Review: eastern standard tribe by Cory Doctorow

Yes, the title is lower-case.

This is my first novel-length story from Cory, a good 'ol canuck. The story follows Art Berry, an EST-born dude living in the GMT timezone. The major premise of the story is that Art feels loyalty to his EST timezone and works as an agent-provocateur by working for an England firm and introducing complexity into projects given to him in order to sabotage them. This way, he gets the GMT-based company in hot water, and makes EST-based companies look better in comparison.

Overall, I felt the story to be about 28 chapters too long (out of 31 chapters). He goes back and forth in the story line so that we get some sense of suspense as we move forward in the timeline. I didn't mind it, but felt he was forcing it a bit too much. What annoyed me the most was the femme-fatale introduced at the very beginning. I know Cory was trying to make her "the crazy girl everyone knows", but really just ended up creating a character that is not believable and one we just want to punch silly every chapter.

The enjoyable parts of the story were mostly based around the realistic use of Internet Relay Chat, and some thoughfull observations on the possible progression of DRM for music.