Attack Surface
by Cory Doctorow

Another book by the amazing Cory Doctorow ( @pluralistic), and one I enjoyed 1000% more than the pirate book that preceded it. I wasn't aware at the time of reading that this is the third in his Little Brother series, but I didn't find that this affected my enjoyment in any way. I suspect the series is a set of thematically-linked standalone novels, and will confirm this when I read numbers 1 and 2!

The book starts with Masha Maximow working in a not-real but very realistic former Eastern Bloc country for a cybersecurity firm with a back-of-the-alphabet-consonant-heavy name. She's dumped because her morals aren't aligning well with their interests, and she's spending too much time schooling activists in operational security, so she returns to her hometown of San Francisco... where she finds herself schooling activists in op-sec.

The book is very well and tightly plotted, flipping between the now and then, showing us present-day Masha threading the needle between duelling MIC juggernauts and the little people trying not to be squished by them, and past-tense Masha's rise from precocious hacker to cyber-warrior for the powers-that-be. There's the typical passages of Doctorow edutainment, where we learn all about cyberwar and self-defence as vastly knowledgeable people agree and disagree and counter-disagree on a wide variety of techy subjects.

I really enjoyed it, which isn't surprising, as 2024 is shaping up to be "The Year I Read Mostly Books From Cory Doctorow". It's a theme that will continue in Book 15 of my list!

(Oh, and you can get a copy at https://craphound.com/shop/)

#reading #reading2024 #books #bookreview #sciencefiction #cybersecurity #cyberpunk #technology #thriller