Homeland

I loved Little Brother. I didn't love Homeland.

Markus and Ange are just less interesting this go-round. The conflict is not as tense. 'Severe Haircut Lady' gets a name, she is still ostensibly the villain, but she is not nearly as threatening. The conclusion is ambiguous, less satisfying and leaves a couple of big loose ends hanging.

The tech talk is interesting, but Doctorow goes a overboard celebrating the hacktavist / maker / burner culture.

Doctorow description of how badly the recession has damaged the San Francisco economy is slightly amusing considering that SF has been one of the least affected metropolitan areas.

“Just because I’m paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get me.”

Homeland is the sequel to Little Brother, though the novel gives enough of the backstory for it to easily stand alone. If you would like a synopsis, please refer to the publisher’s review, it does an excellent job and would be redundant here. The title refers to The Homeland Security Agency (and the NSA) and their seemingly insatiable need to watch and capture every bit of information traveling the airwaves. Our beloved cell phones, smart pads and computers are as transparent to them as any window.

Doctorow writes with authority and confidence about all things high tech, that which currently exists and that which is just around the corner. The listener is easily and comfortably guided by the author’s expert grasp of the technological nature of the material, neither overwhelming us with it, nor pandering to us. You don’t have to be a high-tech geek to enjoy this novel, because it affects all of us. And that’s where it gets truly frightening; because it’s real, not SciFi, not distant future tech, not aliens, but here and now government surveillance, using our very own gadgets to watch us, catch us and maybe even control us.

After listening to this exciting and thoroughly enjoyable novel, this reviewer was shaken to his paranoid core. It’s real, only the characters and the storyline are fictionalized. There is no question that they are watching us, Edward Snowden convinced us of that. Now that we know, do we go back to sleep, or do we follow the advice in the several appendices of the book. Doctorow clearly practices what he preaches, even going so far as to keep this audiobook off of Audible.com because of its onerous digital rights policy, very likely harming his own audiobook’s sales.

Wil Wheaton (yes Wesley Crusher on Star Trek TNG) does an amazing job reading the novel. There is even a part of the story where the main character meets Wheaton. This self-referential bon mot cracks the forth wall for a moment, something Doctorow seems to enjoy in this and his other books. Unfortunately, this excellent performance by Wheaten is slightly marred by the occasional lip smack or dry mouth noises that should have been removed in post-production. Fortunately, it is faint and should go unnoticed with ordinary ear phones or in a car. Don’t let this minor flaw keep you from enjoying an excellent performance.

If you enjoy high-tech novels, with all-too-human characters, this is a must read. Authentic, informative, exciting, and way too real. Homeland is paranoia developed to an art form.

Audiobook purchased for for review by ABR.

Please find this complete review and many others at audiobookreviewer dot com

[If this review helped, please press YES. Thanks!]

Review first published on jenasbookreviews.blogspot.com

The sequel to Little Brother. Set in modern day but even more dystopian than the US currently is (but not by much unfortunately) and California's economy has collapsed. Marcus and his family are definitely feeling the effects of this with everyone out of work so when Marcus is offered a job as webmaster for a political campaign of someone who looks to be the real deal, he jumps at the opportunity. Unfortunately, all this happens right after Burning Man where Marcus was given a bunch of encrypted files by Masha before she was taken away by someone he is convinced was Carrie Johnson, his own personal demon. Now he must find a way to release these files while remaining anonymous or risk losing his job. His friends come to the rescue but when they see that there are over 8000 documents and some is extremely serious, they also start realizing just how high the stakes are and once they start dribbling them out the consequences start coming home to roost.

A brilliant sequel that once again might be set in a dystopian reality but none-the-less hits home about the chipping away at our civil liberties and rights and how the courage of one person or even a small group can be the ripples that might eventually bring about change. Yes, it's scary but when everyone does nothing the outcome is that much scarier.

After the first few chapters into Cory Doctorow's newest book, "Homeland," I wanted to rush downstairs and redo all of my computer's security. After a few more I was wondering how much of my life was already compromised and if that information was already being used. By the end of the book I wanted to do something about it.

Which is exactly what the author had in mind.

"Homeland" is the sequel to Doctorow's "Little Brother," when teenager Marcus Yallow was mistakenly targeted and intentionally tortured by Homeland Security agents after terrorists attacked San Francisco. When the DHS turned California into a police state for "security," Marcus and his tech-savvy friends managed to outwit, confound, and ultimately expose their tactics to the world.

