Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Review by Jonathan

I read Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. This book is about a boy named Marcus Yallow who was close to the Bay Bridge in San Francisco after there was a terrorist attack on it. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and three of his friends are brought to a secret prison near San Francisco by the Department of Homeland Security (the DHS). After days of being interrogated, Marcus, and two of his friends (Jolu and Vanessa) are let go. One of his friends named Darryl is not let go. Marcus is mad that they didn’t let him go, and Marcus wanted to have revenge on the DHS. After the bombing on the Bay Bridge, security in San Francisco got a lot tighter. Pretty soon, every time you went past a stop light you were being recorded by the DHS that you were on some street at some time. If your travel pattern, you would be pulled over by the police. This made Marcus and a lot of other people on the xnet (an illegal internet server for a new type of Xbox called the Xbox universal) very angry. Eventually, the people on the xnet discovered a way to “jam” the DHS tracking server, which would cause tons of people to be pulled over, even if they had a completely normal travel pattern.


Marcus is forced into a position of power in the xnet, with his screen name “M1k3y”. M1k3y soon became very famous on the xnet, but infamous everywhere else, especially the DHS. Is Darryl still alive? If so, will he ever be let out of the prison? What will happen to M1k3y and the DHS? Read this book to find out.