Rating: 
Summary: Slightly Better Than DAOITMK...
Review: ...but not a whole lot. I wrote a poor review of this book already, just a day after the book came out - it was able to download and read it from his site - and strangely enough, my review was not published here. Maybe Amazon edits out the bad reviews to increase sales?Anyways, this book was slightly better, mostly because there are no more Disney rantings as in DAOITMK. It has a slightly better plot and more in-depth character development. I'd recommend downloading and reading it first before buying. An improvement for sure.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but a bit short
Review: A fast-paced pseudotechno-thriller, EST kept me hooked from the very start. The timeline of the book skips back and forth, with the "past" timeline finally catching up to the "present" timeline at the very end. This leads to information revealed in the "present" chapters finally making sense in the "past" chapters, and vice versa.
The supporting characters were fairly static, but I think the main character, Art, developed nicely throught the book - personalitywise, he even seemed quite similar to my husband! *lol*
As a side note, even though I read the printed copy, you can download the book from the author's website - for free!
Rating:
Summary: Pretty Average
Review: After the success of "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" and "A Place so Foreign and Eight More" I expected better from this work. The story of Art Berry and his membership of the EST in the near future lacks most of the elements that have enlivened Doctorow's previous works. I never got very involved with Art or his companions in this story, I didn't really care much in the end if Art got out of the mental asylum or not. He really was better off there! The writing is generally good but not up to his previous standards alas. The story is only moderately interesting and many of the jokes and in-humour about US-English cultural differences are pretty old and uninteresting. The supposed "busines venture" that forms the basis of the action and the characters motivations is just plain silly. The characters of Art's girlfriend and his business partner are two-dimensional and not very believable either. The sudden wrap-up and rather contrived happily-ever-after ending was rather a letdown too, Doctorow is a better writer than this book indicates. To be fair there is some good work in this book and some interesting observations, so it's not a total loss. The "fartmobile" methane-powered cars were great touch for example. I quite liked Art's grandmother too, she was one of the few appealing characters in the book. Another thing I can't help noticing is that both Art in this book and the main character in "Down and Out...", Jules, get very angry (and violent) very easily and seem to have very poor impulse control. They both come across as spoilt and rather teenagerish personalities. It might be time for Doctorow to try for more adult characters. Doctorow has released EST as a free download again as per "Down and Out..." and I'd recommend you try it that way first before forking out good money for what is likely to prove a rather disappointing and expensive experience otherwise. If you've not read any of Doctorow's work before don't start with this book.
Rating:
Summary: High Speed Connection!
Review: Art is some kind of really wired techno-geek, from Toronto but working in London. Linda is his new girlfriend (they met when he knocked her down with his car), exciting but emotionally unstable. Fede is his boss. Art and Fede have come up with a really far out scheme to make money by pirating music from the computer systems of cars on the Mass. Turnpike. They stand to make millions, but now the deal is unraveling. Is Fede trying to doublecross him? And what about Linda? Who can you trust? Especially when you find yourself committed to a mental institution. Worse yet, trapped on the roof. I can't explain it any better than that. You'll just have to read the book. Author Cory Doctorow writes a fast paced, adrenaline-soaked novel of a world like ours but faster, more driven, more wired, more sleepless. People are constantly interacting with communication devices but hardly anyone really communicates. Author Doctorow creates a kind of cyber-babble language full of odd abbreviations and acronyms that is perfectly suited to such a world. You may not understand it but you keep reading. This is a frenetic page-turner. You may not understand all the intricacies of the plot, or the snip-snap, slangy cyberspeak, but you will find yourself quickly engaged with this quirky, entertaining story. I can recommend this one for an entertaining read. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber
Rating:
Summary: Too much hype spoils the reading
Review: Believe me, I love Cory Doctorow. I follow his blog, get his newsletter, and have read very good short stories written by him. That's why I expected more from this novel.
Its strong points are the ideas: the concept of Tribe, the focus on User Interface, the ubiquity of the comm, the use of language. But it has weak points, and the main one is the plot, which is quite conventional, using plot devices straight out of Creative Writing 101: starting 'in media res', 'deus ex machina' for solving the 'someone flew over the cuckoo's nest'/'catch 22' problem, overheard conversations, dialogue for background...
However, I think this book is a promising second book of somebody that, in the future, will become an excellent writer. Maybe it's worth reading just for the 'I discovered him first' value.
Rating:
Summary: Clever and imaginative
Review: Closer to today than _Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom_. Doctorow's world is a convincing glimpse of what the world might well become. No farfetched gadgets, no space warps or cyber anything. A captivating story of betrayal and redemption, but with the humor you'd expect from Doctorow. The institutional mindset and integral inanity is dead on the mark. The story jumps back and forth from two time points--more interesting than a strictly linear narrative, but not hard to follow. I'd give it 4.5 stars, but it deserves to be rounded up not down.
