Book Review: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

In Little Brother, Marcus and his friends are tech-savvy teens, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time after a terrorist attack in San Fransisco. When he is finally released after torture and interrogation, he discovers the city has become ultra-monitored to "protect" the citizens from further attacks. He decides that, since he can't tell anyone he has been detained and interrogated illegally, he will take down "big brother" himself.

While I enjoyed the action sequences and the exciting story, I was very put-off by some of the paranoid social commentary throughout. While I think our government has done some wrong things in the name of security, this was way over the top. If it was meant more as futuristic, perhaps I could swallow it, but it was very obviously near-future. Almost present day.

RATINGS:
s-factor: !@#$
Too much.

mrg-factor: XXX
While not a lot of it, it seemed very much gratuitous - what was the point?

v-factor: -> ->
Descriptions of torture, etc, though not graphic.

Overall Rating: **