Michelle Gagnon’s first novel for young adults, Don’t Turn Around is unquestionably a thriller, certain to resonate with social activist readers and those who know the power of computers to perform invasive functions. With echoes of the hacktivism but not the dystopian angle from Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, Gagnon takes on shady big business, the issue of government cover-ups, and the very real plight of children in the foster care system.
Gagnon tells her story primarily through the parallel threads of two adolescent lives whose paths cross and eerily connect. Sixteen-year-old Noa Torson, who lost her parents when she was just an infant, spent several years in the foster care and juvenile detention system before her escape to independent living. A foster kid with a history of running away, she found her way out of the system by hacking into the Children’s and Family Services database to change paperwork and to set up a fake foster family. For income, she took on the identity of Ted Latham, a brilliant yet reclusive IT consultant who worked freelance for a west-coast-based company named Rocket Science. In her spare time away from computer system security consultations, Noa participates in an online hackers gang called /ALLIANCE/–a reference to the World of Warcraft counterpart that battles the evil Horde. Brainchild of seventeen-year-old Peter Gregory, /ALLIANCE/’s mission is “to wreak justice by pranking the bad guys” (9). /ALLIANCE/ questers can wipe out someone’s credit history or destroy a person’s privacy with a few keystrokes. These hacker geniuses take on bullies and perverts, helping people and animals that cannot protect themselves.
When Noa awakens on an operating table and manages to escape an experimental facility, she is on the run from men in black wearing combat boots. Online searching leads her to the AMRF and to Project Persephone, an apt name for a hellish experimental medical project using kidnapped homeless children as human test subjects to find a cure for PEMA. An awful disease that mainly afflicts teenagers by attacking the endocrine system, PEMA symptoms imitate those of Chronic Wasting Disease. Determined to bring down the criminal exploitation, she is joined by Peter and A6MO—a computer moniker but very real guardian angel focused on wartime raids. Despite their skill, the forces the teens have taken on are too powerful, making /ALLIANCE/’s efforts seem “pathetic and laughable, like a gnat buzzing around a water buffalo” (302). In their valiant fight, Noa and Peter discover that laws contain a labyrinth of loopholes designed to help powerful, moneyed people and to oppress the disadvantaged.
- Posted by Donna
This one sounds engaging. I want to read it myself. I’ll put it on the list for a fall purchase.