For: YAPublished: April, 2008
384 pgs.
Rating: 3.5
Finished Nov. 8, 2008
Set in San Francisco just a year or two in the future, Marcus Yallow is a 17 year-old techno-geek high school senior. One afternoon he and his three best friends skip out of school to play Harajuku Fun Madness when they hear a huge explosion. A bigger-than 9/11 terrorist attack has destroyed the Bay Bridge, killing thousands. But they are in the wrong place at the wrong time - they are picked up by an unmarked white van, hooded, bound, and taken in a boat to an old prison. There they are held separately in deplorable conditions and questioned mercillessly, without any rights at all. This is what sets up the premise of the book.
Marcus, once released, becomes w15t0n, the head of XNet. Together with one of his buddies, Jolu, and his new girlfriend, Ange, he comes up with plan after plan to try to point out to American citizens that they are now living in a police state and that many of their constitutional rights are gone - or at least being ignored. Teenages begin working together to overthrow the DHS (Department of Homeland Security), who have become a ruthless, overbearing, self-righteous group of our-way-or-the-highway clones.
CONS
-Endless technical explanations
-Paced well in places, very slow in others
-No goodness showed in any of the bad guys -- come one!
-No texting? Hard to make a book set two or three years in the future believable without texting.
PROS
-Makes you think......HARD.....
-Deals with a very important, timely subject
-Keeps you guessing
-Raises questions that need to be asked
-Marcus' reactions are very real: elation, crying, being over-the-top scared, horny - you do get to know, and understand, and root for, this young man
-Lots of references to interesting things - the beat writers, places and areas in San Francisco (yeah, City Lights Bookstore!), hippie and yippie history, Orwell's 1984
PRO AND CON, both
-The sex scenes. I really want some of my 7th and 8th graders to read this. I have two in particular in mind, but the sex scenes, which I think are important and very well written. are not appropriate at all for these two young techno-geek men who would otherwise eat up this book. No objections for the readers who can handle and understand this VERY smartly written (and really, quite small) part of the story.
And, hey, this is my ONE HUNDREDTH post!
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