Now it's a few years later. Marcus is an unemployed college dropout whose parents were laid off in the recession. But he's with his girlfriend Ange at Burning Man, he's just got word of an exciting job for a progressive independent candidate's campaign, and life isn't so bad.

Then a person from the past slips him access to a massive file full of embarrassing dirt on the government and some major companies, and his own personal WikiLeaks begins.

Doctorow's young-adult books have all been fairly blatant calls to action with plots wrapped loosely around them. His characters are likeable and energetic and he brings back some familiar face and a few guest stars, but at times some of the interpersonal subplots, especially the romantic ones, seem tacked on and when all is said and done it's not obvious a lot has really happened.

Fortunately his skill at making activism and cybersecurity seem not only doable but fun makes for compelling reading, and the way he weaves real-life news into the story grabs your attention in ways the actual events never did.

The files Marcus finds on school principals misusing security systems on loaner student laptop webcams to secretly spy and take pictures of them in their homes? It actually happened three years ago in Philadelphia. "Sock puppet" software that maintains many different fake "personas" with their own social network identities, interests and backgrounds so that one person can easily flood Twitter, message boards and comment sections with convincing propaganda and disinformation from "real people" to create a false consensus? It's out there, and PR firms, security companies and even the U.S. military are using it.

Like "Little Brother," the scariest part of "Homeland" is how accurate it sounds. The story seems to happen just barely in the future but every tech device, data-mining tactic and security system is available right now and Doctorow carefully explains most of them. He takes you inside the hacktivist movement, inside an Occupy demonstration, inside the groups who are fighting against secretive manipulation and he shows you just what's at stake.

But his characters also wrestle with the moral aspects of hacktivism. Should they leak the documents? Who might get hurt? How do you get people to care? And how do you keep your own privacy when there are skilled, bored programmers out there who don't believe in it?

(The most moving part isn't in the story. It's the second afterword, written by Aaron Swartz, an amazingly talented programmer and activist who could easily have been the inspiration for Marcus. "This stuff is real," he wrote, as he described how he helped raise awareness, build a massive online movement and bring down the sure-to-pass anti-Internet bill SOPA. But it only works if you get involved, he added, closing with, "Let me know if I can help." Swartz, 26, committed suicide, facing decades in jail for downloading millions of academic journal articles from MIT, an offense MIT didn't want to prosecute.)

First and foremost, "Homeland" teaches. How to secure your phone and your computer, how to protect against tear gas and EMP pulses, how to reach voters more effectively, even how to make the perfect cup of coffee. Doctorow speaks directly to all the frustrated people struggling against the economic, political and technological systems stacked against them and shows them how to fight back with style. And there's just enough action and drama and humor to keep you reading compulsively to the end and Googling afterward.

This book isn't just awesome, it's important.

Doctorow can do all the great writer tricks-- plot, character, dialogue. He's also not just a guy that plays someone on TV who does X, he really is a real activist working against draconian copyright and unreasonable monopolist business practices, as the preamble to the audiobook where he discusses Audible's business practices shows. By the way, you have to go to his website to get the audiobook, he won't work with audible until they allow the author to choose DRM.

Set just one step away from the reality we live in, Homeland details the further adventures of Marcus, the hero from Little Brother. This book stands just fine on its own as an independent novel as well.

It starts at Burning Man and Doctorow knows the San Francisco the action moves to well.

As well the text is crammed with heaps of information regarding open source software, piracy, darknets, cool maker stuff, fascinating weird math things, and hacks to make the perfect easiest cup of coffee. None of this gets in the way of the story if you aren't interested in the tech. This is all real, as is the menace our heroes face, a world of militarizing police forces, corrupt politicians, revolving doors between the Army, government, and private contractors, torture...

Which is why the book is not just a great read, but an important one. A bibliography at the end provides sources for further information on these topics.

Unusual themes: the Burning Man festival, a realistic huge protest, and a Wikileaks treasure trove of government corruption. I've occasionally fantasized about going to Burning Man, so Cory's vivid description was a treat. The protest was more important, but Cory can certainly expand on this theme in future books. For example, protests often work fairly effectively; government crackdowns on protesters often backfire hugely, escalating further protests almost immediately.

