Daemon
by Daniel Suarez
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Book Summary Information
Author: Daniel SuarezEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-01-08
ISBN: 0525951113
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Book Reviews of Daemon
Book Review: This is just the beginning of Suarez's and Sobol's world
Summary: 5 Stars
The jacket blurbs for DAEMON favorably compare Daniel Suarez's debut novel with the works of Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton. I would beg to differ. This book put me in the mind of the early cyberpunk work of William Gibson or, perhaps more appropriately, the final novels of Philip K. Dick --- VALIS, THE DIVINE INVASION, and THE TRANSMIGRATION OF TIMOTHY ARCHER --- which composed a loose trilogy and ultimately served as a capstone for his long and impressive bibliography. VALIS, published in 1981, was an anagram for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, which is what DAEMON deals with at its core. Those with long memories will recall the Y2K scare, which was occasioned by the theory that early computer programming codes did not take into account the turning of the century. It was believed that havoc would result; what occurs here, however, is far worse than anything that was anticipated leading up to 2000.
Suarez picks up and moves right along with the presumption that his audience has at least a rudimentary knowledge of computer programming and cyberspace. Readers who are of a certain age and station may well be served by having a 16-year-old at the ready to interpret some of what is occurring during the course of the work. However, Suarez does define the term "daemon": it's a quiet little program that runs in the background of your computer and Internet experience, transferring money, delivering e-mail and monitoring power level. Sounds mundane, almost boring, doesn't it? That is not the case, at least in this author's capable hands. What he does is extrapolate what happens when daemons are written with malevolent intent.
The "malevolent" in DAEMON is personified in Matthew Sobol, a legendary online game designer who uses the occasion of his premature death to launch his ultimate creation. When a notice of Sobol's passing is posted online, it activates a previously dormant daemon that initiates a chain reaction resulting in one death and then another. Law enforcement personnel are just beginning to connect the two deaths and to classify them as murders when a cataclysmic event occurs that results in the horrific killings of a SWAT team and an FBI strike force. The instigator is Sobol, who from beyond the grave begins to unleash new layers of daemons that unravel a system that for the most part functions efficiently.
These acts raise a question: How does one stop a murderer who is dead, but whose plan of attack is constantly evolving in reaction to defenses against it? The answer may lie in part within an online computer game through which a reconstructed Sobol guides his carefully selected minions, planning a series of earth-shaking acts heralding not so much the destruction of the current civilization as midwifing a new one.
DAEMON is definitely a plot-driven work; it would be wise for the reader not to become too enamored with any one character, as just about everyone is potentially disposable. Indeed, there are enough explosions and destruction to satisfy even the most jaded action junkie. And while there aren't many sex scenes, there is one in particular that will cause those of similar inclinations to stop reading in order to defog their eyeballs.
This is just the beginning of Suarez's and Sobol's world. A sequel to DAEMON, titled FREEDOM, is due out in 2010, and parts of it are available online at www.thedaemon.com. But my gut feeling is that the new world that Suarez is creating is too vast, too broad, to be contained on the canvas of two or even three books. Jump on now while you can still catch up. And hang on.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
Summary of Daemon
Already an underground sensation, a high-tech thriller for the wireless age that explores the unthinkable consequences of a computer program running without human control?a daemon?designed to dismantle society and bring about a new world orderTechnology controls almost everything in our modern-day world, from remote entry on our cars to access to our homes, from the flight controls of our airplanes to the movements of the entire world economy. Thousands of autonomous computer programs, or daemons, make our networked world possible, running constantly in the background of our lives, trafficking e-mail, transferring money, and monitoring power grids. For the most part, daemons are benign, but the same can?t always be said for the people who design them.
Matthew Sobol was a legendary computer game designer?the architect behind half-a-dozen popular online games. His premature death depressed both gamers and his company?s stock price. But Sobol?s fans aren?t the only ones to note his passing. When his obituary is posted online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events intended to unravel the fabric of our hyper-efficient, interconnected world. With Sobol?s secrets buried along with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed at every turn, it?s up to an unlikely alliance to decipher his intricate plans and wrest the world from the grasp of a nameless, faceless enemy?or learn to live in a society in which we are no longer in control. . . .
Computer technology expert Daniel Suarez blends haunting high-tech realism with gripping suspense in an authentic, complex thriller in the tradition of Michael Crichton, Neal Stephenson, and William Gibson.
Robin Cook on Daemon
Doctor and author Robin Cook is widely credited with introducing the word "medical" to the thriller genre. Thirty-one years after the publication of his breakthrough novel, Coma, he continues to dominate the category he created, including his most recent bestseller, Foreign Body, which explores a growing trend of medical tourism--first-world citizens traveling to third-world countries for 21st-century surgery.
Daemon is an ambitious novel, which sets out not only to entertain, which it surely does, but also to challenge the reader to consider social issues as broad as the implications of living in a technologically advanced world and whether democracy can survive in such a world.
The storyline portrays one possible world consequent to the development of the technological innovations that we currently live with and the reality that the author, Suarez, imagines will evolve, and it is chilling and tense (on www.thedaemon.com the reader can find evidence that the seemingly incredible advances Suarez proposes could in fact become real). Daemon is filled with multiple scenes involving power displays by the Daemon's allies resulting in complete loss of control by its enemies, violence with new and innovative weaponry, explosions, car crashes, blood, guts, and limbs-cut-off galore.
As far as computer complexity, Daemon will satisfy any computer geek's thirst. I was thankful for Pete Sebeck, the detective in the book whose average-person understanding of computers necessitates an occasional explanation about what is going on. I came away from the novel with a new understanding, respect, and fear of computer capability.
In the end, Suarez invites the reader to enter the "second age of reason," to think about where recent and imminent advances in computer technology are taking us and whether we want to go there. For me, it is this "thinking" aspect of the novel which makes it a particularly fun, satisfying, and significant read.
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