Reviews and Comments

A summary of anthropologist Gabriella Coleman's time observing and floating on the surface of Anonymous. It walks through their history coming from places like /b/ to bursting on the scene taking aim at Scientology through times like OpTunisia and Occupy and ending with Stratfor.

The characterization of Anonymous as being the digital version of the trickster gods is apt - the chaos of the extreme decentralization of Anonymous along with their tactics (legal, illegal, and everything in between) resulted in some spectacular wins and some equally spectacular losses.

The book ended with the breaking of Edward Snowden's expose of the NSA's extensive surveillance activitiers, though that wasn't something that involved Anonymous. It attempts to end on a positive note that groups like Anonymous and the other groups might provide some sort of defense against the surveillance state, but in hindsight that hopeful optimism seems to have been rather misplaced.

The biggest observation in the book for me was the note that for those years Anonymous was the only group stepping forward in a time when more people needed to throw off the apathy and lend their voice to things like the Occupy movement.

The new book picks up a short time after the end of the first book. The new book focuses more on Hippolyta and George, though Montrose and Atticus have a thread as well. They're still being used as pawns in the games of the various sorcerors, though as always they're adept at finding the gaps to maneuver in so that they're not completely powerless (the way they are in society as a whole).

The main threads cover Hippolyta, her son Horace, and Letitia, running an errand for the ghost Witham, Atticus and Montrose taking a trip to the plantation where their ancestor, the slave that would become known as Nat Turner, started his journey to freedom (and where they meet an old friend unexpectedly), Ruby and what became of her after the climax of the last book, and Hippolyta's husband George dealing with a cancer diagnosis.

I wonder if a third book is planned -- given how this one wrapped up, it certainly seems like some of the groundwork's been laid for that.

So overall I really liked this book. It recast the standard Lovecraft mythos in Jim Crow America, with the protagonists various members of the same African-American family who get pulled into the various machinations of groups of cultists. The fact that this was already a group of people that were pretty much at the mercy of whatever white America chose for them makes them ideal fodder for a group that can capitalize on that to use them as pawns in their own games.

Probably my biggest gripe in these was that there was very little of Elder God-like beings in these books. There was one instance where some very non-human creature made an appearance, plus a couple of instances of ghosts/spirits, but by and large this was focused on the people and there wasn't a lot to distinguish the sorcerors as being particularly Lovecraftian. In some ways this was almost more of a spin on a detective noir trope, but with spells and sorcery instead.

So, sadly I am yet again reminded that I am old. I'm no longer able to keep details of these series in my mind so that I can read the next installment a year or more later, and also don't have the free time to take a week and just plow through all the previous books as a refresher (how much time did I lose to rereading all the Robert Jordan books all those years ago....?).

That having been said, I did not do a bad job at recalling what had gone before here. Still a fair bit of "Wait, who was that character again?" but overall I was able to follow the plot and know what was going on relatively well. Still a puzzle/mystery to figure out what was going on in this book, but also got some good backstory to help fill in some of the bigger picture stuff.

I definitely have "re-read all three books" on my early 2023 list, which will help in really wrapping my head around the plot and what's going on.

My path to this was more than a little roundabout. After watching the "Time Stand Still" documentary, I found myself thinking of the documentary before this, when they talked about the events that became this book. As I was in enthusiastic about what I had to read, I decided to give this book a try to see if there was some fresh content from the band to consume.

The book details the events that took Neil's daughter and then his wife, and his multi-year struggle to reconstruct his identity and life after his loss. Written as a part travelogue, part memoir, it covers his travelling and his attempts to put the pieces back together.

The look into his process of painfully going back to see who he is now is raw, fascinating and unflinching. It takes him a solid two years to pick up a pair of drumsticks again (and a few years after that to rejoin the band and move forward musically), and he freely admits his flashes of bitterness at seeing couples and families that remind him of what he's lost.

Equally interesting are his observations while on the road. He skewers a lot of the fellow travelers as fat and incurious, and displays a grasp of Western environmental issues (water rights) that many Americans don't have.

His reading rate is equally impressive, he devours books (and writes in his journal and letters to friends and family) at an amazing rate.