Attack Surface

Little Brother #3

by Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow's Attack Surface is a standalone novel set in the world of New York Times bestsellers Little Brother and Homeland.Most days, Masha Maximow was sure she'd chosen the winning side.In her day job as a counterterrorism wizard for an transnational cybersecurity firm, she made the hacks that allowed repressive regimes to spy on dissidents, and manipulate their every move. The perks were fantastic, and the pay was obscene.Just for fun, and to piss off her masters, Masha sometimes used her mad skills to help those same troublemakers evade detection, if their cause was just. It was a dangerous game and a hell of a rush. But seriously self-destructive. And unsustainable.When her targets were strangers in faraway police states, it was easy to compartmentalize, to ignore the collateral damage of murder, rape, and torture. But when it hits close to home, and the hacks and exploits she’s devised are directed at her friends and family--including boy wonder Marcus Yallow, her old crush and archrival, and his entourage of naïve idealists--Masha realizes she has to choose.And whatever choice she makes, someone is going to get hurt.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Audiobook, Cyberpunk, Dystopia, Thriller, Technology

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 13, 2020

About the author

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and Little Brother and novels for adults like Rapture Of The Nerds and Makers. He is a Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been a fan of Cory Doctorow for many years now. He has a blog and is involved with the frontier of real hacking, technological exploitation, and how we are encroached upon. Not only that, but he's also focused on how we can protect ourselves.

In fact, I've been a huge fan ever since Little Brother. It was timely then and it's more timely now to see how tech is used to spy on us. I have yet to read as good a novel that spells out the dangers, the ACTUAL tech, and the consequences... from conception, application, to possible solutions.

And I'm not even talking about tech-based solutions, but real social reform.

That takes me to this novel. Attack Surface takes place a decade after Little Brother and while it has Marcus (from LB) as a side character, the main character in (AS) is a fully-fleshed continuation of one of the best side-characters of the original. And she was on the wrong side. :)

Add ten years of updated tech, modern social reform issues INCLUDING racial injustice, riots, police states, how tech turns our current society into a playground for those who would spy and give action points for those already in power, and give us a hard-hitting story of ethical ambiguity, survival, and the BIG QUESTIONS... and THEN give us a novel that out-performs and out-scares me even when propped up against Little Brother.

I'm not joking. This is not a lightweight dystopia. This is our modern world with real tech and yet it reads like an exposé AND a hard-SF novel.

I don't know. I'd have to do a serious comparison between LB and AS to be sure, and this one is definitely an adult read because it deals with all the real complications of living as an adult, but I think this one might be better.

It's certainly timely as hell. The riots in here ARE BLM. The extra complications are the same kind that WE should all be considering.

And so is the solution.

I totally recommend this book.

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third volume of Little Brother series, but it can be read as a standalone. The first one, Little Brother, was nominated for both Hugo and Nebula awards in 2009 and was one of my most prominent reads of 2020 with my review located here. I read is as a part of monthly reading for January 2021 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group.

If the first two books had Marcus as the protagonist, here we follow Masha Maximow, who was mostly “on the other side” working to help to suppress hacktivists, but at the same time supplied Marcus with sensitive data in the second book.

This story starts with Masha working for a private company Xoth that helps an authoritarian regime of Slovstakia to identify and suppress protesters. The imagined country is a mix of both Soviet Union republics and former Warsaw pack countries with a hint of Arab spring protests (e.g. kebab is a local food). Sometimes the author contradicts himself – saying that it was a satellite state (meaning outside the USSR) and a former Soviet republic (i.e., a part of the Union), it uses Cyrillic alphabet and has a tendency to see Kremlin behind everything (therefore, not Russia). The surnames are mostly Ukrainian (security chief Litvinchuk, a protester leader Kolisnychenko), with also Romanian (Anton Tkachi). So, at least partially it is based on Revolution of Dignity, but also on more recent protests 2020–2021 Belarusian protests. Masha on one hand helps to install monitoring systems, on the other, to calm her conscience, secretly teaches a group of protesters to evade the monitoring.

As the story goes on, there are flashbacks about how and why she decided to join first Homeland Security and then a private contractor, where she worked under Carrie Johnstone, the one that supervised Marcus’ torture, which left him traumatized to this day. We see a story of a person willing to do good, but in the world, where goodness is blurry and often loses to needs of the moment. Masha is psychically abnormal even if she doesn’t recognize it.

A very strong continuation of the great edu-tainment series, which teaches how try to minimize the surveillance that is everywhere today.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dystopian, techno-thriller on the technology and politics of the surveillance society.

My dead pixels copy was a moderate 384 pages with a US 2020 copyright.

Cory Doctorow is a British-Canadian blogger, journalist, editor, and science fiction author. He is the author of more than ten novels, many short stories, and a couple of non-fiction books. This was the third novel in his Little Brother series. I have read several books and short stories by the author. The latest was Lawful Interception (Little Brother, #2.5) (my review).

Firstly, it was not necessary to have read the earlier books in the Little Brother series to read this. However, it is recommended. This book leverages characters and events from the earlier books. You’ll appreciate the additional context. In addition, the earlier books in the series were Young Adult. This book was squarely an Adult story. It contains situations, that while not explicit, may not be appropriate for younger readers.

TL;DR Synopsis

This was a story of redemption. The protagonist Masha Maximow was a reoccurring character from the author’s Little Brother series. Seduced by the opportunities of working for The Man she eventually becomes disillusioned with how her government and later corporate employers use her and her skills as a technologist. Realizing she’s become one of the Bad Guys, she defects to the hacktivist allies of her youth. The book will be entertaining for the digitally and politically hip. I laughed-out-loud in several places; something I rarely do while reading. However, it had its rough spots. Even the most woke, male authors have problems with female characters. I felt Maximow was a boy with breasts, despite Doctorow’s ablest obfuscations. The story wandered when flashing back to fill-out her backstory. I liked the info-dumps; many readers won’t. (They’re complicated.) The Tech was scarily credible, but the time and labor for its implementation was FM . Finally, Doctorow’s leftist stance was at times overbearing and verged on devolving into cant.

The Review

Doctorow is a proficient, experienced author. Writing was technically good. It was written in a clear, unaffected manner. It had the smooth look of having been algorithmically groomed by software. I did find two grammatical errors. Both dialog and descriptive prose were very hip. Dialog was good. It was also laced with sly digital culture references. Technical vernacular was used throughout. I thought it odd that the characters-of-colour spoke like white folks, but white foreigners (mostly Germans and Russians) were given accents? The descriptive narrative was very good, although it could become quiet technically complex. If I had an issue with the writing, it was with the flashbacks. They were well handled technically. However, Doctorow could have used some stricter, plot-wise, editing. I felt that all of the flashbacks were unneeded. These extras tended to take the story astray, making it overly long. Finally, there was an unusually large number of back matter sections: Epilogue, Afterwords (two!), Author’s Note, and About the Author.

