it seemed like no one had jobs anymore, no one had money anymore, and people had started to lose their houses.  Marcus' mom and dad have lost their jobs and Marcus had to drop out of college.  Two things happen that will alter the course of Marcus's life.  He is given an encrypted flash drive by Masha at Black Rock Desert.  She tells him to release the contents if anything should happen to her.  He is offered a job as webmaster for the political campaign of Joseph Noss, a charismatic reformer running for Senate.  Will Marcus make the right decisions and save Masha and Zeb without endangering his and his friends' lives?  This was an engrossing read, although I thought Little Brother was a bit more riveting.

"If you're not prepared to learn from the teachers that life gives you, you'll always be ignorant."

"90% of the works in copyright are orphan works:  not one knows who owns the rights to them."

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