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[ariel05]

This book is a young adult cyberpunk story, set in an indeterminate near future. It portrays events that could possibly take place tomorrow.

Terrorists bomb the Bay Bridge in California, and just after it happens, the Department of Homeland Security takes the protagonist and three of his friends into custody. They snuck out of school to follow up on a clue in a partially online game also taking place in the 3D world, and ended up in the wrong place in the wrong time, carrying the wrong sort of technology.

Three of the four are released. The rest of the story details the actions the protagonist takes to try to overthrow the DHS.

It's handled fairly plausibly. The picture it paints is uncomfortably close to reality today, what with security measures already in place, and expanding daily.

The book is intended as a call to arms/wake-up call for teenagers and younger people. Cory Doctorow takes the position that most kids reading for pleasure are also reading to learn how the world works. I was certainly in this category. Besides being a pretty good story for young adults, it also serves as a teaching tool for quite a lot of current stealth and security technology.

Maybe it's because I'm an adult and reading more critically now, but I found that the author taking any excuse to lecture about one thing or another got a little tedious.

The author has released this book in multiple free ebook formats, as well as standard paper format, in an effort to spread it as widely as possible. You can go download it here: http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/ if you don't want to pay for it.

I *did* learn new things about technology. I may even start using some of this tech at home. I don't have anything to hide, but I do like my privacy.