Rating: 
Summary: Technical Accuracy
Review: Cory achieves an unprecedented level of precision and accuracy in his technical references. In past mainstream works of varying media, some attempts at techie appeal have yielded chuckles. Most are insulting, with their obviously irrepresentative 'downloading to a: drive' progress bars that only serve to facade the underlying functionality (which is ok, right?). At best, X-Files could provoke a slight heart-rate increase by flashing 3 frames of a Linux Bash prompt and hexadecimal struct definitions in the background. Cory's references are the type which sends chills down the spine of true geeks.
Rating: 
Summary: wired-lite
Review: Does Eastern Standard Tribe represent a mature, perhaps the word is refined, Cory Doctorow? Possibly. The story has all the wise cracking style of his earlier work but it is somehow muted or melded better into the overall story. Art, the central character, is an adult that has always known and lived in a information connected world. It is not a steroid juiced techno-world like so many other novels, nor is it an iron fisted corporate state. It's real, where people have to work, eat, and get from point A to point B without getting mugged, and earn a living. Art is associated with a group of people on-line that represent the Northeast U.S., the Eastern Standard Tribe. Art's main character trait is that he loves to argue, also he has a severely rev'ed up imagination that leads him and the reader to wonder if Art is really nuts. This idea is helped along by the fact that half the story takes place in a Sanitarium as Art waits for a competency hearing. He is accused of attacking his business partner, but claims he is being set up. Art's job is that of secret sabatour for the EST tribe, and he was in London acting as a consultant for the future Virgin/Deutch Telecom Co. Making sure they submitted a bad proposal so his tribe's company would win the job.
The Sanitarium parts are told in first person and the rest of the story, told in flashbacks, is related in third person. This is not as confusing as it sounds. Refreshingly short in length compared to other authors, this story is quite mundane. No one saves the world, no great catastrophe is averted with whiz-bang technology. It is a simple human story and Doctorow touches lightly on some social issues: loyalty, group identity, sanity. Some of these topics should have been explored in more detail as the dialog that Doctorow uses to present them is very entertaining. A light quick read that should get three and a half stars.
Rating:
Summary: Near future SF, breezy and fun
Review: Eastern Standard Tribe is Cory Doctorow's second novel. It is very much of a length (short, in a good way) with Doctorow's first, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. It's also set in a tech-driven future, though not the same future as the first novel. The novel opens with the narrator, Art Berry, on the roof of an insane asylum in Massachusetts, contemplating whether or not to kill himself. The story proceeds on two tracks, one concerning his business ventures and adventures in London, the other concerning his time at the asylum leading to his escape attempt which ended up with him marooned on the roof. Art is an agent provocateur for the "Eastern Standard Tribe", a group of like-minded individuals who all keep EST hours no matter where they live. His job, along with his boss Fede, is to make a local company agree to a nice-sounding but idiotic scheme, the failure of which will enhance the reputation of the EST companies. But while in London, Art manages both to come up with an actual good business idea, involving downloading music on the freeway, and to meet and fall in love with an unstable American woman named Linda -- the meet being, naturally, a "meet cute": Art runs over her in his car. Before long they are forging a relationship, while Art is trying to market his idea. So how does he end up in the loony bin? Well ... perhaps Fede isn't as much of a friend as he seems. And perhaps ... best let the story tell that ... At any rate, it's only fair to say that none of the main characters comes across as exactly "stable". I liked it OK, but couldn't love it -- it's a fun, breezy, read if you can tolerate the jerky characters, with some sparkling ideas, but no really "big" ideas. The characters are interesting if not exactly likeable -- even Art seems to probably need some time in the loony bin, though perhaps not the treatment he gets once there. The plot is cleverly constructed, though also on occasion a bit implausible. The apparent central notion of time-zone based "tribes" is totally unconvincing, and Doctorow himself doesn't really push it in the book.
Rating:
Summary: wild satire
Review: Eastern Standard Tribe
Cory Docterow
Tor, Mar 2004, $23.95, 224 pp.
ISBN: 0765307596 While working for an international monolith that either files employees away or deletes them, interface designer Art Berry is developing a data flow management program. His objective is to create the most user-unfriendly software ever promulgated on an ill-cyber public. Art is an underground operator for the global Eastern Standard Tribe though he resides in the heartland of the Greenwich Mean Tribe. In a world when boundaries exist in the twilight mind of the bureaucrat, only power matters, but how to achieve and hold authority in a boundless orb is the question of the competing tribes trying to foster their time zone on an unsuspecting people still used to the influence of DAC (delete, alternate control). Art believes that his hostile program will embarrass the rivals, but soon after hitting his current squeeze with his car he finds he has doubts about the truth as venerated by tribal leaders. Now Art stands on a Boston insane asylum's rooftop thinking of using that ancient communication device the stubby pencil to escape from his current scenario. Like his first Berry novel, DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM, Cory Docterow provides a wild satire of the shrinking yet increasingly complex world. The zany story line is crazier than the lead protagonist making it difficult to follow and requiring extra time beyond the standard for this size novel, but it is also amusing as many icons are skewered. Art is a terrific anti-hero struggling with whom and what to believe as those he held sacred prefer spins rather than honesty. Fans of intelligent humorous but weird, not easy to track satires will join Art's quest for what is right. Harriet Klausner
| 
