I finished this book on the plane yesterday, on my way, ironically, to Burbank (or close enough to it).

First up, I enjoyed it, overall. The story was tightly told, the stakes were more or less clear, and the near-future setting had enough connections to the present to feel very plausible.

I had a bit of a hard time with the viewpoint character, who kept giving off vibes of "clueless post-millennial kid" in how they approached problems; I think the scene that gelled it for me was when something viscerally upsetting happened, and their response was along the lines of "I knew what I had to do; I had to go and bear witness". That sentiment pervades the whole book, this sense of "dunking on people on social media will change the world" and I think I have a hard time believing that, given the way the world has moved in the past decade. If this book had been released in the year of the Arab Spring, maybe I would have been more convinced, but it's a hard sell a decade later when it's clear that the Arab Spring didn't generate meaningful long term change, other than to teach governments that clamping down on dissent over social media is important, and ensuring they have the tools to do it.

It's a very optimistic book, despite its setting, and I'm not sure I feel the same optimism.