I had become quite tired of Cory Doctorow's self-promotion and half-baked anti-DRM rants on boingboing, and I hadn't planned to read any of his novels, but I was looking for something free to read on my new Amazon kindle (which, by the way, is awesome). One of Doctorow's biggest claims to fame is that he has freely provided all of his fiction under a Creative Commons license, so I grabbed a copy of Eastern Standard Tribe, which is one of his shorter novels.

Color me surprised to find out that it's actually quite good! The story takes place in a believable near-future, the sci-fi jargon doesn't get in the way, the protagonist is recognizable and likable, and I liked the way that Doctorow interleaved the story's two timelines (this technique reminded me a bit of Matt Ruff's Bad Monkeys). I'm looking forward to trying another of Doctorow's novels.