But the trove of Wikileaks-like corruption was, to me, the most important and the most realistic part of the book. Those who run our government and our biggest corporations are moral midgets who don't deserve to be appointed as dogcatchers. The fictional trove of documents probably understates just how corrupt they are in reality.

If our leaders are so evil that they might as well be psychopathic, why do we tolerate them? Why don't we rise up and remove them from power? What are we afraid of? Look around the world, and it's not hard to come up with a better way of running things than the way we do it in America. So throw the bastards out, and replace them with something like Denmark, Holland, or Australia. The longer we go on tolerating such corruption, the more we resemble the United States of Enron. It's embarrassing.

After the traumatic events of the bestselling Little Brother, Cory Doctorow returns with the sequel in Homeland, as Marcus Yallow finds himself in a harsh world where the government is always watching and waiting. His time being detained has scarred him in some ways — though not as bad as some of his friends — so that he is now less trusting than ever. But he also knows that while the truth may not set or keep him free, getting it out to the masses is more important.

Homeland opens with an entertainingly fantastic chapter where Marcus is at Burning Man for the first time in his life, which Doctorow describes with such detail that it seems as if he may have been once or twice himself. It culminates in a Dungeons & Dragons session with the founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and actor Wil Wheaton. Marcus also comes across an old enemy and comes into possession of a flash drive with some very incendiary information.

Back in San Francisco, life is the same with Marcus’s parents out of work, as well as himself, with everyone trying to get by in this terrible economic climate. Marcus gets a job offer he can’t refuse: working as the webmaster and tech guy for a candidate running as an independent for the California Senate, looking to change the world and make it a better place. So things start to look up for a little while, but Marcus has to make the decision about what to do with the flash drive. It contains a torrent address and password that lets him download gigs of information on the corruption in the government, hard proof of what they have perpetrated, how they have tortured, under the guise of protecting the American people. Marcus will have to decide if his safety and health are worthy sacrifices for getting this information out to the people.

Doctorow keeps the thrill running just like he did with Little Brother, putting Marcus into tight spot after tight spot, using his friends when he can, but also knowing the risks of putting them in danger. Doctorow also does a great job of using cutting edge technology to make the story feel a little futuristic, but at the same time completely plausible. Fans will be sucked into Homeland and kept going until the last page, hoping for a possible future continuation to this chapter in the story of Marcus Yallow.

Originally written on April 27, 2013 ©Alex C. Telander.

For more reviews, check out the BookBanter site: [...]

Older does not necessarily mean wiser, not for Marcus Yallow, hero of Cory Doctorow's bestselling and award winning novel, Little Brother. The sequel, Homeland, is set a couple of years later and opens with Marcus and his girlfriend, Ange, living it up at the Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. There, in the middle of nowhere, Marcus' demons come to haunt him.

First is Masha, who used to be on the wrong side, but might now be on the right side. She hands Marcus her insurance policy: a USB drive with access to dirty documents she's been collecting about the dirty dealings of private enterprise, government departments and a certain former employee. She urges him to publicise the documents should she disappear. Enter Marcus' worst nightmare, the woman who oversaw his capture and torture in Little Brother, Carrie Johnstone. She's at Burning Man, too and she's not there to celebrate what seems to be the largest gathering of unplugged nerds in history.

Masha is kidnapped and Marcus is injured in the explosion triggered to cover the retreat. He returns to San Francisco with a broken nose, the USB and a job offer. The broken nose is annoying, but Masha's insurance policy and his new job--webmaster for a charismatic political candidate--are at direct odds. To do one justice, he has to all but fail at the other. Having a job is a Big Deal; he's been out of work for the better part of a year and, as a result of his shenanigans in Little Brother, his parents' careers have hit the skids. But, this is Marcus. He's a nineteen year-old guy, he's smart and curious. He downloads the treasure trove of data accessed by the key on the USB. It's incendiary stuff.

The gang gets back together to process the data. Before they can officially decide what to do with it, however, some of it is leaked. Marcus falls into another nightmare that feels like a paranoid delusion until his laptop starts talking back to him.

