396 pages

English language

Published Aug. 7, 2013

ISBN:
978-0-7653-3369-8
Copied ISBN!
Goodreads:
12917338

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4 stars (70 reviews)

In Cory Doctorow's wildly successful Little Brother, young Marcus Yallow was arbitrarily detained and brutalized by the government in the wake of a terrorist attack on San Francisco—an experience that led him to become a leader of the whole movement of technologically clued-in teenagers, fighting back against the tyrannical security state.

A few years later, California's economy collapses, but Marcus's hacktivist past lands him a job as webmaster for a crusading politician who promises reform. Soon his former nemesis Masha emerges from the political underground to gift him with a thumbdrive containing a Wikileaks-style cable-dump of hard evidence of corporate and governmental perfidy. It's incendiary stuff—and if Masha goes missing, Marcus is supposed to release it to the world. Then Marcus sees Masha being kidnapped by the same government agents who detained and tortured Marcus years earlier.

Marcus can leak the archive Masha gave him—but he can't admit to being …

11 editions

Review of 'Homeland' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Sequel to Little Brother, an excellent book; this was not quite so good, but still very interesting if you want to read about an all-too-realistic and somewhat grim future of the USA where organizations like Homeland Security and ICE have far too much power, children can be detained for no reason, and mass surveillance is an ongoing problem. Yeah, despite being a YA book in audience target and writing style, it's pretty heavy (and technical) in detail.

The book continues the story of Marcus Yallow, former teen hacker, and now unemployed dropout as the economy crash and the repercussions from his teen hacker infamy have made him near unemployable and also impacted his parents' jobs too. Follow Marcus from Burning Man into the receipt of a darknet trove of wikileaks style information on government corruption and abuses, his agonizing over whether to release it, and ongoing cat and mouse games …

Review of 'Homeland (Little Brother, #2)' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Disclaimer: I got interested in this book because it is what Edward Snowden is packing up on his back in a scene of CitizenFour. I was really curious about what would be Snowden's reading material. I wasn't disappointed.

Homeland is fun and enriching. I would say it is a handbook of sorts to modern day society, disguised as a young adult novel. In it the characters deal with a huge dump of information that needs to become public, and how to go about and do it without ruining their personal lives too much. No wonder Ed Snowden was interested.
I am not going to spoil it, but must say I was a bit dissatisfied with the way it ends. It is a bit anti climactic, specially considering how exciting the build up to it is.
Nevertheless, it introduces the reader to a whole world of ideas and possibilities, from hacking …

Review of 'Homeland' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Cory Doctorow sets up an intriguing premise in Homeland, the direct sequel to his book, Little Brother. Instead of combating unconstitutional surveillance from Carrie Johnstone and the DHS's California branch, Doctorow forces Marcus to either question his own politics--landing a job with independent candidate, Joe Noss, and his campaign--or figure out how to leak out the documents Masha gives him at the Burning Man festival. With the debate surrounding last year's leaked NSA documents 2010's Wikileaks story, Doctorow wasted no time writing and publishing Homeland to continue those discussions while continuing Marcus's hacking and encryption endeavors.

I loved this set up, and Marcus's time at Burning Man with Ange and some cameo appearances got me excited about how the conflict would play out. Unfortunately, the story began to drag itself out. At some parts, I was wondering when the narrative would kick itself back into full gear. The …

Review of 'Homeland (Little Brother, #2)' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I already liked Little Brother a lot. This is a pretty good sequel. It picks up a couple of years after the events of Little Brother. It also works as a standalone. Little Brother pretty much predicted Snowden. I hope Homeland is not going to be the same. It's a scary vision of where we may be heading ... scary-scary. Read either one. But don't blame me if you become a little paranoid. Reminder: just because you're paranoid does not mean they are not watching you. Also: it's not paranoia, if they are really watching!

Review of 'Homeland' on 'LibraryThing'

No rating

A sequel to Little Brother, this time involving the further mischief done by a contractor for Homeland Security, an election campaign that might restore hope after a disastrous economic collapse that took hope from young people and saddled them with debt, and a trove of incriminating documents that need to see the light of day - preferrably without landing our young hero in prison. Timely and thought-provoking. More thoughts at barbarafister.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/the-paranoid-style-in-american-literature/ .

Review of 'Homeland (Little Brother, #2)' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I would say its by far the worst Cory Doctorow book i've read (and I've read a large number of them). It reads like an advertisement / fangasiming for all of his favorite things online. Lots of name dropping.

There are a large number of elements of the book I liked. I really want to build stuff, even tempted to try to get re-involved with the local hackerspace. I found the ending a bit disappointing.

I'm not sure I'd recommend it, but I don't regret reading it.

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