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Stephen Davies
HACKING TIMBUKTU New York. Clarion Books. 2010. 272 pages ISBN-10: 0547390165 reviewed by Patrick Killough (1) biblio.com 10/01/2010 Would you recommend this book to other readers? Yes. * * * * * review: I asked amazon.com/VINE to send me this book to read and review because my 16-year old grandson is into both computers and more especially into parkour. English missionary Stephen Davies, resident in Burkino Faso wrote the boys adventure tale, HACKING TIMBUKTU. In an "Author's Note" Davies claims that this is "perhaps the first ever parkour novel." Davies does not provide a glossary of either hacking or parkour terminology. But he defines and redefines terms throughout his yarn. The novel's hero is 16-year old Londoner Dan Temple. His father has moved to Australia with a new wife. Dad happily pays for Dan's rent in London. Dan is a school dropout trying to make a living as a "freelance code monkey." He is a White Hacker, i. e., does not worm his ways into computers to do harm -- at least initially. Dan's second passion is parkour (from the French parcourir, to run a course). In its simplest form, parkour is the art of running as fast as possible in as straight a line as possible toward a pre-defined goal, using only the human body as a means of propulsion. and for overcoming obstacles like walls, roofs, trenches, etc. A male practitioner of parkour is a traceur, a female: traceuse. "Parkour
is not so very different from hacking. ... Both move freely to surpass
the barriers erected by man to enclose and restrict" (Ch.
2).
Boys love both codes and mysteries and running and jumping; so viva hacking! viva parkour! Through SKYPE, Dan hacks his way into a computer in Timbuktu, Mali where he finds a Magic Square, the key to an immense treasure of gold stolen and hidden 700 years earlier. With his friend Omar, Dan Temple soon flies to Africa and pursues the treasure. The boys in turn are pursued by a growing horde of computer nerds worldwide who want them to share knowledge of the treasure with them. More dangerous is the novel's murderous villain Moktar Hassim, a religious student in Timbuktu. He offs or maims more than one person in his pursuit of the gold. Moktar has stolen the original manuscript giving exact indications of the trove's location. Parkour is used incessantly throughout HACKING TIMBUKTU. For it is the art of escaping pursuers, as well as the art of running fast toward a goal. And are these boys pursued! Including by a larcenous London policeman. The African roots of parkour are also highlighted, as Moktar Hassim is shown to be a fast racer and obstacle overcomer in his own right. And like many others in Mali, Moktar can climb a cliff faster than is good for either Dan or Omar. This is a fine boys adventure tale. I commend it warmly to parents and grandparents as a gift for boys and girls who show signs of becoming couch potatoes or mentally lazy. It is a wakeup call. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/childrens-books-young/hacking-timbuktu -davies-stephen-2010~ctbk~1c656~326527067 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com 10/02/2010 name of review: "If martial arts teach you fight, parkour teaches you flight" rating: * * * * review: Seven hundred years ago on the Niger River in Timbuktu, Mali, West Africa's greatest center of Islamic learning, a fictional 17 year old student of mathematics named Akonio Dolo stole a massive amount of gold bricks from a mosque. Escaping his captors by acrobatic skills common in his mysterious Dogon tribe, Akonio Dolo climbed to the top of the mosque. Before plunging to his death, he gave clues as to where he had hidden the gold, far, far away from Timbuktu. Searchers from Timbuktu ignored an important clue found in the boy's room: an Arabic mathematics treatise with a Magic Square of 7 by 7 blocks filled with numbers. One October not long into the 21st Century, two students in Timbuktu, Moktar Hasim and Ahmed, were scanning old crumbling manuscripts into computers to preserve them. Ahmed discovered the manuscript from Akonio Dolo's room and recognized it as a key to finding the lost gold. Moktar slammed the scanner top on Ahmed's head, deleted the copy of the MS from the computer and ran off to find the gold. Word of this theft reached London during a major international conference of computer hackers. A group calling itself Knights of Akonio Dolo began putting pressure on conference attendees to help them find the gold. Enter 16 year old Daniel Temple, "free lance code monkey." He is pressured by searchers for the gold to hack his way into the computer in Timbuktu and retrieve the missing Magic Square. He succeeds and escapes the Knights with the help of his mate Omar Dupont, who is bilingual in French. This proves handy as after many narrow escapes in London, the two boys reach francophone Mali and search for the gold. Danny is a phenomenally good hacker. Omar is fantastic at parkour. Danny is not bad at parkour but can never catch up with Omar. Omar knows little about computing. The novel is called HACKING TIMBUKTU. Its author, Stephen Davies, bills HACKING TIMBUKTU as "perhaps the first-ever parkour novel" (Author's Note). If you don't know what parkour is going in to this non-stop, no girls, action yarn, you soon will. It is described over and over and over. For example: "If martial arts
teach you fight, parkour teaches you flight --an efficient way of
evading pursuers and moving smoothly over obstacles in your path. Kong
vault, dark vault, kash vault, cat pass, gap jump, dismount, drop"
(Ch. 2).
