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misterjay's review against another edition
4.0
One of the best things about Rick Dakan's Geek Mafia series is the feeling of being in the club that the reader gets.
Dakan's protagonists are clever, but not perfect, and not above the reader. They create imaginative plans, true, but their skills are more put to the test by adapting to situations after the plan has fallen apart.
The book itself is a quick read; the plot is fast and tight, letting readers into the setting easily and giving just enough clues that the ending is a natural conclusion, rather than a foregone one.
The novel is from a small press, and is also available for free as a promotional tool while Dakan builds his fan base.
Dakan's protagonists are clever, but not perfect, and not above the reader. They create imaginative plans, true, but their skills are more put to the test by adapting to situations after the plan has fallen apart.
The book itself is a quick read; the plot is fast and tight, letting readers into the setting easily and giving just enough clues that the ending is a natural conclusion, rather than a foregone one.
The novel is from a small press, and is also available for free as a promotional tool while Dakan builds his fan base.
whackboy's review against another edition
2.0
all in all, this was ok. not great. it has the standard requirements to get me interested in the caper and a few neat complexities of character . . . modern day techno savvy cloak and dagger, stealing from the man and crushing them by breaking laws because "it's the right thing to do" sort of thing.
there's pretty much no veiling to the anarchistic politics and that's just fine by me. a light and lively read. i'll probably dig into part 1 and 2 in the series someday down the road.
there's pretty much no veiling to the anarchistic politics and that's just fine by me. a light and lively read. i'll probably dig into part 1 and 2 in the series someday down the road.
jacalata's review against another edition
3.0
Worked well as a standalone book without having read the first book in the collection.
verkisto's review against another edition
3.0
What I remember most about Geek Mafia, the first book in this series, was how much fun it was. I went into without many expectations, and found it to be entertaining, exciting, and giddy with its own purpose. I remember it being tight and compelling, and even at the time, I hoped that there would be future books in the series, or at least more by Dakan.
Mile Zero is one of those future books, and I'm surprised with how different it feels. The crew from Geek Mafia is now living on Key West, running smaller scams to keep up their lifestyle, and basically living the Key West lifestyle. It's still entertaining, but it lacks that fun factor that the first book had. It has a good chunk of the same characters in it, but somehow they lack depth. The conversations they have seem trite and forced (no joke: a good portion of the dialogue at the beginning of the book is a lot of "Hey, looking good!", "No, man, you're the money!", and "Where's the party?" type of stuff that doesn't add a thing to the story), and as a result, they don't feel fleshed out. In fact, they feel like they're just caricatures of their previous selves. There was an attempt to bring out Paul and Chloe's relationship with a subplot where they argue over the business and their future, but it, too, felt forced.
The story took a little while to get going, as Dakan seemed to have a hard time deciding whether he wanted to give attention to the story or the Key West lifestyle. At the start of the book, the narrative flipped between the two, and I had a hard time getting a handle on where the story was headed. Luckily, the story gained ground, and by the time I was about a third of the way through the book, I knew I was in it for the long haul, despite some of my reservations. It just wasn't what I was expecting, based on how high my expectations were after having read the first book.
I also got distracted from the story by a few copy-editing issues. I'm accustomed to quotations using double-quotes for the main dialogue, and then single-quotes for dialogue within the dialogue, but this publisher kept using double-quotes. Plus, I'm also accustomed to paragraphs of dialogue not having an end-quote at the end of a paragraph, but then picking up with another start-quote at the next one. It's a good indication of when someone is still speaking, or when one character is speaking a monologue. The publisher didn't use this convention, closing off all paragraphs with double-quotes, and several times in the story, I lost track of who was speaking because I kept thinking someone else was part of the dialogue. Given that the book is basically a heist story, with a lot of people talking at length about how things would go down, it was more than just one occasion where this took me out of the story.
Overall, though, I thought it was entertaining enough to have been worth the read. The idea of following a bunch of techie anti-heroes as they try to make their way through the world is strangely compelling, and I'm looking forward to reading the last book in this series. Based on what I know of it, Mile Zero will segue directly into Black Hat Blues, so for a change, reading the books back-to-back will be more in my favor.
Mile Zero is one of those future books, and I'm surprised with how different it feels. The crew from Geek Mafia is now living on Key West, running smaller scams to keep up their lifestyle, and basically living the Key West lifestyle. It's still entertaining, but it lacks that fun factor that the first book had. It has a good chunk of the same characters in it, but somehow they lack depth. The conversations they have seem trite and forced (no joke: a good portion of the dialogue at the beginning of the book is a lot of "Hey, looking good!", "No, man, you're the money!", and "Where's the party?" type of stuff that doesn't add a thing to the story), and as a result, they don't feel fleshed out. In fact, they feel like they're just caricatures of their previous selves. There was an attempt to bring out Paul and Chloe's relationship with a subplot where they argue over the business and their future, but it, too, felt forced.
