Ruxandra Grrr's Reviews > Red Team Blues

I wanted to read Cory Doctorow because I had an understanding he was some sort of an anarcho-punk. I enjoy his twitter threads and he seems politically aligned with me. That being said, I don't know what the fuck this was. I know this is about my expectations, but even from the synopsis, it felt like it would be more about crypto-grifters and such, you know, skewering those annoying Silicone Valley bros. This was not that. And it didn't feel punk at all.

So I didn't know this, but red team vs blue team is a concept about security. Red team are the attackers, finding vulnerabilities in security systems, while blue team are the defenders, creating those systems. The main character is Martin, a 67-year old forensic accountant who has spent his life being red team. And the book would like you to know he fucks. Like a lot. Even though it's not necessarily his habit. He fucks a lot in this book.

So Martin does a job for a friend and then he is stuck in a very shitty situation that he has to get out of, by playing on his red team strengths. This was an interesting core to the character, but beyond that, I didn't find much to connect with. Martin has a good opinion and amiable dynamics with billionaires, CEOs, the kind of lawyers that hide your assets and so on. That irked me so much and it really didn't get subverted.

There is a lot of racial diversity when it comes to other characters (not a lot of them have white people names), but all the other characters feel very two-dimensional and sometimes the whole diversity thing feels very awkwardly introduced. Raza, his friend, an economy professor, kinda fills the magical Black woman role, who is there to support Martin in his quest. (Raza is five foot two, a heterodox economist reviled by the majority of her profession and beloved by her grad students and the Democratic Socialists of America. She is a war refugee, speaks five languages fluently, and is one of the best cooks I’ve ever met. She is brilliant, funny, and compassionate. And she gives one hell of a pep talk.)

I perhaps would have rated this even lower because of my politics disappointments, but the last third does get a bit more interesting when it delves deeper into NIMBY sentiments in San Francisco and the life of homeless people. Not by much, though. There's a lot here (without spoiling), that's about spending habits and how that changes with the circumstances.

Another thing I did like was that we had some casually non-judged polyamorous people. Even then, Martin, does a thinking like this: Even before I heard of ethical nonmonogamy, I had been painfully disabused of the idea that an adult woman was any man’s “girl.” I had some patient women to thank for that lesson and a few impatient ones who’d made sure it stuck. Stuff like this just feels so awkward to me, cause I'm like: great, yay, those women did emotional labor for you, well done.

More awkward: That wasn’t something I’d have ever thought to say to someone, but I discovered that I felt good about someone saying it to me. I guess that’s what they call emotional intelligence. Maybe I should spend my remaining years cultivating it. It felt a bit cringy to me. Sure, I guess, the character is an old and that's his perspective, but I still turned my nose up at these things, because I'm bitchy.

I will not be continuing in the series, but I will give this author another try, because I already have a hardcover of Walkaway that was gifted to me. Hopefully that's better!

2.5/5