Kind of amateurish writing (though I guess it's being written by a teenager), and unrealistic characters and plot.

"I danced until I was so tired I couldn't dance another step. Ange danced alongside of me. Technically, we were rubbing our sweaty bodies against each other for several hours, but believe it or not, I totally wasn't being a horn-dog about it."

"Every night since the party, I'd gone to bed thinking of two things: the sight of the crowd charging the police lines and the feeling of the side of her breast under her shirt as we leaned against the pillar. She was amazing. I'd never been with a girl as...aggressive as her before. It had always been me putting the moves on and them pushing me away. I got the feeling that Ange was as much of a horn-dog as I was. It was a tantalizing notion."

"Ange nuzzled me a little and I kissed her and we necked. Something about the danger and the pact to go together -- it made me forget the awkwardness of having sex, made me freaking horny as hell."

Lots of cryptonerd free software worship stuff, which is annoying. Every Linux fanatic's silly fantasy.

I felt a bit choked up and/or defiant at parts, like the rescue scene, so that's good, at least. ( )

2.5 Stars

Well that had a whole lot of 'splaining throughout which, whilst necessary, made for some long dull moments in this YA dystopia.

I know this has been very popular but I honestly feel like it hasn't aged well. The main character makes lots of pervy comments about girls and says he can't hug his kidnapped, injured and traumatised male friend because guys don't hug each other. I think we have moved past that mentality as a society right? On the positive side, I really liked the way the dystopic elements developed and how things became quite brutal quite quickly. Just okay for me.
( )

I have just started to read Cory Doctorow's books. This book made it onto the CBC 100 Young Adult Books That Make me Proud to be Canadian list so I figured it was one I needed to read. I am still woefully deficient in my YA reads probably because I thought they wouldn't be as challenging for an adult reader. This book proves that I was certainly wrong about that.

Four high school students, Marcus, Darryl, Vanessa (Van), and Jose Luis (JoLu), meet up in downtown San Francisco to play an alternate reality game that involves finding clues before other teams find them. Just as they are about to start they hear loud explosions resulting from a terrorist attack on a bridge and the subway system. The Department of Home Security quickly rolls into action and the foursome are detained on suspicion of terrorism. Darryl was wounded while the group escaped during a melee in the BART system and he was taken to a separate holding system. Marcus initially refused to provide the password for his cell phone incurring the wrath of the DHS investigators. It was five days before Marcus, Van and JoLu were released. They agreed they would not tell their parents they had been held for questioning; instead they told them they had been on the other side of the Bay and had to stay in a makeshift refugee camp for that period. Marcus is determined to find out what happened to Darryl but the DHS is running surveillance on communications and traffic and almost every public location. Even the classrooms in schools are fitted with cameras. Marcus devises an alternate internet system using X-boxes (which I don't pretend to understand) and cryptography which is almost immune to the DHS spying. He spreads this out to friends and gamers that he feels are trustworthy but there are still risks he will be caught. And now there are rumours that people charged with terrorism will be sent overseas to some place like Syria and never heard from again. Marcus and his buddies are certainly playing a high stakes game. Life is not all covert operations though; Marcus has attracted a like-minded girlfriend, Ange, and there are some sweet moments of teenage love and lust.

When this book came out in 2008 it was criticized as having serious themes that weren't appropriate for young adult audiences. A high school principal in Florida pulled the book from the curriculum in 2014 because it presented questioning authority as a good thing. Perhaps in response Doctorow has kept the book on his website as open source, meaning it can be read for free by anyone (or at least anyone with internet access). High school seems to me like a very appropriate time to challenge students with the question of when is it appropriate to question authority. It's a conundrum people face often as they head out into the workforce. ( )

I didn't see what people liked about this one. The message was larger than the story (as in, pounding me over the head with it), and the narrator's voice was condescending and explainy. Couldn't even finish it on audio. ( )

Well, now I understand RSA encryption.