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A review by lazygal
The Hive by Barry Lyga, Morgan Baden
4.0
I loved Lyga's Jasper Dent series so was really excited to see that he's got a new book and how it would compare to them. In this case, it's as though Lyga is channeling Cory Doctorow, and I mean that in a very good way. "The Hive" was founded on the idea that peer pressure/peer justice would get rid of online bullying and shaming (although it's very much about shaming!) and is government run. When someone does or says something online, people can "like" or "condemn" it and when the algorithm shows a bad condemn to like ratio, the group can - in real life, in public - exact some sort of punishment. What could possibly go wrong?
Our heroine is the daughter of a Latin professor (living) and an infamous hacker/programmer (now dead) and the government is convinced that when her father died, he left something behind, something the government wants (what, they're not quite sure, but they know it exists... probably). So when Cassie, in an attempt to fit in with the cool girls at her new school, posts a somewhat questionable joke online, the Hive decides that what she said was unacceptable and that she should be severely punished. No spoilers, but there are some parts that require a suspension of disbelief as she goes on the run, trying to avoid "justice" and repair her reputation. She's kind of like Katniss but with code, not arrows.
What doesn't require that suspension is the existence of the Hive and the idea that an entire society, so addicted to its devices and its desire for likes (or upvoting or whatever the term is on different platforms) could create such a thing and then use it to mete out justice. Or that the government would use it to try to control events and people, becoming more authoritarian in the process.
eARC provided by publisher.
Our heroine is the daughter of a Latin professor (living) and an infamous hacker/programmer (now dead) and the government is convinced that when her father died, he left something behind, something the government wants (what, they're not quite sure, but they know it exists... probably). So when Cassie, in an attempt to fit in with the cool girls at her new school, posts a somewhat questionable joke online, the Hive decides that what she said was unacceptable and that she should be severely punished. No spoilers, but there are some parts that require a suspension of disbelief as she goes on the run, trying to avoid "justice" and repair her reputation. She's kind of like Katniss but with code, not arrows.
What doesn't require that suspension is the existence of the Hive and the idea that an entire society, so addicted to its devices and its desire for likes (or upvoting or whatever the term is on different platforms) could create such a thing and then use it to mete out justice. Or that the government would use it to try to control events and people, becoming more authoritarian in the process.
eARC provided by publisher.