There was a single POV in the story-- Masha Maximow. She has been a reoccurring character in the series. She was a technically gifted, first-gen, Russian immigrant from a single parent, Bay Area, home. I was always uncertain of her US immigration status? She was well-enough wrought, but not without flaws. Maximow had traditionally worked for the The Man, either DHS or Blackwater-like ‘security firms’, as a Grey Hat hacker. I’d give her an untutored diagnosis of mild, sociopathy. I’ve also known a lot of Geekettes. Maximow was like no female, technical, practitioner I’ve ever known. Despite her sociopathy, Maximow never had the literary scent of a woman to me. Doctorow tried hard, but she always walked like a man in my mind's eye. Another problem I had, was that Maximow, was technically, professionally and socially too savvy. I’d have expected for someone with only a high school education and from an immigrant, single-parent home to be less successful at her age?

Supporting characters included Markus Yarrow and Tanisha Sams. Yarrow was the series’ main hacktivist protagonist. He’s an uber-geek. He routinely supplies a technological solution to every injustice. Ange, Yarrow’s wife and the series’ Mary Sue also makes an appearance. Sams was Maximow’s youthful bestie. She’s not a geek, but she’s brilliant in her own way. (All Doctorow’s good guys are extremely talented, young folks.) She’s a post-BLM activist organizer who needed help. (Maximmow owed her.) Maximow’s, Russian mother also maked several supporting appearances. I found her oddly likable.

Antagonists included, the Oakland, California PD, Carrie Johnstone, and Ilsa (no last name). The OPD was the embodiment of the US, authoritarian, police state. I don't know what they did to Doctorow to become one of the Bad Guys? Johnstone was a reoccurring Bad Gal in the series. She was a psychopath. Young Maximow was her protégé. She’s segued from questionable practices against American’s while at DHS to even more questionable practices at Zyz, a private security firm. I’ve always had the feeling she was modeled on, Sarah Palin? Ilsa was an ex-Stasi, operator, working for Xoth, a rival firm to Zyz. Ilsa was Maximow’s final Bad Gal boss. ( Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS for reference.) It should be noted that the story’s main antagonists were uber-capable, older, women. It was a nice touch, that Maximow had such interesting role-models when considering her future. Yet, Doctorow did a better job with the literarily, thinner, Bad Gals than his protagonist.

In addition there were numerous NPCs. They were stereotypes from: Silicon Valley and tech-types (I most closely identify with the Techbros in the story), US and private military, corporate apparatchiks, and civil government drones and the unsung heroes of activist organizations.


The story contained: sex, drugs, violence and too few music references. Consensual sex was of the hook-ups category and use of prostitutes type. It was referred to, but there were no explicit scenes. Note that rapes and their aftermath appeared in the story. In addition, urolagnia and other paraphilia was described and referred to. Softcore drugs and unprescribed pharmaceuticals were consumed. Liquor was consumed to the state of drunkenness. There were no gun battles. Violence was physical. It was not gory and only mildly descriptive. Note there was torture and the threat of torture described. Body count was low. Music references came from: discos, clubs and bars while consuming too much alcohol and party drugs.

The plot was a redemption story. Maximow realizes that Being Evil Sucks. She’s metaphorically losing sleep at night and starting to be consumed by guilt over her creating a cyber-panopticon sold by the private security firms she’s been working for to (mostly) authoritarian domestic and foreign governmental and business entities. After her Heel Realization, she defects from her corporate masters and joins-up with the activist/hacktivist friends of her youth. Its the Power of Friendship trope play that saves her.

This story was a techno-fest. A large part of the narrative existed to support the description of the technology of the surveillance society. In most places Doctorow’s scenarios were scarily credible. I've since purchased a Faraday Bag for my phone. The level of technical detail was very high, with only a minimum of hand waving. A problem I had was the superlative success of the protagonist at overcoming technical challenges. It was near superhuman what she could achieve in short periods of time. There was also a lot of information on resisting unwanted surveillance, the book’s OPSEC. I didn’t mind the info dumps, but many folks will find them challenging. The amplitude of Doctorow’s signal gets really high when it came to the political awareness that was needed to resist authoritarianism, and the combination of weaponized internet and telecoms networks. I was expecting him to quote Thomas Jefferson at some point: The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

The largest problem I had with the construction of the story was with the flashback storytelling technique used. This was there to flesh-out Maximow’s background leading up to her realizing she’s become one of the bad guys. Technically, they were well handled. However, there were too many flashbacks. Some of them appeared to be only tangentially related to the story. Several of them could easily have been edited-out to improve the narrative and slim-down the page count. Time in the story felt hinky to me. There was never an explicit description of the story’s date or of the date’s of the flashbacks. Time also introduced continuity errors in the story. For example, Maximow’s mother was described as being 18-years older than her. At the end of the story, irl, Maximow was in her late 20’s or early 30’s. Her mother was described as being elderly. She could only have been in her 50’s based on the narrative. Her life as an Office Administrator couldn’t have been that hard to have prematurely aged her?

Finally, Doctorow was working with a broken play with his story future history-wise. The last book in the Little Brother series Homeland was vintage 2013. The United States under the Obama Administration was a different place than in 2020. There was a bright, leftist, future back then. As a future history, Doctorow’s back story had jumped the rails with the: Trump Presidency, pandemic, success of foreign authoritarian regimes abroad, BREXIT, climate catastrophes and other global events. I didn’t feel this story salvaged the Little Brother backstory. I also thought that Doctorow, unwrote the series' general theme that: there was a technological solution to every political problem. It was disheartening. That shining YA message was a lot simpler than that of this book's.


This was a good political, techno-thriller. Although, not everyone will like it. It was technically, too complicated. The leftist politics verged in places toward being screeds. And, I thought it went overlong in its development of the main character, while not being completely successful at it. On the other hand, if you’re inclined toward: woke, digital, hipsterism, it’s going to be your jam. It’s dense and cleverly written. In places its quiet arch. Recommended for geeks and digerati.