Throughout HACKING
TIMBUKTU parkour and hacking are compared. Both give practitioners a
rush, a sense of freedom"Parkour is not so very different from hacking. Traceur (one who does parkour) and hacker both require special techniques, special vision. Both move freely to surpass the barriers erected by man to enclose and restrict. Parkour and hacking are about one thing only: freedom" (Ch. 15). This book, despite its total absence of girls or teen romances, should appeal strongly to boys and girls aged 10 to 18. It has history, Africa, murder, chases, codes, computers, mysteries and two British boys using only their bodily and mental skills to track down a huge hoard of gold. And don't forget Moktar Hasim. He is ruthless, regards the gold as his. When his path crosses that of Daniel and Omar, expect mayhem. Daniel begins as a "white hacker," doing no harm to computers he invades. See if Daniel can stay true to his ideals when tempted by gold. -OOO- http://www.lunch.com/Reviews/d/stephen_davies_ hacking_timbuktu-1631906.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com 10/02/2010 title of review: The non-stop adventures in England and Africa of 16-year old "Danny Temple, freelance code monkey" rating: * * * * review: Stephen Davies's 2010 novel HACKING TIMBUKTU tells the adventures in England and Africa of 16-year old "Danny Temple, freelance code monkey." 700 years earlier Akonio Dolo a fictional 17-year old mathematics student in Timbuktu had stolen a fortune in gold and hidden it in a faraway cliff. Clues as to how to find the horde lay hidden until the 21st Century and a university project to scan crumbling manuscripts of Timbuktu into computers. Unable to resist temptation, Moktar Hasim, an African student involved with the massive scanning project, learns one late October day that one MS is the key to the gold, bops a colleague on the head, deletes the scanned manuscript's file on the computer and scampers off to find the treasure. Meanwhile word of Moktar's theft flashes around the world, arriving in London during the annual convention of HOPE (Hackers of Planet Earth). A rapidly growing group greedy for gold calling itself The Knights of Akonio Dolo try threats and violence to induce various conference hackers to work with them in their quest. They put the finger on Danny Temple. He escapes with the help of his francophone friend Omar Dupont (whose parents live in Paris) and after many parcour chases across roofs and one three-storey leap into the Thames, the two boys reach Mali. There their paths cross with Moktar Hasim, who has already killed in his search and will do the same to Danny and Omar if he has to. HACKING TIMBUKTU is possibly the world's "first-ever parcour novel" (Author's Note). If you don't know what running, jumping, dodging escaping, etc. parcour is now, I won't spoil your pleasure by defining it. Every five pages or so parcour is re-examined. And especially in its parallels to the rushes and highs that hackers feel when they break through a computer's fire walls (as Danny does via SKYPE to retrieve the deleted gold file in TImbuktu and later to add frequent flyer miles to an Air France work station at Gatwick Airport so the boys can fly to Africa). Practitioners of parcour (they are called traceurs) and hackers are kindred spirits in their search for personal freedom: no obstacle is too high for them. HACKING TIMBUKTU is a classic boys adventure tale in a genre hallowed by Sinclair Lewis's 1924 HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE (high tech aircraft, chase, chase, chase) and a favorite series of my youth, DAVE DAWSON by R. Sidney Bowen (an American teen and a British teen team up to fight the Axis). Gold corrupts: it hacks into the innate amorality of the African students Akonio Dolo and Moktar Hasim, as well as into that of the young Brits Daniel Temple and Omar Dupont. In this novel: no girls. No teen romances. Just rooftop chase after chase, cell phones as aids to capture an opponent, codes, computers and the extra rush from combining parcour and hacking. -OOO- recommended reading: -- Sinclair Lewis: HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE, THE TRAIL OF THE HAWK. -- R. Sidney Bowen: DAVE DAWSON IN