From there, the novel follows a similar path to its predecessor. Marcus is roughed up, there's a riot and government types do Bad Things. Marcus' voice is engaging, though, and the reader gains a good sense of a young man who is trying to grow up on his terms...and realises he can't. Like so much of his life, even this process is going to be dictated to him, for him, and until he locks step with events, his yelling and flailing will continue to sound like the obstreperous tantrum of a boy. Marcus faces a decision greater than protecting himself, those he loves, or even compromising his job. Can he do what's right?

I can't say the message of Homeland is particularly new, not so many years after Little Brother, but it's still relevant and there is a definite sense the author practices what he preaches. Security and freedom of ourselves, our lives and our data are important issues and while Cory Doctorow has a definite opinion, he never veers into the territory of telling the reader: You Are Wrong--which is greatly appreciated.

Cory Doctorow writes for a young adult audience, but the novel is just as enjoyable for an adult. The in-depth explanations of technology and how it works could be condescending. They never are. It's interesting stuff that inspires more than one bout of `net research. A bibliography in the back of the book helps with that. There are also two afterwords, one by Jacob Applebaum of WikiLeaks and the other by Aaron Schwartz, co-founder of Reddit, also described as an internet activist. Sadly, Aaron Schwartz is no longer with us. His message in the back of this book is worth reading, however. I found it more accessible than the one written by Applebaum.

All in all, there's stuff to think about wrapped in a neat little adventure. If Marcus' story is to continue and I suspect it will--Carrie Johnstone is still out there--I'd like to see a different approach. A different book. Given Marcus gains some much needed maturity by the end of Homeland, I think I will.

Another note: I read the free version of Little Brother, the book before this one, in 2009 and liked it so much I went out and bought two copies, one for the shelf and one to give away. I'd say that's a successful model of online publishing.

Written for and originally published at SFcrowsnest.

I read Pirate Cinema in December. I found it fascinating, fun, and exciting. So I picked up "Little Brother" at the library and read it in short order. I was disappointed that the plot seemed the same, the characters almost identical, and even the ideas to be so similar, I couldn't help but wonder if I'd read the same book twice. I thought, "One-trick author." If it's a good trick, great, but it wasn't worth reading another. Then "Homeland" came out and I found the idea of a sequel to Little Brother to be intriguing enough to check this one out of the library.

What a surprise! This book was every bit the masterpiece I found Pirate Cinema, but it wasn't loaded with the same tired old ideas about copyright laws. Instead, Doctorow takes on the very ideas of privacy and freedom and how they are under attack in the technological age. Brilliant. I couldn't put it down. If you're a Doctorow fan, pick it up and you'll love it. If you're not, prepare to have your mind blown. Fast-paced, suspenseful, and full of good thoughts. I'm not one who gushes (actually, I'm usually the opposite - check my other reviews!) This book is hot stuff.

It is not necessary since this book stands on its own but you will want to read both books because they are GREAT!

Homeland starts off a little slow after the wild ride of "Little Brother" but pretty soon, a second wild ride begins and you'll be up all night unable to put this down. The story is fictional but the technology is chillingly real.

As someone who works with the Internet, I recommend this for everyone who uses facebook, reads online blogs, etc. You have no idea what the corporate PR guys are doing - and this book is REALISTIC - it does not include any technology that isn't being used on you right now.

Billed for teens, this is a book that adults will not only find riveting but instructional (in a horrifying way).