[Samantha ♡ ( Percy’s Version ) · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5/5⭐️

[Natazzz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t understand why everyone loves this book or this author so much. It was kind of an enjoyable read, but it was overshadowed by a lot of frustration: (1) Past and present stories are told within the same chapter, which is very confusing; (2) there’s way too many unnecessary detailed tech explanations; (3) what people say or do is constantly explained as if the reader is too stupid to figure it out themselves; (4) everything is very black and white. Tech is bad and protestors are good, the bad guys are all one dimensional and evil; (5) it is hard to really care much about the main character and her tough life not having a spine or a personality and making so much money making evil tech; (6) the very cringe worthy redemption arc which includes this white woman saving the black lives matter movement; (7) this book has not one but two afterwords by other people telling us how great and important this book and the author are.

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hitting even more close to home than Doctorow's previous books, with technology that all of us use every day, I still found myself hanging on to the technology presented by my fingertips - just - have a grasp - of it....there! However, the jumping timeline gave me a lot of trouble, mixed with the technology i barely understand. When everything came together, I enjoyed the book a lot more as a story. Scary, scary, stuff. And the point remains, be diligent and knowledgeable about what you're using, and then....use it for good. As Doctorow says in the afterward, it clearly shows how we rationalize ourselves into doing things, probably things we would say we'd never do. Technology, politics.....hmmm

[Edward Silverman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an electronic advance copy of this book in return for a fair and honest review. What a time to have this book come out. In my mind, I was thinking trenchant and clairvoyant for this five star book, then I saw the afterword where “trenchant” was used, so you’ll have to take my word for it that I was thinking it independently. This book is timely and incredibly relevant given the events of the past few weeks leading to massive demonstrations against the overreaches of law enforcement in the United States, though as the book makes clear and should be obvious, this isn’t just an American problem. It follows a female protagonist, who is conflicted in her emotions and motivations through much of the novel, and talks about how she interacts with both her ideals, and her desire for security and salary. I think the author meant to portray her evolution as a stand in for most Americans.
As I read this novel, I am amazed at how Doctorow has been able to, in many ways, predict real life, but given his work that I have read so far, this is terrifying. Other reviewers have called it preachy, but I did not find it to be. The character has those moments, but it is in the context of her using her expertise to help assuage some of the inner turmoil she is feeling. I think the thing the author is trying to point out is how, even though security in the hands of good guys is useful, you can’t always be sure only good people will have that technology. You might trust one president, but can’t trust the next. Or as I once heard described, I think on 60 minutes, imagine Richard Nixon in charge of the NSA in 2020.
The character used network analytics among other tools, which struck home as I use network analysis in the course of own job. It is tremendously effective, yet scary if it gets out of control. Doctorow points out that you can’t become a Luddite to accomplish goals, but have to use security and technology responsibly in order to avoid bad actors and state surveillance. He points out that people normally won’t notice until it is too late, especially middle and upper class caucasian people. The story is told from the main character’s point of view, which means you only get to experience other characters through her eyes.
That said, the story is entertaining and I did not find it preachy so much as an interesting warning. The evolution of the main character was engaging, and even divorced from the real world, this is a solid story. Couple it with current events, and this is fire. Five stars and I would recommend this to both Sci Fi AND thriller fans. This might do better in the general fiction section than science fiction.

[Amanda Espinoza · Rating 4 out of 5]

After ten years in the tech industry Masha is very good at her job. Surveillance tech companies pay Masha a lot of money to use cell phones, cell towers, and all kinds of technology to spy on bad guys. Masha’s special skill is being able to collect tons of data and interpret the information to create information cascades. She knows how everyone is connected. But who are the bad guys?

Sometimes for reasons even she isn’t clear about, Masha, will go out at night and help those she spies on during her day job. She teaches these new friends how to avoid being detected. Eventually, the target of her work hits closer to home and her friends.

This is a stand alone novel set in the same world as Doctorow’s Little Brother and Homeland. In Attack Surface we follow a first person narrative told from the perspective of Masha who is a character in the first two books. The timeline jumps around and it helps fill in the reader on events from the first two novels. It has been six years since I read Homeland and I needed help with the backstory. It would be nice to read Little Brother and Homeland first, but it isn’t necessary.

Without reading the first two novels it’s easy to figure out the setting is an alternate world, but it’s scary close to how things work in the world today.

The main conflict of the novel takes place within Masha. She likes to keep her worlds and people in different compartments. When those compartments begin clashing she has to decide what kind of person she is and who she will help.

The politics and problems of technology are fascinating. I enjoy Doctorow novels the most when I am learning something new about technology. In this novel I learned about zero day exploits. I also laughed when the author casually mentions how Internet of Things are stupid. I have used the app Signal for years, but now I want a faraday bag for my phone!

This would be a fun book to talk about with other people who are interested in tech security. I highlighted so many paragraphs that would make great conversation starters. There are also a lot of discussions in the novel about the purpose and effectiveness of protesting.

If you are already a fan of Doctorow or slightly alternative realities then you will like this book. My hope would be that more people read this and it would make them think about how their data is being used, because everyone who uses a mobile device is impacted.

Thank you to Tor Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of Attack Surface in exchange for an honest review.

[Magdelanye · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know a lot of people in the...industry but mostly they didnt trust me, because I am not trustworthy. p84

What is it that is so damn appealing about such kinds of admissions? The reader might well slam down the barricades but I am a sucker for sincerity. I will not only trust you I might be rooting for you at the end of the day.

Did you ever wish you could slice through all the bullshit and go straight to the heart of the matter? p107

You hare off after these solutions without ever stopping to see if there's another , worse problem that will burst into life the moment the current one is 'solved'. p89

If I didnt know better (correct me if I'm wrong) I would assume Cory Doctorow to be a woman, for its not often that this kind of delicate switch can be sustained in such a long and carefully nuanced novel. Masha is magnificent. Told entirely from her rather cynical point of view, we nevertheless are carried along the gradual path of her social evolution. Because I trust CD and had a crush on Masha, I blundered through the cognitive dissonance and the technical details that clog the narrative until it all clicked.

I wanted to start over from the top, in case I'd missed something. I was hungry for information , but non of the information I consumed did anything to reduce that hunger-it just made me more hungry. p105

I'd kidded myself that I could make things better to make up for all the ways I was making them worse. p119

If you've ever casually wondered about the extent of the surveillance industry or if you are in it, this book will give you a some things to rattle your cage and keep you up at night.

