Book Review: Pirate Cinema

Title: Pirate Cinema
Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: Tom Doherty
Rating: 1

Synopsis (via Goodreads): Trent McCauley is sixteen, brilliant, and obsessed with one thing: making movies on his computer by reassembling footage from popular films he downloads from the net. In near-future Britain, this is more illegal than ever. The punishment for being caught three times is to cut off your entire household from the internet for a year - no work, school, health or money benefits. Trent thinks he is too clever for that to happen, but it does, and nearly destroys his family. Shamed and shattered, Trent runs away to London, where slowly he learns the ways of staying alive on the streets. He joins artists and activists fighting a new bill that will jail too many, especially minors, at one stroke. Jem introduces him to the Jammie Dodgers, beautiful brilliant "26" to love and cemetery parties. Things look bad. Parliament is in power of a few wealthy media conglomerates. But the powers-that-be haven’t entirely reckoned with the power of a gripping movie to change people’s minds...

Review: It only took me two months to finish this book... Oops. 

Maybe it took this long because every time I looked at it I glared at it, or maybe it was because it was awful. I hated it. I have come to the conclusion that I'm not a technology genre type of reader. If you write anything about fixing computers, building computers, hacking or software, you will lose me. Doctorow lost me on page one. 

Out of the three factors I focus on the most when reviewing (characters, plot and writing style) not one stood out. Nothing reeled me in. The main character, Trent, is obsessed with taking clips from original movies and remixing them into his own - similar to fanfiction. In his world, such creativity is viewed illegal and violators get their internet shut off. When this happens to his family, his dad loses his job, his mom loses the medical support she needs, and his sister starts to fall behind in school. So, what does he do? He runs away and continues to make more illegal movies by doing lots of illegal activities. What a genius.  

News flash: running away from your problems never works.