Little Brother, by Cory Doctrow, is one of those rare Young Adult titles that may be enjoyed by adults as well as teens. The plot for this book, the Department of Homeland Security imposes Martial Law on San Francisco after a terrorist attack, is so adult enough, that if the main protagonist of this story were not modeled after a high school kid, this could just as easily been a Tom Clancy type spy thriller.

The opening pages are used to quickly introduce most of the main characters. Doctrow does an excellent job taking non-teens into the world a gaming and the use of technology used by gamers and kids in general. We know this story is set in the future by some of the surveillance technology used in schools, but we also know this is a not too distant future, maybe only a year or so from our now, 2009 almost 2010, because there is nothing really unfamiliar about the technology introduced, only the uses the technology is put to.

I also applaud Doctrow for giving us a group of buddies that is mixed in terms of race, eating choices and other preferences. Younger readers may not pick up on the message that different is good and this older reader hopes that this message may not even be noticed by younger readers because kids groups these days seem to becoming more diverse. The author also makes a point that the law is not always enforced equally when one of the characters speaks about who the DHS will prosecute more than others, a point that Doctrow reinforces when he describes the length of imprisonment for various people picked up by the DHS in this novel.

The book also makes a strong political statement for questioning authority and, under certain circumstances, supporting civil disobedience. Some of this is backed up with a history lesson of what the Free Speech Movement of the ‘60’s was all about and a reminder that if you don’t speak up for what you believe in, you may find you right to speak up taken away. Because of these underlying political messages, this book will no doubt be controversial in some circles.

Perhaps I am over analyzing the content of the book too much. Even if you ignore the political side of the story, it’s a great buddy story, it is a teen romance novel, it is a great hacker story and it is a great adventure story. In short, this is one great book, no matter how you approach it. The only weakly developed characters in the book are the parents, but the parents are not necessarily weak characters.

I’m giving this a full five stars. It appealed to my revolutionary side, I loved the geek appeal and I found the basic premise very realistic and possible. Some people may have problems with the politics of the story, but others will love it. ( )

Near-future sf about the consequences of a terrorist attack on the San Francisco Bay Bridge, as Homeland Security moves into the city to "protect" everyone by turning them all into suspected terrorists and watching their every move. Scary and all too realistic. ( )

Cory Doctorow is one of my favorite authors and a major activist in the world of online rights and freedoms. "Little Brother"is one of his best books yet. While it has a teenage protagonist and is marketed as a YA book, it is intelligently written and easily accessible to adults. It would make an excellent short read for anyone.

The story is of a young man who gets caught up in a terrorist attack in San Francisco. He and several friends are taken in for questioning, and one of them never returns. The city turns into a police state over the next few months, with the government tracking people's movements and activities and clamping down on protests. Rather than meekly accepting the situation, though, the teen and his friends fight back, using their technological know-how to show just how useless much of the security is against anyone but innocent citizens and exposing the government's own misdeeds.

The plot does seem a bit dated now that a new administration is in place, and at times the book does get a little heavy-handed about promoting freedom over false security. However, it still serves as a warning against the dangers of 'security theater' and the possible abuses that universal surveillance and blind patriotism can bring. In many ways, it's a virtual how-to manual for subverting the system to expose these dangers. ( )

I had been wanting to read this book ever since Scott Westerfeld mentioned it on his blog which was at least a year ago.

Anyway, I finally finished it, and I enjoyed it... but I did find that all the techie speak that was in it was over my head and I could have cared less for it. Overall I really enjoyed it, but if anyone is the least bit offended by politically charged books - you may want to take a sneak peak into it while at the bookstore or library before heading in completely.

Have you ever had the experience of remembering why you enjoyed something? Like reading? Where you sit back and get involved in the book? The characters? The action? And suddenly you find yourself fifty pages from where you started, and a couple of hours have mysteriously disappeared in what feels like a few minutes? Little Brother by Cory Doctrow brought back that original feeling to me.

Little Brother takes place in a post 9/11 future that may be just a tomorrow away. Little Brother is about Marcus Yallow, a seventeen year old San Francisco hacker, and his friends who happen to find themselves at the wrong place at the wrong time, a terrorist attack that fells San Francisco's Bay Bridge, killing 4000 people, and Marcus and his friends are rounded up by the Department of Homeland Security, DHS ( a title worthy of Joseph Goebbels) in the wake of the attack and detained in a makeshift prison on Treasure Island in the San Francisco harbor. The justification of their imprisonment is nothing more than the profile of being a teenager, which can be used to fit the description of any anti-social behavior. Marcus and friends are held incommunicado and subjected to interrogations and various humiliations designed to break them and reveal more terrorist plots. After a week Marcus and friends are released with the exception of one, Darryl. After their release the friends find San Francisco under everything but stated martial law under the auspices of the DHS, and the friends go their own ways. Marcus wants revenge on the system that abused him and becomes a reluctant revolutionary. Another drops out right away wanting only to return to a normal life, and a third helps Marcus set up an underground internet communications system for those who want to resist the DHS' authority and return civil liberties to San Francisco. Echoes of today's events buzz through the pages and I think future readers will find it relevant and as resonant as some of George Orwell's predictions in 1984. Little Brother is listed as YA (young adult) book but I wouldn't let that label deter an adult from reading it, I found it a very engrossing book and if it is truly a YA book it doesn't talk down to it's audience. If there are some critiques of the novel they're MINOR. Some of the information given is basic and repeated a couple of times in the beginning but that's hardly noticeable and probably of benefit to the YA audience the book is intended for. Some of the discussions of the through the rabbit hole world of hacking and cryptographic codes made my head swim a little, but things that close to math usually do. There's a bit of teenage wish fulfillment in it, bully retribution, teenagers are smarter than adults and are the last chance for freedom in America, but given the circumstances and parameters laid out in the book it is a perfectly plausible reaction to the events described in the book.

A "Modern Classic" is an encomium that's used all the readily in blurbs, and those books and authors have faded to obscurity, but I think Little Brother lives up to that sentiment and is a book that should be put into schools curriculum's and remain there for a long time to come. Hopefully in Little Brother the young people who read it will see a path they want to take this country. ( )