3 out of 4 stars
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The Hacker Chronicles is an exciting cyber thriller novel written by Patrick Oster.
It is Aloysius Wachter’s first night in his new job as a glorified night watchman in Organization for Emergency Management and Communication watching 10,000 police, community and business surveillance cameras. He sees a pretty girl resembling his ex-girlfriend fleeing what turns out to be a murder scene. For some reasons, Aloysius, also known as Vic, feels a great need to help and save the girl. With his special skill as a hacker and with the help of his two friends, a Russian and a Chinese who are even better hackers than he is, Vic becomes an amateur detective and a crime buster.
This is not just an exciting cyber thriller. It is also an amusing, entertaining and a very informative book. Told in a lively, conversational and realistic tone in the first person perspective of a twenty five year old millennial gamer, the book offers tips or more like gives the readers an idea how easily an account is hacked. It reveals how vulnerable a person is online especially those who need to share everything and post all about themselves on social media.
What I like most about the book is the concept of Vic’s character. He is a school dropout and an unambitious guy with an unfinished graphic novel and still depends on his mother for allowance, on the outside, but a skillful hacker, with even more skillful hacker-friends, who can find an Agrentine who staged her own death, on the inside. Even his manner of talking, funny and a little sarcastic, is quite appealing while his way of explaining online procedures and computer jargons is simplified and apparently meant for laymen.
Descriptions of settings and characters are clear and can be easily visualized while dialogues are informal and realistic. Just like Vic, all the other characters are well-developed and the one I can relate to the most is his mother. Reference to popular celebrities like Chow Yun Fat, Jason Statham and Lady Gaga and popular movies like ‘Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon’ and video games like ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ makes the book charming and heartwarming probably due to familiarity.
However, though the pacing of the novel is fairly steady, there is some kind of a period of sluggishness and inactivity between the first and the last case which gives the book a feeling of inconsistency. Moreover, some information regarding the internet, hacking and other online activities can be overwhelming to some readers especially the older ones. Furthermore, there are several noticeable errors like missing words but mostly typos (like that instead of than and here instead of her).
I, therefore, rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. It is very interesting, amusing, entertaining and informative. I recommend it to cyber thriller fans especially those who are fascinated with computer hacking. Readers who are not into social media and other online activities may have difficulty keeping up with the terminologies in this book but are not discouraged to have a go at it.
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The Hacker Chronicles
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