Just don't make any mistakes, is a wish, not a plan. p145
You might end up convincing yourself that you dont love anyone rather than admit you're doing the wrong thing. p308

[reherrma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nach "Little Brother - Homeland" aus dem Jahr 2013 liefert nun Cory Doctorow nach über 9 Jahren den 3. Band der Trilogie ab. Haben sich die beiden ersten Bände noch an ein jüngeres Publikum gerichtet, schiebt dieses Buch eine viel reifere und erheblich dunklere Geschichte an die gleiche Leserschaft nach, die in dieser langen Zeit auch älter und reifer geworden ist, natürlich hat sich die "Little Brother" Trilogie auch immer an alle gerichtet, die dem Thema des Überwachungsstaates kritisch gegenüber stehen. Die beiden ersten Teile haben auch die Dinge vorbereitet, die in dem vorliegenden 3. Teil verhandelt werden.
Die rätselhafte Mascha Maximovic, die Heldin oder zumindest die Hauptfigur in diesem Buch, ist in den vorherigen Büchern flüchtig aufgetaucht. Jetzt treffen wir sie einige Jahre später wieder, wo sie für eine private Sicherheitsagentur in einer namenlosen ehemaligen Sowjetrepublik arbeitet, die für den dortigen Diktator die Dissidenten ausspioniert.
Masha verkörpert gewissermaßen die Debatte über den Einsatz der Technologie, mit der Cory Doctorow sich seit Jahren abarbeitet. Sie hat einen gut bezahlten Job bei diversen Cybersecurity-Firmen, wo sie sich im Auftrag von Regierungen weltweit in die Accounts von Dissidenten und Aktivisten hackt. Manchmal nutzt Masha ihre Fertigkeiten aber auch, denselben Aktivisten und Dissidenten dabei zu helfen, einem Hackerangriff zu entgehen.
Sie wechselt zwischen den Rollen, die sich der Macht rühmen, die die Werkzeuge ihr über andere verleihen, und kauert in erbärmlicher Angst vor der Macht, die sie über sie und ihre Freunde haben, und gerät dabei in Konflikte mit beiden. Dieses gefährliche Doppelspiel wird noch gefährlicher für sie, als sie in Gewissensnöte gerät, und sich entscheiden muss, zwischen ihren Arbeitgebern und ihrer Familie und ihren engsten Freunden zu wählen; denn diese entfesselten privaten Security-Firmen kennen keine Gnade vor eventuellen Verrätern...
Ich weiß nie, was ich nach dem Lesen von Doctorows Büchern über die Welt denken soll, in der ich mich befinde. Er ist ein Meister darin, alle Seiten der Probleme von heute und der nahen Zukunft zu zeigen, während er dafür sorgt, dass die Geschichte einen in ihren Bann zieht und nie wieder loslässt.
Auch entwickle ich immer beim Lesen eines der Bücher von Cory Doctorow eine Paranoia, wenn ich wieder mal lesen muss und Cory mir aufzeigt, wie schlecht es um meine eigene Cybersicherheit steht. Immer wieder sagt Mascha zu ihren Freunden, dass sie keine Chance auf ihre Sicherheit haben, denn die andere Seite ist immer besser und ihnen einen Schritt voraus.
Beschrieben wird Masha als eine unangenehme Figur, die den technologischen Analphabeten als Job schreckliche Dinge antut, hauptsächlich im Ausland, aber auch in iher Heimatstatt Oakland bzw. San Francisco. In ihrer Freizeit hilft sie dann einigen Freunden (unter ihnen der, aus den ersten beiden Bänden bekannte, Marcus Yallow) die sie mag, für ein paar Stunden der Entdeckung durch den Staat zu entkommen.
Dazu kommt ihre merkwürdige Hassliebe zu Marcus, die einiges über ihren Gefühlszuständ verrät.
Eine wirklich spannende, anrührende, visionäre und politische Geschichte, die aus dem gegenwärtigen Einheitsbrei der dystopischen SF herausragt und Lösungen anbietet. Hier schreitet er ebenso wie Kim Stanley Robinson ("Das Ministerium für die Zukunft") voran...

[Jessica Dai · Rating 3 out of 5]

(1) cory doctorow does incredible activism work; (2) this is a book focused on plot + ideas more so than literary execution; both of these are reasons why it's extra frustrating to me that it feels like the core tension here, masha's dilemmas, seem a bit too clean to me. like of course if you're literally building surveillance for authoritarian regimes you should probably feel bad -- but like 98% of tech workers are not building autonomous weapons or working for defense contracts, they're just like fb data scientists or something, and maybe it's easier to say well at least I'm not doing what masha's doing. that being said, a more generous reading of this would be the suggestion that even people who have done the worst things are not irredeemable, that the past is unchangeable but the future is never set in stone.

not my favorite and wouldn't read again BUT his other work is definitely worth following

[Andreas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Synopsis:  Masha Maximov works for a cybersecurity company "Xoth" which offers targeted surveillance services to governments, starting with the city of "Bltz", the capital of "Slovstakia" (obviously European Slovakia). In her free time, she helps out dissidents in Slovastakia who usually don't know how to protect their mobile phones, how easy it is to get inside and compromise the whole connected group. When autonomous cabs start hunting those dissidents, Masha understands that the firms she's working for are really bad. But it is only the start and friendly fire is hitting ever closer to her home. 

Review: The dystopian, oppressive governments in this SF novel are not far away from our current situation, and everything in there could happen in a few years in our slice of reality. Doctorow's projection is absolutely relevant: BLM riots are happening right now, some of the technological surveillance techniques are used these days, and government are on the verge of falling to this fascist, rassistic, oppressive nightmare - including the U.S.A. or some EU countries. 

Masha's character is only a vehicle for the author's message using first person point of view. In the second half of the novel she develops a history and emotional basis for her own. When she grew out of her super-hero status as a genius hacker girl, I grew very fond of her and loved to read her whole story. I found it enormously interesting to have a main character not on the good side but being engaged in the bad side and watching her figuring out which side she really should choose. But I had to question some of her decisions when she switched allegiances which felt unrealistic. I see the need to drive the plot forward and introduce some twists, but on the other hand it could have been less meandering and more focused, avoiding some complications.

While the novel is set in the same series as Little Brother and Homeland, I had no problems following the narration, as the dependencies seem to be sparse.  I wasn't able to really connect to some side characters like Marcus who played a more important role in the previous novels, but that only means that readers who are already familiar with the setting will love it even more. The most important difference is that this novel is not YA anymore.

The plot could have been tighter, and the author needs loads of infodumps to transport his message to the reader - I was able to skip most of the explanation, because I know too much already about the inner workings of encryption or signatures for example. Casual readers might feel overwhelmed, though. But Doctorow made a fabulous job of combining those techniques and embed them in his dystopic vision. The thriller sometimes drags, but his message always works: People have to act now in order to prevent mass and targeted surveillance in our world. EU GDPR is just a start, Apple's privacy restrictions hurting Facebook and Fortnite are heavily needed everywhere. 

