Yet another book for which I missed the book tour’s Ottawa stop. But, again, my good friend Simon (@macdonst) was there to get my copy of the book signed by the author, Robert J. Sawyer (@robertjsawyer.) Nathalie (@nathalie101) managed to get the book on the top of her reading list first, but here I am, months later, with a review.
« Watch » is the 2nd book in Robert J. Sawyer’s WWW trilogy. The books starts a few hours after the first book had left us. We keep on following the story of Caitlin Decter, the 15-years-old math genius we have learn to love in « Wake ». This time around, the author abandons the Chinese story-line to concentrate on Caitlin’s and Shoshanna’s, as well as a new one involving « Watch », a US agency trying to understand, monitor, and potentially destroy « Webmind ».
The action flows nicely, and Caitlin’s day-to-day life is fun to read, but some of it seems superficial. I liked the book, overall, but some technical aspects of it seemed weak. The computer engineer in me couldn’t help but notice the few problems with the way the characters do this or that. Although the « Distributed Denial Of Service » attack described in the book is a good representation of what such a thing actually is, the way it is done seemed over-acting and not technically accurate. Oh well. I’m sure the average reader won’t notice.
So, should you get this book? If you enjoyed the first one, « Watch » is definitively for you. Sawyer plays on the same themes with a language that is easy to read and interesting story arcs. And, at that point, you should also pick « Wonder », the 3rd book of the trilogy, when in comes out in a few months.