The story took a little while to get going, as Dakan seemed to have a hard time deciding whether he wanted to give attention to the story or the Key West lifestyle. At the start of the book, the narrative flipped between the two, and I had a hard time getting a handle on where the story was headed. Luckily, the story gained ground, and by the time I was about a third of the way through the book, I knew I was in it for the long haul, despite some of my reservations. It just wasn't what I was expecting, based on how high my expectations were after having read the first book.
I also got distracted from the story by a few copy-editing issues. I'm accustomed to quotations using double-quotes for the main dialogue, and then single-quotes for dialogue within the dialogue, but this publisher kept using double-quotes. Plus, I'm also accustomed to paragraphs of dialogue not having an end-quote at the end of a paragraph, but then picking up with another start-quote at the next one. It's a good indication of when someone is still speaking, or when one character is speaking a monologue. The publisher didn't use this convention, closing off all paragraphs with double-quotes, and several times in the story, I lost track of who was speaking because I kept thinking someone else was part of the dialogue. Given that the book is basically a heist story, with a lot of people talking at length about how things would go down, it was more than just one occasion where this took me out of the story.
Overall, though, I thought it was entertaining enough to have been worth the read. The idea of following a bunch of techie anti-heroes as they try to make their way through the world is strangely compelling, and I'm looking forward to reading the last book in this series. Based on what I know of it, Mile Zero will segue directly into Black Hat Blues, so for a change, reading the books back-to-back will be more in my favor.
verkisto's review against another edition
3.0
I mentioned in my review of Mile Zero that I enjoyed Geek Mafia because it was fun. Mile Zero touched on that fun, but part of what let me down was that where the first book in the series was from Paul's perspective, Mile Zero picked up the perspectives of the other characters in the story, most notably Chloe. I get it; Chloe's now someone to trust, and having part of the story from her perspective reaffirms that notion. But getting outside of just Paul's head made the mystery less impactful, since now we couldn't experience his uncertainty as well.
Black Hat Blues takes that notion one step further, by adding additional point-of-view characters, most of them new to the crew. Chloe, Paul, and the gang have moved on from small-time swindles in Key West to full-scale cons in Washington, D.C., and they've picked up a few hackers on the way. That's fine, but the new characters are immediately trustworthy because we get to see the world through their eyes. I missed that device of not having everyone's input to keep me wondering how everything was going to play out.
In addition to those new point-of-view characters, Dakan also winds us back and forth through time as he sets up the story for us. First we start off in the present, with the con getting started. Then we jump back a bit to see how one of the hackers came on board. Then we jump back to Chloe in later times, and then back again to another hacker, who's also telling his story from the past. It wasn't confusing, necessarily, but it felt very messy. Neither Geek Mafia nor Mile Zero were told that way, and Dakan was still able to bring in new characters without having to break time in order to get us familiar with them. I wish that Black Hat Blues had followed that format to some degree. The new characters are necessary to the story, so it's not that they're in there just to fill up space. Dakan brings three new characters into the crew, and we need to know a bit about them and how they were brought into the group. I just wish that the story had been told more linearly, instead of hopping all over the place like a hyper kangaroo.
I also had more issues with the publisher and their printing conventions. I noticed a lot of typos (a couple of "the the"s and other repeated words, a lot of missing articles and other words, some commas in the wrong place, the use of "peak" to describe someone looking surreptitiously around a corner, and even a egregiously misused "it's" and even the use of "their" for "there"), and they used words in ALL CAPS instead of italics to emphasize a particular word. It struck me as something I would read online instead of in print, and it distracted me whenever I came across it. The novel also veered into Cory Doctorow territory, where Dakan provided a lot of info-dumps to make sure the reader was on board with all the hacking activity. I'll give Dakan credit, though, since that kind of thing was necessary for the story, but the method of getting those info-dumps across was a little out of place. For good measure, though, he made sure to name-drop Doctorow in the first 25 pages or so. After that, I sort of knew how the rest of the novel would play out.
For all that, though, the novel is about on par with Mile Zero in its entertainment value. Neither book measures up to how much fun it was to read Geek Mafia, but honestly, I read the first book seven years ago. I'm not even sure how I would feel about that one if I went back and re-read it today. Regardless, I'd definitely recommend folks read the first book, but as for the two sequels, I don't see them as being necessary.
Black Hat Blues takes that notion one step further, by adding additional point-of-view characters, most of them new to the crew. Chloe, Paul, and the gang have moved on from small-time swindles in Key West to full-scale cons in Washington, D.C., and they've picked up a few hackers on the way. That's fine, but the new characters are immediately trustworthy because we get to see the world through their eyes. I missed that device of not having everyone's input to keep me wondering how everything was going to play out.