The narration's structure jumped between several timelines quite often and sometimes I had difficulties orienting myself, leading to a somewhat stuttering reading experience. The logical connections between the timelines became obvious quite late, but I highly enjoyed it when I noticed the many interleavings. 

This stuff is scary, it is relevant for the public discourse, and we need to act now. Highly recommended for fans of near future SF who don't shy back from complicated technology - not only as a fascinating reading but also as room for thought on the value of privacy and the role of governments.

[Olav · Rating 4 out of 5]

When "Attack Surface" is good, it's great. When the plotting and characterization stumbles, it's very very bad.

Picking up almost a decade after the events of Doctorow's YA novel "Little Brother," his upcoming novel follows the career of Masha Maximow, the hacker/programmer who showed up briefly in previous novels.

As an anti-hero protagonist working for private security firms, Maximow's loyalties are split between the well-funded realpolitik employers that let her live in luxury, and the idealistic friends and allies she helps in secret. This makes for interesting internal tensions for the character, as well as opportunities for Doctorow to expound at length about computer security and encryption.

One of Doctorow's strengths as a writer is his ability to delve into complex real-world computer security issues with a depth of knowledge, while making the subject accessible to lay readers. He also makes it evident why the subject -- and the nuances he's describing -- are of immediate relevance to the plot.

Where this book falters is when Maximow has a road-to-Damascus moment, and switches her allegiances completely almost overnight. Having known people working for major military contractors, her character arc did not feel realistic to me. When broaching issues of politics, I can't help but feel that Doctorow can be somewhat naive. The popular uprisings later in the book -- and the police reaction to the uprisings -- are pollyanna-ish.

Despite these quibbles, Attack Surface is a vital and necessary contribution to the public discourse. Doctorow is extremely talented at diagnosing the problems with how new technologies are being used to subvert human freedom, even if his solutions ring hollow.

At least 80 per cent of the novel is a lot of fun to read, and even that last 20 per cent is more of a let-down than being actually bad.

[Ethan Williamson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book reads like a Vice News article: slightly informative but elitist failing to stick the landing.

First, good things: good use of cyber terminology and the first chapter moves super well. Basic OPSEC lessons for all

As for everything else, well.... The author markets this as a standalone novel within his established series but sure doesn’t make it easy for newbies. The characters hardly have any additional characterization beyond the barebones of what is established previously or what is being directly spoken. They just exist, have a relationship already, and then don’t change that relationship at all throughout the story. There’s also no middle ground for people, you’re either good or bad, any attempts at grey is thin at best.

Speaking of the story there isn’t a lot of one happening. The first chapter was great and then he pivoted away from that tried to move things forward in a different direction while giving the main character a past. This results in a poorly formatted jump plot where things barely move forward and then you’re whisked back to the past. The pivot robs the story of any forward momentum to the point where you feel like the story should be moving but just nothing ever seems to happen. There’s no end goal, there’s no “living in the world” there’s just characters doing barely anything for the last 250 pages.

[Jay · Rating 2 out of 5]

PSA: If you were hoping this book would tie up the major loose end from Homeland, it does not.

A sense of completionism and not having anything else on my to-read list led me to this one despite my being disappointed by the two previous novels in the series. Hopefully I can wash my hands of this now. Masha is a somewhat more interesting protagonist than Marcus, though somehow both of them manage to share Mary Sue-ing duties in this story. The first half of the book showed some promise; while I don't generally like lengthy flashbacks as a structure, the tales from Masha's past at least have some direction to them. Once the story gets to present day San Francisco Doctorow reverts fully to "stuff happens, then it ends" mode. In the afterword the author notes that he cut 40,000 words from the final draft. Goodness know where he would have put them; the book is already bloated with pages and pages of needless detail that doesn't advance the narrative at all.

If you want to be paranoid about your phone and your printer and your thermostat spying on you (and maybe you should), this is the book for you. If you want any kind of satisfying story, it is not.

[Ana Ulin · Rating 2 out of 5]

My notes: https://anaulin.org/blog/book-notes-a...

[Fraser Simons · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cool thing about this being the third in the YA hacktivist series is this has the benefit of hindsight in both the real world divergence from its fiction, as well as the events of previous books also having aged for a while. The result, I think, actually augments the previous books for me because I did feel they were slightly idyllic—but I read them this year, not when they were published. And this book confronts those notions while also nurturing, through a different tactic, the same ethos found particularly in the first book. Where kids were educating each other on how to not be surveilled and technology was in a place where they could pretty much mask themselves. Today, that’s not really the case. If you’re under targeted surveillance… it’s pretty much over. You’ll slip up at some point. It is not a final solution, or even a realistic one; doubly so for the average consumer.

But the techniques and reasons to shirk the surveillance state exist still, and perhaps for even more reason, because now the people who read these books when young, as the author mentions in the afterward, are now working in tech sector jobs and can Vote! This storyline reflects the growing up and changes the world of Marcus has undergone, but it centres the mmm… not quite villain who pops up in the last two - but morally compromised and the opposite in rhetoric to Marcus, pretty much. This was the exact right book for this series and really works to retrofit the previous books, as we get a duel timeline situation with her past, as well as the moral quandaries she still navigates.

She’s smart, she’s not too far from other girls but certainly badass. And she’s got the viewpoint I think many people in the sector will have doing her work, so her obstacle and quandary is very relatable. Again, though, the writing is certainly YA and as such feels like it explains things very well, but often repeatedly—or more like… dumbed down after it just explained something. It’s a technique you’ll be familiar with if you’ve read the previous books. There will be a technical explanation that has good information design and then the person who already understands the thing clearly, starts explaining it for a laymen. This sometimes is really helpful and sometimes really annoying. Together with the basic writing style, the character work and themes shine through, but the prose always feels, at its best, unobtrusive.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Masha Maximow is a smart girl who is working for Xoth Intelligence. This is an InfoSec company who can provide individual, companies, states and countries with the tool they need to monitor and spy on their staff and citizens. She is currently in the country of Slovstakian working with the Ministry of the Interior to upgrade their systems to enable them to spy on their citizens with the best software that Xoth is prepared to sell a former Soviet Bloc country.

She learnt her trade of surveillance and providing the tools of oppression by slipping through the darker shadows of the internet in the virtual battlegrounds of Iraq, and now she is highly paid and very very good at her job. Rather than chill out in a five-star hotel in the evenings, she hits the streets and finds the leaders of the public opposition to the right-wing goons in the government and teaches them every thin that she knows on how to fight back against the oppressive surveillance. Insider knowledge does help sometimes…

Then she gets caught.

