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Hacking. Parkour. Codes. Hidden Treasure.
Hacking Timbuktu
by Stephen Davies. I read an ARC of this YA novel via NetGalley.com - it's due out in the States in November, but is already out in the UK, from what I understand.
In 14th century Timbuktu a young Dogon thief, Akonio Dolo, steals quite a lot of gold, hides it, and leaves behind a cryptic clue as to its whereabouts before dying. In the modern day, Danny is a 16-year-old Australian computer whiz living in his own apartment in London (on his parents' dime, he admits) who gets dragged into the treasure hunt when one member of group calling themselves the Knights of Akonio Dolo tries to rope him into hacking into a server in Timbuktu, where a manuscript scanning project has discovered the clue Akonio Dolo left behind. It seems everyone who comes into contact with Danny wants the gold and thinks Danny has the ability to get the clue and solve the riddle, so in the end Danny decides he has to do so in order to stop everyone.
He's accompanied by his best friend Omar, a young French parkour expert who taught Danny the art of parkour, and together they attempt to elude the Knights of Akonio Dolo, Moktar Hasim, the increasingly desperate man from Timbuktu who stole the manuscript page, and the authorities between London and Mali, while deciphering the map and searching for the gold.
What I liked: finally! An adventure book that uses modern technology to advantage! In so many books and movies I find myself wondering why on earth the characters just don't *call* each other - it would solve so many problems. Danny and Omar's lives are complicated here by the Knights using cellphones, email, and Facebook updates to communicate and coordinate near-instantaneously.
I also ran the hacking explanations by my programmer-in-residence, who told me that they're acceptable enough for a fictional depiction and wouldn't throw him out of the story.* I have no idea about the parkour, as my experience is limited to watching YouTube videos and observing![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
myrialux play Assassin's Creed 2, but when reading those segments I certainly felt real - he captures the emotion and exhilaration that I image traceurs might feel. I also like that it's brought up in one scene that the British grabbed a bunch of art and artifacts from the various nations they colonized and brought them back: a Nigerian nobleman comes to a curator demanding the repatriation of several important religious artifacts and is faced with the endless filling-in of a request for repatriation form.**
What I think could have been improved: it would have been nice to have some female characters with speaking roles in the book. It also would have been nice if Danny or Omar was explictly a character of color*** so that the only major roles with characters of color weren't one of the antagonists and the long-dead thief. It also would be nice if there were a few more puzzle-solving things in the book, but I understand it's a YA novel and meant to be fairly short.
Overall: it certainly kept me reading along and was hard to put down. Recommended as a quick, fun read although I don't think it'll be anyone's Favoritest Book Evar.
* The author admits in a note in the back that the C+ code he wrote for one section of the book is full of syntax errors, but as I'm not familiar with C+, it worked for me. If you know it, skip it except for the $msg variable. :)
** In my years of museum school and working at a museum afterwards, I had a lot of exposure to the issues and bureaucratic inanities involved in repatriating items - and that was only within the U.S. I can imagine it's ten times greater when you're repatriating items between nations and have a national diplomatic layer to deal with.
*** If Omar's skin color was mentioned in the book, I missed it. His father is French and his mother is English, and I'm not familiar enough with French naming practices to really want to assume that "Omar" is an explicitly Muslim/Arabic name, as I'd assume in the States. So he is potentially the Ethnic Sidekick to the White Guy, but it's only an assumption.
by Stephen Davies. I read an ARC of this YA novel via NetGalley.com - it's due out in the States in November, but is already out in the UK, from what I understand. In 14th century Timbuktu a young Dogon thief, Akonio Dolo, steals quite a lot of gold, hides it, and leaves behind a cryptic clue as to its whereabouts before dying. In the modern day, Danny is a 16-year-old Australian computer whiz living in his own apartment in London (on his parents' dime, he admits) who gets dragged into the treasure hunt when one member of group calling themselves the Knights of Akonio Dolo tries to rope him into hacking into a server in Timbuktu, where a manuscript scanning project has discovered the clue Akonio Dolo left behind. It seems everyone who comes into contact with Danny wants the gold and thinks Danny has the ability to get the clue and solve the riddle, so in the end Danny decides he has to do so in order to stop everyone.
He's accompanied by his best friend Omar, a young French parkour expert who taught Danny the art of parkour, and together they attempt to elude the Knights of Akonio Dolo, Moktar Hasim, the increasingly desperate man from Timbuktu who stole the manuscript page, and the authorities between London and Mali, while deciphering the map and searching for the gold.
What I liked: finally! An adventure book that uses modern technology to advantage! In so many books and movies I find myself wondering why on earth the characters just don't *call* each other - it would solve so many problems. Danny and Omar's lives are complicated here by the Knights using cellphones, email, and Facebook updates to communicate and coordinate near-instantaneously.
I also ran the hacking explanations by my programmer-in-residence, who told me that they're acceptable enough for a fictional depiction and wouldn't throw him out of the story.* I have no idea about the parkour, as my experience is limited to watching YouTube videos and observing
myrialux play Assassin's Creed 2, but when reading those segments I certainly felt real - he captures the emotion and exhilaration that I image traceurs might feel. I also like that it's brought up in one scene that the British grabbed a bunch of art and artifacts from the various nations they colonized and brought them back: a Nigerian nobleman comes to a curator demanding the repatriation of several important religious artifacts and is faced with the endless filling-in of a request for repatriation form.**What I think could have been improved: it would have been nice to have some female characters with speaking roles in the book. It also would have been nice if Danny or Omar was explictly a character of color*** so that the only major roles with characters of color weren't one of the antagonists and the long-dead thief. It also would be nice if there were a few more puzzle-solving things in the book, but I understand it's a YA novel and meant to be fairly short.
Overall: it certainly kept me reading along and was hard to put down. Recommended as a quick, fun read although I don't think it'll be anyone's Favoritest Book Evar.
* The author admits in a note in the back that the C+ code he wrote for one section of the book is full of syntax errors, but as I'm not familiar with C+, it worked for me. If you know it, skip it except for the $msg variable. :)
** In my years of museum school and working at a museum afterwards, I had a lot of exposure to the issues and bureaucratic inanities involved in repatriating items - and that was only within the U.S. I can imagine it's ten times greater when you're repatriating items between nations and have a national diplomatic layer to deal with.
*** If Omar's skin color was mentioned in the book, I missed it. His father is French and his mother is English, and I'm not familiar enough with French naming practices to really want to assume that "Omar" is an explicitly Muslim/Arabic name, as I'd assume in the States. So he is potentially the Ethnic Sidekick to the White Guy, but it's only an assumption.
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