Similar to Neal Stephenson at his most mediocre. It's fine, but I liked the character stories more than the intrigue

Wanted more closure but I always want more closure

This could have been a 5 star book. The first 65 pages of character building are good and valuable. The trouble is that there is then another 150 pages of waffle before everything comes together. Perhaps there will be follow up books where this information becomes useful (and if there is another book I will definitely read it), but as a standalone this book could have had 75 to 100 pages edited from it, and as a standalone would have been much better for it. Push through it though because once you get to the second half of the book it really picks up. I like the characters and want to know what happens to them. This is a 3.5 star book for me but as I can't do that on goodreads it has to be three. Hopefully once there is a 2nd book I can review my star rating up.

Teepee or wigwam? Is there anything in between genius and failure?

Great read that challenges your notions of privacy in a connected world and the idleness of examined life.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot was a book interesting enough to persuade me to read through til the end, but ultimately it was a disappointing ride. For starters, Shafer could either shave off a good 100 pages of this 422-page tome that are solely filled with character musings irrelevant to the plot, or he could keep those 100 pages and justify them by having the actual plot of the book start earlier and end later (I'd prefer the latter. He did a great job setting up the three protagonists and their emotional backgrounds. Very real characters.). What I mean by this is that WTF has a very slow start - a good quarter way through the book, it starts to pick up speed, and as it's going along as fast as you'd hope for - bang - the book ends without resolving anything, a reverse in media res, so to speak. The book lays out a hopeful future for the protagonists, but doesn't reveal whether that future comes to fruition or not. You might say it's not the destination that matters, it's the journey, but when I spend this much time on a book, I want to know about that destination. Sure, there are some books that do a fabulous job with this sort of truncated ending, and Shafer could have possibly even pulled off a truncated ending, if only he had ended it a bit further down the line, such as one minute before the true event that would set the endgame in motion, not 2 hours before. Dramatic stakes, yo.

Also, the title of the book doesn't come into play until the last 10 pages. It's not a bad title but honestly, there was no point in withholding the explanation of the title until the end, it's not like it was a bombshell or anything.

A bad book? No. Who doesn't love a slightly-off-the-wall dystopian piece built around the frightening perils of information gathering? But a book I would recommend to others without having it undergo another round of editing? No.

Disclosure: I received this book through GoodReads' FirstRead Program.

This is a really fun, thriller that is smart, witty, and completely engaging with some great characters. I really enjoyed this.

This was a fun read, and, well, quite feasible in terms of What Does The Future Portend? Somewhere between a quick Beach Read type of fluff book and more serious Crying of Lot 49 style "messing with my head" over all.

Similar to The Circle, but I liked this one much better.

Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they are not out to get you. –Catch 22

Paranoia about the NSA used to be the stuff of tin foil hats and other conspiracy theorists, but with the revelation from Edward Snowden things have definitely changed. David Shafer’s comedic novel focuses on an international conspiracy using a faux leadership guru against a small counter-intelligence only known as “Dear Diary”. Funny names are used, paranoid delusions are realized, and hijinx results. However, it seems the book is focused completely on comedic punch lines rather than having any kind of point. A lot of the references are very dated and gives the impression the novel had been sitting in a drawer for a decade or two which impacts the currency of the novel.

Mark Devereaux is a self-help guru followed by millions. His book Bringing the Inside Out is a bestselling novel and he has made appearances on the Oprah-like talk show Margo. Leo Crane, family heir to a major gaming fortune, is in rehab. After losing a number of jobs from his alcoholism, he starts blog entitled I Have Shared a Document With You. While covering mostly paranoid delusions, he seems to accidently hit on a major government conspiracy using Mark Devereaux’s popularity to convince the masses to give over their information and buy the new Node (read iPhone). Leila Majnoun works for a low-level NGO in Malaysia. When she stumbles upon a piece of the conspiracy puzzle, her family is targeted by the federal government. Only with the help of the shadowy “Dear Diary” is she saved from danger and forced to fight against the conspiracy.

This book feels a bit half-finished. He starts the concepts, but there is no execution or finishing. Some people have compared the book to Infinite Jest, but it really doesn’t hold a candle to it. Yes it is funny and involves a government conspiracy, but it doesn’t have any deeper issues. It is closer to Dave Eggers to The Circle, but Eggers has a better idea of where he was going and what he was trying to say. Shafer is trying to get a laugh and it is too obvious that’s his only point. The book has gotten attention this year simply because of NSA conspiracy and the reach of social networking into our private lives. Overall it is a very flat story.

Privacy is an illusion these days. None of us reads the terms and conditions when we sign up for stuff, let alone when they're updated. Our data—even data we don't know we're creating—floats around in the digital ether. Theoretically, laws protect us and our data from being used for nefarious purposes. In David Shafer's science fiction thriller, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, a cabal of companies and intelligence workers have joined together to corner the market on the world's data, intending to lease access or monetize it however they can...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review consideration.