This is the story of Marcus Yallow. There is inevitable action, heartbreak, and conspiracy in his future. “Homeland” by Cory Doctorow takes place in semi dystopian version of San Francisco, the current home of technological innovation. It was published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. If you're a teen or young adult today with a great interest in technology like me, then this book will surely interest you. It has an awesome combination of tech, action, and interaction.
The book begins at Burning Man, a kind of yearly nerdstock gathering in the desert outside of San Francisco. Marcus is attending with intent to show off his 3D printer that uses sand as a medium. Things quickly turn and Marcus is thrown back into an old life that we learn about through his character development. He tries to balance all of the things pulling him in life but has a hard time with it. It leads to some pretty cutthroat moments and tough decisions. He has to constantly cram all of the responsibilities he takes on into his already complicated life.
Homeland is similar to spy books in some ways. It deals with a lot of government conspiracies and secret organizations. The issues of puppetry where the elite pull the strings of the lower class are also discussed a lot. If you like shows like Silicon Valley and especially Scorpion, a new hit TV series, you'll more than likely enjoy Homeland. For example, Scorpion is about a specialized team of geniuses employed by the government to respond to situations. In Homeland, Marcus and his friends work against a tyrannical government who also plots against them. In experiencing both, it's kind of like seeing both sides of the battle. Scorpion is about a just government fighting individual technological threats, but Homeland is about individual hacktivists fighting an unjust government.
This is not the first novel in it's series. It's actually the second. "Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow was the first in the series. It was published in 2008 and is about the same characters. In the book, there is a terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco and Marcus finds himself defending his rights from the government. Homeland doesn't really continue the story much, but provides a new adventure for the same characters. We do see some non main characters make a return though. If you haven’t read the first book, you may not understand some of the references about those characters. Otherwise, it is very easy to pick up this book, not much prior knowledge is needed.
One of the coolest things about his book is it's applications and similarities to real life. So many of the things in the book actually exist. When Burning Man was being described, I thought it was so ridiculous and out there that it was obviously not real. However, I was watching a popular late night show when something was equated to Burning Man. My reaction was literally saying to myself "Holy crap it's real?!" So much of the terminology and technology is also real. Tor or The Onion Router is talked about a lot and is something I've used personally on several occasions. It allows you to route your internet traffic through nodes of other Tor users all across the world and maintain full anonymity. ParanoidAndroid and ParanoidLinux are both real operating systems that emphasize security. Torrents are real things, along with hackerspaces where engineers and tinkerers can go to collaborate on projects. All of these things made me really like this book. Seeing things I use every day being talked about in an entertaining, down to earth book.
At the very end of the book (not the story), an anecdotal section talks about the similarity to real life that this book has. This was my favorite part because after all that story and all that fiction, the reality is laid out and you see the parallel. It's interesting to see something that you thought of as fiction being brought into a reality. The tech, action, and interaction form a good story with very dynamic and developing characters. To top it all off, at the end you are shown how realistic the book actually was. The book appeals to a new age of teenagers who have a peaked interest in technology and the way their government is manipulating it. The best part is, it tells of ways that you can manipulate it too.

If you're familiar with his previous work, you probably had high hopes for this book, Cory's latest work. But, as high as my expectations were, I was not prepared for such a thrill filled, tension packed ride!

'Homeland' picks up a few years after the events that took place in Doctorow's 'Little Brother'. The Bay Area Bridge had been bombed, people had been hurt, and San Fransisco had basically been turned into a police state. But thanks to some ingenious hackers, good ultimately wins over evil even though just about everyone involved pays a heavy price.

This book follows Marcus, Ange, in their continuing fight against the growing surveillance state. It's grounded in solid tech and reads like it was ripped from the headlines of a major newspaper written today.

'Homeland' is definitely worth reading. If you're a Doctorow fan, you'll love it, if you're not, you will be by the time you're done with this book. Get it. Read it.

Homeland presents today's dangerous reality and makes you paranoid about the possible near future.

As its prequel, Little Brother, is a call to action, being very successful at that. It left me alarmed, curious and better informed to help in the building of a freer world.

The reading is engaging and will keep your interest for the most part. However it's likely you will have to stop and google a couple of names and concepts to understand parts of the plot. The technology explanations that Doctorow throws in are accurate and timely but you may be distracted by them if you really don't care about computers.

Keep in mind, this book is a call to action framed in a compelling story, so it's lacking some literary finesse. Doctorow's message is clear and successfully transmitted to the reader but the characters (and their relationships) are not very complex, you don't get to immerse yourself in their thoughts, they don't have any deep philosophical dialogue nor they make any insight into our society's structure. At the end of the book we don't get conclusions for many of the subplots, and the change in the main characters, due to their experiences throughout the book, are left unexplored.

Bottom line, this book successfully conveys a powerful message of alarm and a call to action through an interesting story. I guarantee you will find it a worthwhile reading. But don't expect more than that.

Cory Doctorow's award-winning YA novel "Little Brother" (2008) was an enjoyable cautionary tale, and so I looked forward to the sequel. To my disappointment, "Homeland" expands on the first book's principal flaw--its preachiness--and departs from the suspensefulness that made it work, thus drawing greater attention to the flaws in his protagonist.

