Imagine being watched 24/7. Someone knows your business, where you are, and what you’re doing, all the time. What would you do? Would you deal with it or fight back?

Cory Doctorow’s exciting science fiction novel Little Brother extrapolates from recent events to explore the frighteningly realistic possibility that in an increasingly authoritarian world, our liberty is becoming more and more limited. His unique voice and riveting plot make for a captivating science fiction novel that most young adult readers should enjoy.

Enter Marcus Yallow, a clever, tech-savvy teen who knows his way around the system. At 17 years old, he already knows how to hack into virtually anything, anytime. As a somewhat mischievous kid who enjoys testing his limits, Marcus can find ways to trick the flawed detectors that track his friends and schoolmates daily, and knows how to achieve a sense of privacy in the networked world.

But when a terrorist attack strikes San Francisco, his hometown, Marcus and his friends are among the few who are able to escape, unfortunately making them prime terrorist suspects. He and his friends are captured and thrown into a secret jail, where they are held for days of cruel interrogation.

Once Marcus is finally released, he can barely recognize his own city. Security is amped up to a new level of paranoia, but nobody feels safe. Everyone is tracked for possible terrorist activity. But even more troubling for Marcus is his realization that he is now being watched under close scrutiny by his enemies. As Marcus grows disgusted with the police state his home has become, he vows to fight the authorities behind the changes himself.

Set in present-day San Francisco, Doctorow’s novel follows Marcus and his friends in their fight against the organizers of the paranoia: the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS. As Marcus cultivates a plan to bring down his enemies, he is eventually forced to take them on himself, when he realizes that his risky plan could lead to serious consequences for his friends.

While Doctorow’s attempt to narrate in a realistic teenage voice occasionally falls flat, young adult readers will find that Little Brother, aimed at teenage readers 13 years old or older, is a unique coming-of-age story in a high-tech world. In the midst of his adventures, Marcus still finds time to be a regular teenager, and faces everyday problems that most teen readers can relate to. In his fight against the DHS, Marcus learns important lessons about friendship, how to tackle the responsibilities of leadership, and he even falls in love.

Although Doctorow is not able to craft his characters as consistently as he builds up the novel’s main plot line, the creativity of his ideas is undeniable. At the heart of his novel is one central idea: to what lengths should the government limit privacy to ensure safety? Throughout Little Brother, Doctorow asserts his belief that this question is irrelevant, emphasizing the uselessness of paranoid security measures that only interfere with the right to privacy.

The novel is also centered around Marcus’ use of technology to organize his rebellion against authority. Doctorow mixes hacker language, a set of networking terms, and instant message conversations with his dialogue to achieve Marcus’ unique voice, and creates M1k3y, Marcus’ cyberworld identity.

Published by Tor Books, Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother will be available for purchase on April 29.