He boss at Xoth considers her compromised and she is swiftly sacked. The hotel room that she stays in that night is normally rented by the hour, but she needs to lie low before leaving the country. She is woken in the middle of the night by the sound of a car crash, it was one of the Finecab automated taxi’s wrapped around a planter. She is just dozing off and hears another crash. Another cab crash, The feeds on her phone showed the usual riot and overly heavy police response and then lots of photos and videos of cabs being deliberately run into the protestors. She realised that this was the work of the company that she had been working for not long ago. She had to leave the country as soon as possible.

She ends up back home in San Francisco, but waiting for the flights means she has time to think about how she ended up in the InfoSec business and the first person that she worked for, Carrie Johnson. When she is back home she hooks up with Tanisha a friend from long ago who is involved with the Black-Brown Alliance which had its origins in the Black Lives Matter campaign. They spend a while catching up and Maximow realises that the group needs a full-time security person and offers her services. They head back to Tanisha’s flat and she falls fast asleep. She realises that she is being targeted when the alarm of her sounds. The phone is off, but there is a hacker trying to get into her phone. The log file terrifies her, so she goes to check Tanisha’s phone and realises that it has been compromised. Just how much is soon clear when she is picked up on a train and Maximow offers to go with her.

Life for both is never going to be the same again.

This world that Doctorow has imagined is set in the very near future, with most of the technologies that he is writing about either already with us or we are on the cusp of receiving them. It feels absolutely bang up to date with some of the things that are happening in the plot and subplots being very strongly influenced by current real-life events. It is set just far enough into the future to be a quite disturbing dystopia. I really liked this book, even though it is a terrifying read. If you think about the implications of a future of overly authoritarian states that he is predicting in here, then it is pretty grim.

I thought that the characters mostly felt fully fleshed out, Maximow, in particular, seems to be some flawed genius. Her two bosses at the InfoSec companies, Carrie Johnstone and Ilsa are two sides of the same coin really. Both super smart and ambitious they only have on thing in mind and that is to maintain power and influence in their company and over the population as a whole. I did find that it jumped around a bit too much between her present warp-speed life and the recounting of her previous life. Occasionally he moves away from the technical language that most will be able to follow and ventures deep into the silicon pathways. Where this book really wins though is presenting the stark future of the advent of mass and oppressive surveillance of the population at large and the choices that we have to make very soon as a society to curtail government and private sector intrusion into our private lives. This is 1984 in real life; your life. Oh, and read the two afterwords too; they should make you think.

There is a need to balance online privacy, everyday security and the ability to solve crime. But not at the cost of individuality, freedom and self-expression

[Ale · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re at all familiar with Cory Doctorow, it’s probably through his writing for websites like Boing Boing, where he tackles issues on cybersecurity, privacy on the internet and the importance of transparency for corporations and government agencies (amongst, I’m sure, many other topics). If you’re a bigger SF/F fan, then at the very least you would have read some of his novels, all of which tend to deal with very similar topics as his articles, set in a near-future world that seems closer every day.

Attack Surface is no different. Billed as a sequel to his previous novels Little Brother and Homeland (neither of which I’ve read but I might own on my Kindle), it follows the story of Masha Maximow (who I understand is actually a side character in a previous novel), a programmer who works for a corporation selling surveillance software to autocratic regimes. However, by night, she tries to help those same dissidents avoid the very surveillance systems that she programmes.

Doing this in regimes where she has little loyalty for either side is fun, and the pay is obscene. But when the targets are closer to home, when the noose starts to tighten around the very people that Masha cares about, she is confronted with the need to make a choice. Unfortunately for Masha, it’s not a choice without consequences.

The first thing that really threw up about Attack Surface is how much technical jargon there is. Now I should give credit to Doctorow here, because he does really explain all the concepts and never really falls into the trap of overexplaining and infodumping on the reader. Masha’s voice feels at times pedantic in these explanations, but it works because she is a pedant when it comes to technology and opsec. So it makes sense and I actually didn’t mind; if anything, it provided me with a lot of context for both Doctorow’s politics and if anything, it really taught me a lot about how easy it is for any malicious actors (or even garden variety crooks) to get access to devices. Not least of all because people are really poor about their security and people are lazy and trustworthy - they believe they will never be on the receiving end of the government’s surveillance and control.

Masha herself is an interesting character: she’s upfront about the fact that she’s doing the work for the money and it makes for a far more conflicted and interesting dynamic. She’s not perfect by any means (nor does she pretend to be), but it humanises her in a way that you don’t see a lot of in SF/F books, or at least not for female characters. She fucks up, she makes mistakes, she makes poor choices and she can be brutal in her assessments of what is and is not achievable. I really empathised with her and she straddles the line of paranoia and being right with ease. The two timelines, one where we learn about her career, and the other set in the “present”, where she needs to make her choices, make for very interesting reading, at times veering near the breakneck speed you’d expect of a cyber thriller.

I understand that Little Brother was more young adult, but if that’s the case then Attack Surface very much is not. It’s an adult novel, dealing with issues that are happening to us right now, and Doctorow clearly believes that it’s up to all of us to push back against this intrusion into our privacy, that we can and should keep these corporations and governments accountable at every step, that we should continue building communities and lifting up those without as much social and political capital in the fight against capitalism, white supremacy and fascism.

This is not just a novel about the future, this is a novel about the now and I urge you all to read it.

Many thanks to Head of Zeus and NetGalley for the copy of this book.

[Janall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Terrorist or Freedom fighter? The answer depends on who is looking at the data. This book delves into the world of hacking, post soviet regimes populated with paranoid petty dictators, and protesters protesting police brutality, resulting in more paranoia on the part of the dictators and brutality aimed at the protestors. This is pretty grim stuff and as I read the book- it’s all happening in real time Summer of 2020.

Our heroine- Masha is a cool chick, one that Im pretty sure wouldnt want to hang around me. Written in first person , we follow Masha in her exploits as she uses her tech smarts to outwit the technology she helped to install while employed by a data security company, turning it into a weapon aimed at the oppressors. She flashes back to a decade before when she got her first taste- by working for a security contractor for the US and stationed in Iraq. There is some bad stuff going on in Iraq, and her employers turn a blind eye to things they aren’t getting paid to stop. Masha lives with her choices by “compartmentalizing” her feelings so she can sleep at night. But those compartments frequently crack open.

Her best friend Tanisha from childhood is leading a evolved Black Lives Matter group- Coalition of Black and Brow people-black and brown people ( Muslims and hispanics) join in to fight oppression. Not suprising, the powers that be- Republicans and corporate Democrats aren’t going to just lie down and lose their control. Its all going well until the the coalition is infliltrated by people who plan to discredit the cause- by digging dirt and turning peaceful protests into violent riots while the police stand by. This gives the police cause to purchase more battle gear and surveillance tech to spy on the populace under the guise of providing security. The slippery slope goes into a full slide.

