Doctorow spends too much time on boing boing self promoting his books. At the same time too much of his books are devoted to wacky gizmos that we've read about the year before on boing boing. His last novel Little Brother was a powerhouse of post 9/11 paranoia and at the time very current. Many of his concepts seem almost too current, and quickly outdated the year past their publishing. So is the case with Makers.

Every other paragraph is devoted to highlighting the funky gadgets the Maker Duo come up with. Which has left little in the way of character or plot. Instead it reads like...dialogue dialogue dialogue....funky device or idea...mention of a real life researcher who came up with a funky device...dialogue dialogue...another funky device. Huge spans of time are skipped over which "sum-up" all the cool stuff you'd want to read about.

I've spent my fair share of time tinkering with gizmo's and cannibalizing spare parts to make something new. It's exciting and I love it. But Makers takes away that joy by giving you too much information and not enough heart to connect to any of it. ( )

IMO, it wasn't up to Doctorow's usual standards. The story didn't hold me, and his portrayal of overweight folks really rubbed me the wrong way. (Oh yes, they're all waiting for a cure that lets them eat 10,000 calories per day - and when they finally get thin they do nothing but worry about their wardrobe when they're not sleeping with each other).

Particularly disappointing because I know he can do *far* better. Gave up about half way through... ( )

These folks didn't change, grow, adapt, evolve, or mature for nuthin'. Stuff happened and they did the same thing over and over again. Blah. Written well but blah. ( )

awesome book.
loved his take on copyrights.
Thought its great what he is doing by gigivng the ebook away.
Awesome story. want to read more by him.
lesson learned (if you can get those from fiction):do what you love and the rest will follow?


p.s. first book I read on my nook

This is my second Doctorow book after For the Win and I still don't know how to feel about his work. I enjoy how he weaves near-future ideas into his work and paints the reader a portrait of dystopia America that is already being created. My frustration with Doctorow come when he puts his sci-fi ideas first and focuses on character development second.

In Makers the novel starts with Suzanne Church, a reporter who gets lured away from Silicon valley to find out details about how manufacturing startups can change the business world. The story goes out of it's way to explain how 3D printers, venture capitalists, and a lot of startup components are structured. Church also gives a women's perspective into the tech world. Church comes off as the most put-together character until she is sidelined later in the story.

The story takes some weird turns that I didn't expect and for the most part kept me interested. This story wraps up with a serious commentary on how people who attempt to change the world are left broken and battered.

My issues with the story come from how plotlines are picked up and then discarded. The ride in partcular felt weak because the character's had little real interaction with it and it is left to smaller characters to fill that role. The shifting narrator's felt confusing at times and beyond a few very specific locations, the character's could just be floating heads.

I enjoy Doctorow and commend him for releasing his work for free. I look forward to trying out some more of his work, especially Little Brother.

Download Makers Here ( )