The new story is set a couple of years after the events in "Little Brother." Marcus Yarrow, who is struggling to pay for his college classes, is trying to find work. His parents, as always sympathetic, supportive but clueless, are now, unfortunately, also underemployed. The story opens with Marcus and his girlfriend, Ange Carvelli, attending the Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert. This is the best part of the novel, in part because Doctorow describes the event so well, and in part because he recreates some of the mystery and suspense that drove "Little Brother." (Doctorow also juices up the Burning Man part of the book with some surprising real-life cameos.) At the festival, Marcus is given a thumb drive with sensitive documents that compromise the misdoings of a government contractor, and is instructed to post the materials on the Web if the source should "disappear."

There's some promise to this set up, but the momentum is quickly lost. When the source of course disappears, Marcus decides first to catalog the documents in his possession; this plot device allows characters from the first novel to come back in from the cold. Marcus's trusted network sets to work reading and providing notes on the trove of files, and while not quite a Sisyphean task, neither is it practicable. Meanwhile, Marcus lands a job as the chief technology officer for the campaign of an independent California politician so pure he seems to wear a halo. He's basically President Obama before the Left lost faith in him. And here's where you realize the storyteller's didacticism is beginning to get the better of the story.

It's not the government per se, as in the first novel, that's evil. No, what's egregiously wrong with the country now is that the people's choice for president (read President Obama here) has been corrupted: he's opted to compromise his ideals. Thus, California candidate Joe Noss represents the undying hope for the ideal candidate that Obama had once been for so many. But perfect people don't make for interesting stories.

Neither does the work of cataloguing documents. Eventually, Marcus's friends, perhaps responding to the reader's mutterings, also start asking Marcus why they're doing it. At around this point, Occupy San Francisco-style protests begin to kick up, and the police brutally attempt to suppress them. Why? Just because, apparently. Marcus gets caught up in this police activity and the experience shakes him up to the point that he finally gets around to where we all were from the start: He abandons the cataloguing idea.

Ultimately, the problem with this novel is that the characters, their activities, and their aspirations are all so self-absorbed. The world seems to exist to entertain Marcus and his friends. Even in love, relationships develop to gratify oneself. (Marcus is pleased with Ange because of everything she is and does for *him.*) The characters seek to do their own thing unmolested, and if everyone sought that, this social ethic seems to suggest, then society would be better off. It's not apparent that the characters feel that they have a social responsibility to help others. As a result, there's not a lot of light between the left-leaning libertarianism of this book and the right-wing Ayn Rand's rational egoism.

As for the political sensibility underlying the story, Doctorow seems to reduce the modern, complex American political scene to the certainly problematical "one percent." That one percent of the U.S. population owns 40 percent of the nation's wealth is inequitable and unjust. That the monied class and big corporations corrupt politics through money is deleterious to democracy. But for the analysis to stop there is to ignore the reality that the early 21st century American populace is deeply polarized, with significant numbers of Americans, particularly in the South, supporting far right, Tea Party positions. I guess one must forgive the Californians of the novel for not knowing that Dixie is not San Francisco.

The author, too, gets self-indulgent at times. We saw this (and found it cute then) when the characters in "Little Brother" started getting "foodie" on us, waxing poetic on burritos. In "Homeland," Marcus's ability to make awesome cold brew and hot brew coffee just seems like another, increasingly annoying manifestation of his self-absorption.

One of the things the author does do well, just as with the first novel, is to capture the thrill of savviness with computers and computer networks. For that reason, and I mean this genuinely, the annotated bibliography at the end of the book is its best feature. Doctorow provides lots of great suggestions: you might do well to start with those books instead.

Despite being a fan of Cory Doctorow, I felt this time he went a too far regarding trying to push his political views on his readers. The story is overall very interesting and flows well. It is not, however, as action oriented as most other works by Doctorow. Great reading for exposing the loss of basic privacy in America and how to try and fight it legally. Doctorow does get off the track many times to espouse his opinion that all the evil in the world is caused by : (choose your own term because they are all used) Republicans, conservatives, corporate executives, rich people, religious people, etc. He reluctantly alludes several times to the disappointment his characters feel because the "new president who said he was changing the world" was ALMOST as bad as Bush was....
If Doctorow could leave off the emotional blame games in most of his works they would be much more impactful. Overall his stories are good technofiction but tend to get too political in unrealistic ways.

Loved "Little Brother" and "Homeland" is an excellent follow up to it. Characters remain relatable and flawed; tech explanation & description is handled well. Exposes serious issues with the current state of our country as well as hammering home the fact that the true problem is complacency and acceptance, the dismissal of events & actions as "just the way it is." Was saddened upon reading Aaron Swartz's afterword, reading his words a month after his death.

