Read our interview with Kevin Brooks

Kevin Brooks’ iBoy is, as are all of his books, a tense, well plotted, often humorous, and always thought provoking young adult novel. Technology, teenagers, crime, friendship, and loyalty weave together in a story that shows what strengths lay at the heart of true friends and what power information can hold.

It begins with Tom, an ordinary young boy living a tense life on a London housing estate. Raised by his grandmother, who scrapes nearly enough money to survive out of writing novels, Tom struggles with typical teenage worries: will he get the girl he likes? How little coursework can he do to get by? But Tom goes to meet Lucy one normal afternoon and wakes up days later with an iPhone shattered and embedded in his brain and powers beyond even the dreams of a teenage boy.

Suddenly, Tom has access to all of the information floating around the web and all of the information connected in any way to the internet, to all of conversations, voice mails, and texts that make up the communication of modern life. Tom is swamped with information and access, drowning in the minutiae of the everyday. Eventually able to go home, his new found super-information-highway powers lead him to discover that his accident was a deliberate attack, and that Lucy has also been swept up in the violence and rage that flow out from the estate’s gangs.

Tom’s powers, while they may make him a superhero, do not give him an instant moral compass, or any answers to the difficult questions that come with access to all of the information in the world. Brooks has a deft touch with his characters. They are, above all, real people, who react to shattering events with emotion and determination, no matter the cold hard facts they may have at their fingertips. Tom must decide what to do with the weapons he has, how to act with the knowledge he has gained. Is it enough to help Lucy, or should he avenge her? Is it possible to help his grandmother, or must he hold back? None of the questions are simple, none of the answers to be found with a simple search, and yet Tom must decide.

With all of these questions, iBoy is also a page turning read, fun and fascinating, with endearing characters and interesting villains. Brooks navigates the world of a modern day superhero without resorting to cliche or losing sight of the place his characters call home. What does it mean, after all, to say that information is power?

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