When writing stories about hackers, or books set in cyberpunk or Sci-fi settings, the hardest thing is knowing how to strike that balance between storytelling and technical description. Echoes by Laura Tisdall is a hacker book that leans much further on the storytelling side, shedding all the technical aspects of hacking in favour of telling a meaningful story about teenagers.
Echoes is about a sixteen-year-old hacker named Mallory Park
—she also goes by the hacker name Echo Six— who is juggling a number of responsibilities. Mallory is forced to look after her younger brother Jed and her father who suffers from PTSD, all while dealing with anxieties from her school life. She balances this by escaping to The Forum, which is an online community full of hacker friends that she’s never met.
Mallory spends her time completing hacking assignments given to her by The Asker, the admin of The Forum. At The Forum, one of the biggest rules is that no hacker is allowed to divulge any personal information about themselves. This means that Mallory has mastered the art of having ordinary conversations with her forum buddies while avoiding slipping-up and revealing anything of substance about her real life.
Unfortunately for Mallory, hackers start disappearing. Hackers from The Forum even. And soon enough, Mallory’s secret digital life bleeds into her real one as a conspiracy unravels.
What I liked about this plot is that the author, Laura Tisdall, did an excellent job incorporating the plight of a teenager with social anxiety. Mallory dislikes human contact and begins to panic when people get too close. This makes for some intense and meaningful scenes once she eventually meets hackers in person.
Her non-hacker life is also pretty dramatic, and gradually there is more understanding about the absence of Mallory’s mother and how it affects her brother and her father.
The characters are really well done in this book and for the most part they feel plausible. One of the standout characters is another hacker from The Forum named Warden. He offsets Mallory’s flaws nicely, and helps her character to grow as a character.
What I felt the book was missing the most is actual hacking. Since this book is geared more towards a Young Adult audience, much of the techno jargon you’d expect to see in a book about hackers is missing. In the instances where Mallory is carrying out the act, the descriptions are surface level. For many readers, this might be ideal. Others may go into this expecting more instances of hacking.
All-in-all, Echoes is a decent book for the YA genre. Those expecting something more complex hacker story may need to look for alternatives in the Sci-fi / Cyberpunk genres. If you understand what you’re in for before you read Echoes then it will be a satisfying experience.
If you’re like me and wanted more of a hardcore hacker story then you may end up disappointing yourself. But despite the fact I was looking for something else, I didn’t regret reading Echoes. I appreciated the way it captured the thoughts and feelings that teenagers often struggle with and I enjoyed seeing Mallory grow as a character before my eyes.