SINGAPORE. http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?store =BOOK&WRD=hacking+timbuktu =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com 10/02/2010 title of review: "From here on in it's all catting and hacking." rating: * * * * I am 75 years old. In my lifetime I have seen America take on previously unfamiliar sports such as surfing, skateboarding and soccer. And now there is parkour. In his Author's Note to his 2010 novel HACKING TIMBUKTU, missionary to Africa Stephen Davies, opines that he has just written "perhaps the first-ever parkour novel." You do not have to know anything about parkour before opening HACKING TIMBUKTU. But I was helped because my 15-year old grandson in Greenville, South Carolina took up parkouring (aka PKing) a couple of years back. I have watched him leap across streams, scale pillars and fall without (too much) pain on shoulder, etc. after jumping off a ten-foot high tree house. Action is non-stop from beginning of HACKING TIMBUKTU to end. Two English boys, Danny Temple and Omar Dupont (the latter bilingual in French, which helps greatly when the boys reach francophone Mali), are swept into a worldwide frenzied hunt for treasure. 700 years ago Akonio Dolo, a fictional 17-year old mathematics student in Timbuktu, Mali, had cleverly stolen millions of dollars of gold from a mosque. He left clues where to find his trove but they were not noticed until a computer project scanning all ancient manuscripts of Timbuktu into document files popped up Akonio Dolo's clues. Danny Temple is a white hatted (i. e., one who does no harm) computer hacker with some knowledge of parkour. His friend Omar Dupont is a master of parkour but a bit of a computer dud. Throughout HACKING TIMBUKTU there is constant interplay between the mental games played by the mind and the physical games played by bodies (called traceurs) that do parkour (PK). A perfect example, from many, is what happens at the Gatwick Airport. The two boys, after fleeing across the rooftops of London from The Knights of Akonio Dolo (and Danny even having dived three storeys into the Thames), are determined to fly to Mali and find the treasure for themselves. They don't have enough money. But Omar has Air France's equivalent of Frequent Flyer Miles. If Danny can tap into the computer at the Air France travel desk, he can increase the miles in Omar's account and, voila, off they go! And the episode that followed allows me to flesh out my review title "From here on in it's all catting and hacking." Daniel had climbed up high above the Air France station. He reached a beam, cut into a computer cable and did the necessary. Parkour and hacking: what a high! "Catting" refers to "cat balance," a maneuver you can find all over YouTube. "Cat
balance had been one of the first techniques Danny learned. … Left
palm, ball of right foot. Right palm, ball of left foot. Head down,
back straight. … You had to practice until you couldn't get it wrong"
(Ch.20)
With the whole world in pursuit, Dan and Omar figure out where the treasure is hidden. But Moktar Hasim, a murderous Arab knows too. And he won't hesitate to kill them if he finds them there before him. I remember my own pleasure 65 years ago reading books like Sinclair Lewis's boys adventure tale HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE and R. Sidney Bowen's DAVE DAWSON series (Yank teen and UK teen team up to defeat the Axis). I think my computer savvy, PK traceur grandson will eat up HACKING TIMBUKTU. My only caveat to all young readers (even the girls who are NOT represented at all in this novel) is this: gold corrupts, even Arab and English boys who start out wearing white hats. -OOO- http://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Timbuktu-Stephen-Davies/ dp/0547390165/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid= 1285850770&sr=1-1 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com 10/03/2010 Title of review: "Privacy is dead. Deal with it." Product rating: * * * * Pros: World's first parkour novel. Gold! Islam. Africa. Hacking computers. Two boys having great fun. Cons: No girls. No teen romance. Unlikely escapes. Amorality trumps altruism. Not profound. Cheeky, breezy writing. The Bottom Line: HACKING TIMBUKTU cleverly melds two juvenile crazes: