Little Brother is a fiction novel by Cory Doctorow that tells the story of a 17-year-old boy named Marcus, and his friends living in San Francisco. The story begins when Marcus and his group of friends sneak out of school to play a coding game known as ‘Harajuku Fun Madness,’ which consists of the players searching for real-life clues around the city about how to move on to the next level. As they stumble upon their first clue, an explosion shakes the city: the Bay Bridge in San Francisco was blown to pieces. Immediately, Marcus and his friends scramble for safety and get reluctantly swept into the stampeding mass of city people heading for the underground train station. It’s at this time that Marcus and two of his friends, Jolu and Van, are arrested by the Department of Homeland Security and imprisoned at a secret location in San Francisco. They are tortured and heavily questioned about the explosion of the Bay Bridge, labeled as a terrorist attack.

The main character, Marcus, then sets out on a quest to take down the DHS. Personally, I think this is where the plot begins to seriously pick up. Marcus’s development went from a 17-year-old hacker trying to get away with minor school security camera hacks to a 17-year-old suspected terrorist. It was such a fast change that I had to go back and re-read the chapter in more detail. The characters and their lives in this novel were so realistic that it made me enjoy the book much more. They all stayed in school despite having been arrested, and didn’t have the whole “main character is the main character because they have a special ability” vibe. Marcus wasn’t special in the fictional, larger-than-life way, he was completely normal. He was just a 17-year-old kid trying to do the right thing by fighting for what he believes in. Although there was a lot of computer/coding terms and facts throughout the novel, Cory Doctorow did an excellent job in thoroughly explaining the jargon so that I wasn’t confused while reading the novel.

To my surprise, I highly enjoyed this novel; it contains action and humor. I could not put this book down. Little Brother is 380 pages of original fiction that I’ve never read before. The plot was a fast-paced, smart, and refreshing take on the typical teenage fiction novel. The characters complemented each other perfectly and had diverse personalities and nationalities. I recommend this novel for those who understand coding and like fiction books, or those who enjoy a novel about the real struggles of teenagers amidst a fictional conflict.