Official Book Cover Homeland, Source: Amazon
Cory Doctorow’s success from the novel Little Brother led him to create a sequel called, Homeland. Just like in novel Little Brother, Doctorow offered a free online excerpt for the sequel only allowing the reader to view the first few chapters. I can easily say that, Doctorow did it again, by leaving the reader (myself) wanting to read more.
A few years pass by, and the book starts off with Marcus and Ange in Nevada at an annual event called Burning Man. With the economy down, Marcus’s hacktivist past lands him a profession as a Webmaster for a campaigning representative who promises reorganization. Marcus experiences a blast from the past and his ex-girlfriend comes into the picture, and gives him a thumb-drive containing a WikiLeaks style of hard evidence of corporate and governmental dishonesty.
Eventually, you come across something so terrible; you can’t look yourself in the mirror anymore unless you do something about it. “So maybe you copy some files, pile up some evidence. You think to yourself, Someday, someone will have the chance to speak out against this, and I’ll quietly slip them these files, and my conscience will forgive me for being a part of an organization that’s doing such rotten stuff. Masha was giving me the keys to decode all the ugliest secrets of the American government, all the stuff that had so horrified loyal DHS employees that they’d felt the need to smuggle it out.”
Thumb-Drive, Source: E-how
Marcus, after receiving the thumb-drive from Masha goes through an internal struggle whether or not to release the corrupt evidence to the world. He is worried that if he releases it, something bad will happen to her. But on the other hand Marcus wants revenge from his past towards the DHS. The other potential problem that Marcus is concerned about is if he leaks the evidence he cannot admit to being the leaker, because that will cause severe consequences at his new job. So Marcus is in this novel is in a internal struggle.
Then a couple days pass and Marcus sees Masha being kidnapped by the same crooked government officials from the previous novel Little Brother. Marcus, and his friends are on a mission to find Masha, as well as making sure the dispersion of the thumb-drive with the corrupt evidence on the Internet the right decision to do.
As I stated before, Doctorow did it again, keeping me intrigued and interested in finishing the novel. You would think that after everything that happened in the novel Little Brother, that Marcus wouldn’t find himself in any more drama. But little did he know, someone from his past would give him another opportunity to become once again the hacker hero. It’s awesome that Doctorow gives people a chance to read his work for free. I am not someone who goes out of their way to read books, but I can honestly say that Doctorow has me hooked, and wanting to keep reading more of his books.
How do you feel about this excerpt, and what do you think Marcus should do?