hacking into computers and parkour ("PK"). Portrays teens who are physically active and mentally creative. But amoral. Jaunty, breezy, superficial writing . aohcapablanca's Full Review: Stephen Davies - Hacking Timbuktu You can thank my 15-year old grandson Gavin Patrick for motivating me to choose HACKING TIMBUKTU by Stephen Davies to read and review. I doubt that Gavin -- though way beyond his granddad in Information Technology (IT) -- is into hacking computers. But he is very big (and locally publcized for his prowess) in parkour, aka PK. I first noticed a change in my grandson a couple of years back during an intergenerational elderhostel. Our group was in downtown Chattanooga on the plaza outside the world-famous aquarium. Young Gavin was teaching other elderhostlers' grandchildren to leap from rock to rock across artificial streams and to do handstands on railings. A few days later, after our white water rafting on the Ocoee River, I watched Gavin scramble up a pillar near the reviewing stands left from the 1996 summer Olympics for whitewater slalom competition. By then I was curious enough to ask what on earth he was up to. Answer: "parkour, Granddad, of course." Accurately or not, I was then told that parkour was an integral part of the physical fitness training of the French army, the U.S. marine corps and other august bodies. Its essence was to tackle obstacles head on rather than go around them. A traceur (male practitioner) or traceuse (female practitioner) charges flat out, straight ahead, climbs or bounces off a wall, leaps from rooftop to rooftop and learns a specialized French-based vocabulary in the process. All that I picked up from my very physically fit, computer savvy grandson. I learned even more from HACKING TIMBUKTU -- starting with computer hacking. In HACKING TIMBUKTU I met 16-year old Londoner Daniel Temple, "freelance code monkey," the world famous "Pergamon 256," white-hat computer hacker supreme. I also met in "London, 21st Century" delegates to a late October global Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE) conference : -- "white-hat hackers (who used their IT
skills only for good),
-- black hat hackers (virus writers, DOS warriors, and script kiddies), -- and gray-hat hackers (who hadn't decided which side they were on or didn't recognize any sides at all" (Ch 2). Suddenly news burst upon the world of an immense treasure of gold bars hidden in the forbidding "cliffs of Bandiagara ... nineteen ghalva northwest of Tireli," not terribly far from Timbuktu, Mali. The gold had been stolen from a mosque 700 years earlier by brilliant 17-year old math student Akonio Dolo. Akonio Dolo was a member of the mysterious Dogon people who create mystical signature symbols called Nommo. The young thief, who is shown practicing a 14th century predecessor of parkour in a vain effort to escape the people who pulled him out of a tunnel, left ample clues as to where his gold was secreted. This he did via a marginal nommo on a page of a manuscript found in his room. It was called "Introduction to Magic Squares." In late October of a recent year in Timbuktu, two students, Moktar Hasim and Ahmed were busy scanning crumbling manuscripts to save them in computer memories. Ahmed recognized a particular MS as precisely that one found 700 years earlier in the room of Akonio Dolo but not then recognized as the key to the stolen treasure's location. Moktar badly injured Ahmed, deleted the computer file and stole the "magic square" manuscript page. Using native African parkour-like skills, Moktar made a daring escape to set off along the Niger River to find the gold. Meanwhile, after the world learned of what Moktar had done, a rapidly growing number of organized treasure seekers styling themselves "The Knights of Akonio Dolo" waylay various nerds at the London HOPE hackers conference and pressure them to retrieve the deleted file hiding in a Timbuktu computer. Under coercion, Daniel complies. Using the Skype page of the project leader in Timbuktu, he penetrates the computer's fire walls and retrieves the magic squares. He surreptitiously texts for help to his francophone young friend Omar Dupont. Omar brings the police to arrest the Knight intruder. And the boys are off to Mali to find