In addition to those new point-of-view characters, Dakan also winds us back and forth through time as he sets up the story for us. First we start off in the present, with the con getting started. Then we jump back a bit to see how one of the hackers came on board. Then we jump back to Chloe in later times, and then back again to another hacker, who's also telling his story from the past. It wasn't confusing, necessarily, but it felt very messy. Neither Geek Mafia nor Mile Zero were told that way, and Dakan was still able to bring in new characters without having to break time in order to get us familiar with them. I wish that Black Hat Blues had followed that format to some degree. The new characters are necessary to the story, so it's not that they're in there just to fill up space. Dakan brings three new characters into the crew, and we need to know a bit about them and how they were brought into the group. I just wish that the story had been told more linearly, instead of hopping all over the place like a hyper kangaroo.
I also had more issues with the publisher and their printing conventions. I noticed a lot of typos (a couple of "the the"s and other repeated words, a lot of missing articles and other words, some commas in the wrong place, the use of "peak" to describe someone looking surreptitiously around a corner, and even a egregiously misused "it's" and even the use of "their" for "there"), and they used words in ALL CAPS instead of italics to emphasize a particular word. It struck me as something I would read online instead of in print, and it distracted me whenever I came across it. The novel also veered into Cory Doctorow territory, where Dakan provided a lot of info-dumps to make sure the reader was on board with all the hacking activity. I'll give Dakan credit, though, since that kind of thing was necessary for the story, but the method of getting those info-dumps across was a little out of place. For good measure, though, he made sure to name-drop Doctorow in the first 25 pages or so. After that, I sort of knew how the rest of the novel would play out.
For all that, though, the novel is about on par with Mile Zero in its entertainment value. Neither book measures up to how much fun it was to read Geek Mafia, but honestly, I read the first book seven years ago. I'm not even sure how I would feel about that one if I went back and re-read it today. Regardless, I'd definitely recommend folks read the first book, but as for the two sequels, I don't see them as being necessary.
starcrunch's review against another edition
4.0
I didn't read the first one, but that didn't take away too much. Fast moving story, hard to put down but a bit frustrating at times. The story seemed rushed at the end, like they were trying to cram as many twists and confrontations as possible into the last chapters. Overall it was cute, though.
theartolater's review against another edition
2.0
Geek Mafia was, in some ways, a revelation. A heist novel for nerds, a genre I have little overall interest in? It was something I got cheap for my Kindle and thoroughly enjoyed enough to recommend to many people, even with its flaws. Mile Zero is the sequel, and is unfortunately quite lacking.
The story takes place over a year after the first book with our protagonists in Key West. Still scamming, still getting by, and a lot of other crews are coming around to plan something big. Of course, things can never quite go as planned, and quickly the situation devolves into a dangerous game.
The fun of the first book is mostly missing from this one. That's the biggest flaw. While the fun propelled the first book along, this just feels like more of a semi-aimless slog, which doesn't seem fair. It more or less left a lot to be desired, which is unfortunate given the end result of the first book. A good $3 read, a good casual Kindle book, but ultimately that's it.
The story takes place over a year after the first book with our protagonists in Key West. Still scamming, still getting by, and a lot of other crews are coming around to plan something big. Of course, things can never quite go as planned, and quickly the situation devolves into a dangerous game.
The fun of the first book is mostly missing from this one. That's the biggest flaw. While the fun propelled the first book along, this just feels like more of a semi-aimless slog, which doesn't seem fair. It more or less left a lot to be desired, which is unfortunate given the end result of the first book. A good $3 read, a good casual Kindle book, but ultimately that's it.
theartolater's review against another edition
2.0
Maybe closer to a 2.5?
I had very warm feelings about this series, liking the first book a lot in particular. Looking back at my review of the second book, I apparently bleached out my memory of it because I really didn't like it, but hey, the third book is available to me so I'll give it a shot, right?
The problems with this book are legion. The first quarter feels like a Cory Doctorow knockoff, the middle half a meandering mess of a cyberpunk mystery, and, while the end does kind of redeem things a bit, the full result is a hacker novel that provides little to truly get excited over.
I feel badly about this, as I just want this to be a lot better than it ends up being. But the unfortunate truth is that the characters barely resemble who they were when they started out (and not in a "character growth" way), and this book feels less like a necessary coda and more of an add-on.
I still think the first book is pretty great. This book pretty much solidifies, however, the way the rest of the series kind of falls apart. Unfortunate, but there are certainly other books and other series that do this better.
I had very warm feelings about this series, liking the first book a lot in particular. Looking back at my review of the second book, I apparently bleached out my memory of it because I really didn't like it, but hey, the third book is available to me so I'll give it a shot, right?
The problems with this book are legion. The first quarter feels like a Cory Doctorow knockoff, the middle half a meandering mess of a cyberpunk mystery, and, while the end does kind of redeem things a bit, the full result is a hacker novel that provides little to truly get excited over.
I feel badly about this, as I just want this to be a lot better than it ends up being. But the unfortunate truth is that the characters barely resemble who they were when they started out (and not in a "character growth" way), and this book feels less like a necessary coda and more of an add-on.
I still think the first book is pretty great. This book pretty much solidifies, however, the way the rest of the series kind of falls apart. Unfortunate, but there are certainly other books and other series that do this better.
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