@sarahzedig managed to be first in line for my library's copy, and liked the Doctorow, I thought it effectively did what he was trying to do -- I'll also say there's a couple Doctorow-fiction tropes that I don't care for that I was pleasantly surprised not to see here (can elaborate without plot spoilers on request)

@bruceiv oh i'm curious what tropes you don't like! i don't really remember why i stopped reading his stuff (i liked little brother and pirate cinema well enough) except that i got really disillusioned with his strain of technoliberalism. his recent stuff has been so solidly materialist though that it dragged me back

@sarahzedig 1. Fatphobia: it was a whole subplot in Makers, and lingered on in Attack Surface as a leitmotif for how evil the protagonist's boss is -- everyone's young and beautiful in a very Hollywood way here, but I didn't catch the negative representation in the same way.
2. Older men dating college girls: Makers and Walkaway, all explicitly and enthusiastically consensual, but it still rubs me the wrong way -- the protagonist here is 19 himself, and the main relationship isn't so age-gapped