Passion Over the Law (NICE!)

By: Kevin F.

Pirate Cinema, by Cory Doctorow, is a fictional novel about a conflict between a teenage boy's passion and the law. The story takes place in the somewhat future in London. The main character, Trent McCauley, wants to make his own homemade movies about the fictional dead actor, Scot Colford. However, to do this, he has to download movies from foreign websites to get the clips he needs. The three strikes law in England (which is a real thing) detects that Trent has been downloading copyrighted content, and ends up shutting down Trent's family's entire internet. Now Trent can't make his movies, but that's the least of his family's problems. Trent's mom can not collect her disability checks, his dad can't do his phone support job, and his sister can't do her schoolwork because all of her assignments and tests are online. Trent feels awful about doing this and decides to run south to London. Here he arrives lonely and scared, and his stuff ends up getting robbed. Trent doesn't give up his hopes in London yet. He meets a lot of new people that can help him fight against the copyright law. His friends don't sit around and complain about the problems. They go out and fix them.

I, personally, had some mixed thoughts on this book. I enjoyed the storyline and the message, but the way it played out in some parts kind of bored me. There were so many characters being introduced at different times, when they were mentioned again, I had to go back and see who they were or what they did. The introduction moved at a good pace, but I feel like some parts of the body dragged out for me. By the end of the book, I knew the characters and it just played out really well. The writing did have vivid description and I could visualize it like I was there.

If you want to read this book, I would recommend it. Like I said, it has a good storyline and a good message. I think it depends on what type of genre you like. If you like realistic fiction, a story that's made up but seems like it could be a real story, then you would enjoy this book. If you like descriptive writing, you would also enjoy this book. If you like inspiring stories about someone following their dreams and working towards it no matter what it takes, then you should read this book. Overall, I did enjoy this book, and I would probably look for more books to read by Cory Doctorow.