Doctorow hasn't disappointed me before and continues to entertain and educate.

I found this sequel as compelling as Little Brother, but I did not break into tears until I read the Afterword by Aaron Swartz That's when the book left the realm of science fiction and became disturbingly real.

This book inspired me to pay more attention and get involved in with changing the world.

Cory does a great job telling the story, I make the cold brew coffee recipe often now, and I loved the afterward.

This sequel to Little Brother is just as intense and gives a glimpse of life in the United States just a few years down the road. I stocked up on tin foil after reading these two from Doctorow. Though Cory says that he writes YA fiction, readers of every age will be riveted.

"Homeland" is a very well written sequel to Doctorow's novel "Little Brother"Little Brother.
We jump forward 2 years, a lot has changed in Marcus' beloved San Francisco, but unfortunately some ghosts from the past come back to hunt him.
This is one of these novels I can't seem to be able to put down. It is laden with technology, hacks, security-bypasses...

I'm now halfway trough the book and am loving it! I will update this review when I finish the book (which isn't going to take long, at this rate.)

So far: A must read for anyone who loves a intelligent book filled with technology.

Look, just read it alright? But read Little Brother first.

Then be sure to read the afterwards. Then hit all the websites he talks about.

Then give a copy of this book to your friends, your kids, and your friends' kids.

Though I liked Little Brother, I found that, although satisfying, Homeland stirred on the basic premise and didn't at too much to the growth of the characters and the story.

At the end, things are left untold and unchecked (though maybe we are talking about a trilogy here and that would change my opinion a bit), and there's a sense of being told a long epilogue or a short introduction of a new story.

Either way, Doctorow is true to his style and the book was enjoyable.

Cory Doctorow is an amazing talent. His stories are amazing, tightly paced, full of wit (and cynicism), but they are also about hope. Don't wait, get this book (and Little Brother) now...and soon you will find your Kindle/Nook/library full of Cory's titles.

“Just because I’m paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get me.”

Homeland is the sequel to Little Brother, though the novel gives enough of the backstory for it to easily stand alone. If you would like a synopsis, please refer to the publisher’s review, it does an excellent job and would be redundant here. The title refers to The Homeland Security Agency (and the NSA) and their seemingly insatiable need to watch and capture every bit of information traveling the airwaves. Our beloved cell phones, smart pads and computers are as transparent to them as any window.

Doctorow writes with authority and confidence about all things high tech, that which currently exists and that which is just around the corner. The listener is easily and comfortably guided by the author’s expert grasp of the technological nature of the material, neither overwhelming us with it, nor pandering to us. You don’t have to be a high-tech geek to enjoy this novel, because it affects all of us. And that’s where it gets truly frightening; because it’s real, not SciFi, not distant future tech, not aliens, but here and now government surveillance, using our very own gadgets to watch us, catch us and maybe even control us.

After listening to this exciting and thoroughly enjoyable novel, this reviewer was shaken to his paranoid core. It’s real, only the characters and the storyline are fictionalized. There is no question that they are watching us, Edward Snowden convinced us of that. Now that we know, do we go back to sleep, or do we follow the advice in the several appendices of the book. Doctorow clearly practices what he preaches, even going so far as to keep this audiobook off of Audible.com because of its onerous digital rights policy, very likely harming his own audiobook’s sales.

Wil Wheaton (yes Wesley Crusher on Star Trek TNG) does an amazing job reading the novel. There is even a part of the story where the main character meets Wheaton. This self-referential bon mot cracks the forth wall for a moment, something Doctorow seems to enjoy in this and his other books. Unfortunately, this excellent performance by Wheaten is slightly marred by the occasional lip smack or dry mouth noises that should have been removed in post-production. Fortunately, it is faint and should go unnoticed with ordinary ear phones or in a car. Don’t let this minor flaw keep you from enjoying an excellent performance.

If you enjoy high-tech novels, with all-too-human characters, this is a must read. Authentic, informative, exciting, and way too real. Homeland is paranoia developed to an art form.

Audiobook purchased for for review by ABR.

Please find this complete review and many others at audiobookreviewer dot com

[If this review helped, please press YES. Thanks!]