Its is nerdery and spy stuff on steroids. I’m a casual nerd- ala the Martian, and had a hard time following passages like:
“... That Sectec box could handle ten million simultaneous connections, and registered the existence of a stock Windows laptop in the Sofitel Bltz, communicating over Tor. It profiled the machine by fingerprinting its packets, did a quick lookup in Xoth’s customer-facing API to find a viable exploit against that configuration, and injected a redirect to the virtual machine on my laptop. I could see the payload strike home.”
You got that? Ya me neither, but I figured that for most people the answer would also be NOPE. But stick with it, all that matters is to understand - Wow Misha is smart, good at her job and this stuff is real and scary.

The situation in the story as in real life is rather bleak: “So you can go and fight in the streets for the world of your dreams where everyone is treated fairly and unearned privilege is replaced by equal opportunity, but you might as well be fighting against gravity. Our modern oligarchs don’t even have to put you in jail to render you impotent: they can just turn your phone, car, TV, and thermostat into virtual ankle cuffs that tell them everything you say and everywhere you go, and rat out all of your friends.”

However the bright light that shines though is the while the citizens can never out gun the government backed surveillance systems with Billions at their disposal, they can hold elected officials accountable- and though democracy ensure that dirty deeds are exposed for what they are. Not an easy answer and required everyone to remain vigilant- by voting, minding their digital footprint, and when necessary protesting with full commitment of life and limb to see that justice is served.

I leave this review with quote: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doctorow, Cory. Attack Surface. Little Brother No. 3. Tor, 2020.
Cory Doctorow must be the love child of William Gibson and Kim Stanley Robinson. Attack Surface, a loose sequel to Little Brother and Homeland, has the a near-future tech glitter that makes our everyday world seem as surreally Kafkaesque as Gibson’s Sprawl. It also has obsessive attention to detail and earnest tone of prophetic warning that we see in Robinson’s ecological science fiction. Doctorow is worried that when we put most of our lives in the cloud, we risk creating a tyrannical corporate surveillance state. Our protagonist, Masha Maximow, whom we met in the earlier books, is a hacker/analyst who has spent her life working for morally dubious government and corporate organizations, but she has also occasionally helped some well-meaning protesters. Her life has been one round of rationalizing cognitive dissonance after another. She has dealt with the potential for crippling guilt by compartmentalizing (her term) the things she doesn’t want to think about. Her morally challenged, self-aware character elevates Attack Surface above Doctorow’s already impressive body of work. Highly recommended.

[Ellie-Simone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cory Doctorow is what I would call a modern master storyteller. I have yet to be lukewarm about any setting or atmosphere he develops in science fiction. Attack Surface manages, once again, to grasp my attention in the way only Doctorow is able. I absolutely loved that this was a standalone novel set in the Little Brother universe. It is such a juicy dystopia. As a reader, it is quite obvious that Doctorow is established and educated in the material he is writing about – namely hacking and technological exposure.

If someone were to ask me to summarize the way in which Docotorow’s stories stand apart from other authors, I would say this:

Social commentary… but make it sci fi!

Ethical and radical at its core, Attack Surface explores huge questions of digital safety in a way that scared me even more than Little Brother – a concept I thought was not possible. This is a heavy, educating, and creepy story of our modern world as it could be… and how it might already be.

[curtis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Having enjoyed the first two volumes in the”Little Brother” universe, I was pretty primed for this one, which explores one of the more underutilized characters in the first two novels. Unfortunately this was a big let-down in a lot of ways. A good deal of the novel feels like part “defund the police” screed, part author’s apology for being a white man. Like other novels that shamelessly beg for their audience’s approval, this was just painful and tedious to read at times. The protagonist—who, again, was a character with a LOT of potential in the first two novels—is wildly unsympathetic; she’s an arrogant, spineless, self-righteous misandrist, and exhibits little meaningful character growth over the course of the novel. The tech and tradecraft, however, are up to Doctorow’s typically superb standards, and the larger plot line of the novel is enough to nearly (but not quite) salvage it.

[Kendra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that preaches to the choir. If you understand everything Doctorow writes about here in terms of cybersecurity and government ops and private industry-as government, then it's a mostly fun ride through the chaos of modern warfare and political force while watching the narrator develop a conscience, or at least kind of a conscience. If you don't know much about this, then you might find this hard going. It could be educational, which I think is one of Doctorow's motives in publishing it, but you'll still need other sources on ethical hacking and related topics.

[Stephen Topp · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are the bones of a good book in here, about somebody who finds themselves in an ethically dubious career, wearing "golden handcuffs", and their struggle to shed their handcuffs and move to an ethical life. I'm pretty sure that Cory Doctorow could even write that book.

But this is not that book.

There's no one reason why the book falls flat - instead, the bad choices pile up, with insufficient genius prose to soften them, until Masha's story simply feels inauthentic:

- it's set in the world of Little Brother, which is a great book. But this holds the book back. The Little Brother timeline has diverged too much from our own, but Doctorow needs to be in touch with current events to tell this story. So there's no sign of Trump's America, but there's Black Lives Matter. The California economy crashed in Homeland, but here's our 2020 bay area full of super-rich tech bros. Nothing needs to be true here - it's a work of fiction - but we need consistency. The "world of Little Brother" now feels inauthentic.

- it continues to use the Little Brother voice, which worked so wonderfully for a teenaged Marcus in 2008. Here, we're following a jaded 30-ish Masha, and it reads like Marcus has read Masha's first person account and decided to rewrite it. It grates.

- the Little Brother voice is also very "Young Adult". But the underlying story here is really targeted at adults; it's about how we react to being trapped in unethical (but lucrative) employment situations. What worked for a teenager exploring the world of surveillance (and counter-surveillance) doesn't work when the protagonist is one of the world's leading experts in the subject, with ten years of professional experience with military contractors, confronting the idea that she might have blood on her hands.

- Black Lives Matter. We're in an alternate timeline, but the book was written in 2020 by an activist, and the story needed protesters in America, so they felt they had to put Black Lives Matter in. Okay. But all the main characters are white, so how do we include them? We add a best-friend-from-childhood that can suddenly put our Masha at the centre of the movement ... and Doctorow (a white male) could have left it at that, and my eyes would roll and move on. But instead he had to invent a whole "we grew out of black lives matter ..." soliloquy, and put it coming out of the mouth of a black female character.

