'Homeland' by Cory Doctorow

Homeland, Cory Doctorow (3.5)

For those familiar with Doctorow’s ‘Little Brother’, this is the long awaited sequel. It follows the same main characters a little further into the future after their experiences with the Internet, cyber spying and government interventions in that book. Doctorow continues with his rightfully paranoid protagonist, Marcus, who once again finds himself in the middle of a cyber war between those wanting freedom of information and those against. In this case, he receives a wikileak-type drop of documents (800k files on a flash drive) from a former adversary at the Burning Man festival. Side note: the book starts with a great description of the event and characters at the festival. Marcus ends up working for an up and coming politician in San Francisco while trying to publish the documents anonymously (and presumably not end up exiled in Russia). I found it interesting that this book was published prior to the Edward Snowden NSA document leaks. The parallels are very scary. While this book is not as fresh and unique as it’s predecessor, Doctorow’s predictions of technology’s abilities and abuses are uncanny. Any fan of his work will enjoy this book.