the treasure! But first they have to get out of London and elude the hundreds of Knights (and a crooked policeman) mad for buried treasure. Omar is far beyond Danny in parkour skill. And between them we learn all about parkour as a method of slipping out of traps set by enemies. Dan combines climbing and hacking skills at Gatwick Airport. He manages to add frequent flyer miles to Omar's Air France account. Voila, it's up, up and away for the two youngsters. Little do they know that their supreme challenge (both in IT and parkour expertise) awaits them on the cliffs of Bandiagara. For Moktar Hasim has turned murderous. And if the boys find the gold bars before he does, they will be toast! We learn much of the innate courtliness and kindness of the people of Mali, as they offer hospitality to the two English boys. But we also see how tourism has brought out their latent greed. One Malian after another demands payment for nothing. The two boys justify their own personal descent into greed by comparing themselves to Robin Hood, who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. They will learn that you may start out trying to give a gift to the poor people of Mali, but they may well strip you of everything you own -- in return. This is a boys adventure story. In my youth I enjoyed them, too, such books as -- BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY by Roy
Rockwood. Bomba is a South American poor man's Tarzan wannabe.
-- DAVE DAWSON IN THE R.A.F. and a bunch of others in the series. In these books Yank teenager Dave Dawson and Brit teenager Freddy Farmer take on the Axis in WW II. -- Later in life I read Sinclair Lewis's 1924 HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE. Using an airplane built in a backyard on kite principles, Hike and friends tackle bad guys in Mexico. Boys adventure tales are much of a muchness. They have either no or irrelevant girls. No teen romance. Go, go, go action. Chases galore. And youngsters outwitting and outrunning crafty, sometimes evil adults. So do not expect to find the psychological or theological depths of Dostoevsky or Graham Greene in HACKING TIMBUKTU. But don't be surprised, either, if your ten to 17-year olds eat it up. The author argues that both hacking and parkour have a common goal: freedom. Freedom from obstacles. Freedom to invade other people's private, protected areas. Freedom to do what it takes to use obstacles as opportunities for personal growth. Author Stephen Davies lives in francophone Africa, specifcally in Burkino Faso, where my niece Kim Varzi not too long ago taught math in French out in the bush among baboons and vipers as a peace corps volunteer. HACKING TIMBUKTU shows the continuing French impact in west and central Africa. It also stresses the physical skills of many Africans which resemble but predate parkour. The villainous Moktar, for instance, is one frightening climber of cliffs. You do not want him pursuing you up an escarpment if he thinks you are between him and millions of dollars worth of gold bricks. HACKING TIMBUKTU is an impressive little, mildly didactic yarn for the young. See how gold erodes morals. The author of HACKING TIMBUKTU thinks that his book may be the world's first parkour novel. And that is an important claim about an important phenomenon. Just ask selected non-couch potato teenagers of your neighborhood. "If
martial arts teach you fight, parkour teaches you flight -- an
efficient way of evading pursuers and moving smoothly over obstacles in
your path. Kong vault, dark vault, kash vault, cat pass, gap jump,
dismount, drop" (Ch. 2).
As for Information Technology (IT) and computer hacking, the book's message is "Privacy is Dead. Deal with it." (Ch. 2) -OOO- P.S. Let me thank -- both amazon.com's VINE program for
allowing me at no cost to select, read and review this
stimulating boys adventure novel
-- as well as epinions.com category lead PESTYSIDE/Patsy for making this title available to me and other epinionators to review. Recommended: Yes http://www99.epinions.com/review/Stephen_Davies _Hacking_Timbuktu_epi/content_526639206020 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= file: davies_timbuktu http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/davies_timbuktu.html |