There are bits in the book where Masha is a shitty ally, wanting to take control of the narrative and making it all about the technology. I'd like to think this is a criticism that Doctorow has received, thought relevant, and injected into this book to share with others ... whether the lesson is one he's realised through introspection or feedback, it's certainly one he hasn't fully internalised yet.

OVERALL: Wouldn't recommend it, but people who love Doctorow's young adult writing style and politics sufficiently can probably see past the book's faults to appreciate the dilemma at the heart of the story and tubthumping about the evils of the surveillance state.

[Annarella · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know if this is a dystopia technological thriller or a fictionalise depiction of the world we’re living in, I just know it’s a very interesting and quite terrifying story. It’s hard to read and think “this is fiction” and assume you are reading about a parallel world where technology is used as a mean to control people behaviour and to repress dissent.
I work in high tech and I know what are the technologies being developed or already existing. All the technologies in this book are already existing and some cases when they were used to control political opponents appeared on papers in recent times.
But this is also the story of Masha, of her friend and of hope that comes from people joining forces and fighting for a better world.
Masha isn’t a likeable character and I found hard to warm up to her. She works for security companies that use the technology to monitor people. She’s an excellent technician but she’s also a damage person who must compartmentalize her life in order to survive.
I met some people like her, people who work to develop technologies that can be in a moral grey area. It’s not hard to see how they are considering their activities as business as usual and avoiding to reflect on the moral implication.
Even if I think it’s a bit unreal that a highly specialised tech guy have a Damascus moment and decides to take side with the good guy it was also a moment I loved because it was hope in quite bleak story.
There are good guys and there are bad guys in this story. At the end of the day all the main characters are women. They are brave and they fight and even Masha, who is morally grey, is able to change and grow.
The technical aspect is interesting and Doctorow did an excellent job in explaining the different technologies and helping people to understand what are the implications and how they can be used.
The plot is quite gripping even if it drags sometimes. It’s not heartwarming and I’m still quite terrified by what I read. I’m a bit paranoid about connected devices and this story did affected me as it made me wish to go back to a very simple phone with no internet connection.
There’s hope at the end to this story but there’s also the message that the power can affect the persons and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I don’t know if my review is logical or what else, I just know that this book should be read by a lot of persons as we need to know how technologies can be used to manipulate and control us.
I strongly recommend it because, even if it’s not a perfect book, it’s important to know.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

[Doon · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Attack Surface is timely and important. As someone who uses tech but doesn’t know cryptography or how mass surveillance works, this was an eye-opining, often uncomfortable read. I actually paused twice while reading this to delete old apps from my phone and check privacy settings.

I hadn’t read the previous Little Brother novels, so the characters were new to me. I liked Masha, though she didn’t feel like any woman that I knew, she seemed to have no inner life, which is unusual. I also felt that the novel was too easy of Masha becoming rich off of enabling dictators to ruin people’s lives. Sure, she feels a bit bad about that by the end of the novel, but she should really feel much worse. The ‘if I’m not enabling them then someone else will’ argument is weak, and even if Masha recognises in the end I wanted more acknowledgement that her behaviour was monstrous, even if her bosses were more so.

While Attack Surface ultimately is a hopeful look at how hacktivists can use protest to push back against mass surveillance, the novel has a huge blind spot.

The characters in the novel talk about how protest against mass surveillance has resulted in laws to curb the use of surveillance, and acts as if that is the end game. In reality, the creation of thoughtful, evidence-based law that enhances freedom and privacy requires a politics and political apparatus that values those outcomes.

In order to ensure those outcomes, the public need to be fully engaged with representative democracy at all levels, voting in every election (local and national), responding thoughtfully to public consultations on new policy and critically evaluating proposals. To get us to a better politics, the public will also often be called on to make suboptimal choices between two candidates that are imperfect. That many people disengage from politics when their progressive candidate fails to achieve nomination/election is part of the problem.

I know that Cory is actually excellent at critiquing policy ideas, particularly his thoughtful ideas on how more rigorous use of competition law would be a better way of regulating the internet than laws that potentially restrict what can be freely published on the net. So I was just a bit disappointed that Attack Surface doesn’t detail how important it is to engage with the administration of politics and policy ideas.

[Kateblue · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a quite depressing, too-long story of what I think is a very possible future. Big Brother is REALLY watching you.

I really like Doctorow's writing, and I like his book offerings at his website, where he offers books for free or for a donation. That's why I paid full price for this one when it came out. Such a marketing plan must be rewarded. Also, I want to support Doctorow's work to free us of DRM, among other things.

But I still didn't like this book much. For one thing, the explanation of computers etc. were WAY beyond me even though they were obviously dumbed down. Also, we were too much in Masha's head early on. So much so that when she started changing her mind back and forth at the end, it wasn't as believable as I would have liked. The "compartments" idea seemed like a way to explain all her mental switcheroos. And the end seemed very rushed. What was she doing at the very end anyway? Was she working in Germany? It didn't say so. Did I miss it?

So I guess it is the pacing. Probably much of the "flashback" parts--where the author is trying to fill us in on Masha's backstory--could have been shrunk down a lot. Much of that part of the book seemed an attempt to make Masha a more understandable and sympathetic character.

I'm still going to read other things he's written, even though he makes me depressed, apparently.

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book kind of scared me. I know I don't do enough, I know I should do more, but I live in this purposeful ignorance of trying to not think about it. While I liked both of the previous books in the series, I never really identified with much of Marcus. Done a lot of the same things, yes, but something about him just was nothing like me, and it's hard to get really into the feeling when that's the case.

Masha however. I see it written out, how she thinks, what she feels, her coping methods -- and it's almost the opposite. Part of me wants to look away because it's like watching a train wreck, starring ME, fictionalised (and a fair bit more knowledgable than I currently am in the books main areas.)

I especially loved the 'hopeful' ending, because, like Masha, I'm quick to assume that if Technology can't fix it, it can't be fixed; and also of having technology as the 'goal' not as the method.

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just can’t. This book is putting me to sleep every other page with all the techno babble. I also can’t shake the feeling that Cory Doctorow is writing a love letter to Snowden and it feels creepy (there is a quote from Snowden on the cover and he is mentioned 2-3 times in the first 2 chapters).

Anyway- there doesn’t seem to be a plot1/3 of the way in, there seem to be little to no scifi here, it reads like a techno thriller, the protagonist is flat - ohh techno wiz young woman who can topple governments or clusters of protesters but never does so cause she is…scared? Hindered? Morally opposed? Who knows and I am not spending another 200 pages to find out. It looks like it may of been a better book if I had read the first 2 books first.

I am disappointed since I thought Cory Doctorow was supposed to be this amazing sci fi writer- but it seems he is not for me.