Matthew Sobol, programming genius, founder of CyberStorm Entertainment, one of the richest and most powerful of Silicon Valley's elite, is dead, but his final creation lives on to execute his last will and testament. At the moment of Sobol's death, computer programmes around the world burst into life, creating an entity known as the Daemon. The Daemon infiltrates our hyper-connected society, gathering secrets, stealing identities. Soon it has the power to change lives as well as the power to take them: those who serve the Daemon are rewarded; those who defy it are eliminated. Recruiting acolytes from the dispossessed and disaffected, the Daemon secures a growing stranglehold on the world's most precious commodity: information. And once you control information itself, how easy would it be to remake the world? It is up to an unlikely alliance - a computer illiterate detective and a white-hat hacker with secrets of his own - to challenge the monster that Sobol unleashed from beyond the grave. But before they can confront the Daemon they must discover what it wants...
Daemon
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Suarez's riveting debut would be a perfect gift for a favorite computer geek or anyone who appreciates thrills, chills and cyber suspense - Publishers Weekly (starred review).
Greatest. Techno-thriller. Period. Suarez presents a fascinating account of autonomous, logic-based terrorism, incorporating current and anticipated technologies to create a credible and quite clever story. Experts have long feared the Internet doomsday scenario; the Daemon is arguably more terrifying - Billy O'Brien, Director of Cybersecurity and Communications Policy, The White House.
Suarez is the best author of tech fiction since Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson - John Robb, author of Brave New War.
Daemon is the real deal - a scary look at what can go wrong as we depend increasingly on computer networks - Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist.
Daemon is better than early Tom Clancy … the tech is invoked with inside knowledge; the writing is better; and deeper issues are explored with greater imagination - Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and cofounder of The Long Now Foundation.
Damon is to novels what The Matrix was to movies. It will be how other novels that rely on technology will be judged - Rick Klau, Strategic Partner Development, Google.
From the Back Cover
Computer genius Matthew Sobol is dead, but his final creation lives on. An infernal web of autonomous computer programs, Sobol's Daemon feasts on the lifeblood of our hyper-connected society: information. Gathering secrets and stealing identities, it soon has the power to change lives as well as the power to take them. Those who serve the Daemon are rewarded; those who defy it are eliminated. Recruiting acolytes from the dispossessed and disaffected, the Daemon grows stronger with each passing day. We face a start choice: confront a faceless, formless monster or learn to live in a world in which we are no longer in control.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Not sure what the some of the others reviewers were expecting but I absolutely loved this book - enough to write my first Amazon review.
Suarez takes some of the most interesting modern technologies - mmorpg's, social networks, autonomous software agents, botnets, darknets. etc. - and combines them with the most pressing social problems - the growing gap between rich/poor, 1st world/3d world, l33t/newb, young/old - and extrapolates this into a gripping, all too believable(ish) thriller, probably the only book I've ever read that actually lives up to the title 'technothriller.'
The plot unfolds like a particularly well oiled machine, initial small scale incidents snowballing into a full on climax that Michael Bay would be proud of. The initial chapters read as a tech-savvy police procedural then build through FBI/CIA/NSA involvement and an evil version of Bruce Sterling's network gift economy into full on widescreen computer game madness. It's true that the later parts of the book push believability a bit, but I was so hooked at that point that I really didn't care.
An impressive book, especially for a debut novel. Roll on the sequel...
p.s Although written for a mass audience the tech/hacking sequence are kept pretty accurate but he's not writing for the black/grey/whitehat/script kiddy crowd so if your the kind of person that going to be put off by him mistyping a port number then this isn't for you.
Suarez takes some of the most interesting modern technologies - mmorpg's, social networks, autonomous software agents, botnets, darknets. etc. - and combines them with the most pressing social problems - the growing gap between rich/poor, 1st world/3d world, l33t/newb, young/old - and extrapolates this into a gripping, all too believable(ish) thriller, probably the only book I've ever read that actually lives up to the title 'technothriller.'
The plot unfolds like a particularly well oiled machine, initial small scale incidents snowballing into a full on climax that Michael Bay would be proud of. The initial chapters read as a tech-savvy police procedural then build through FBI/CIA/NSA involvement and an evil version of Bruce Sterling's network gift economy into full on widescreen computer game madness. It's true that the later parts of the book push believability a bit, but I was so hooked at that point that I really didn't care.
An impressive book, especially for a debut novel. Roll on the sequel...
p.s Although written for a mass audience the tech/hacking sequence are kept pretty accurate but he's not writing for the black/grey/whitehat/script kiddy crowd so if your the kind of person that going to be put off by him mistyping a port number then this isn't for you.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Okay, I'm not going to beat around the bush here (after all, I'm not Sean Connery or Geoffrey Boycott!). Much as it pains me to have to pull a young author's trousers down within a public arena, I am sorry to inform you that this book is a right old stinker! After a fair start (which could conceivably have led somewhere) it gradually pans out that the whole thing is not headed anywhere. The basic premise may be sound enough (and in fairness, there are moments when the author shows a good feel for the short-term pacing of suspense). However there is no significant plot development whatsoever, after the the existence and power of an internet daemon have been established. The structuring is absolutely abysmal. Various events (that are explained in tedious levels of detail) ultimately turn out to have been entirely superfluous. One seemingly major character (a young computer hacker) is given page after page of narrative, only to abruptly disappear without a word of explanation (before making a ham-fistedly token reappearance at the end of the book- that was possibly supposed to pass for a 'twist'?). It's as though the whole of the second half was nothing more than a load of waffle that was designed to buy time, while the author embarked on a (doomed) quest to come up with a worthy direction in which to proceed. Perhaps he was trying to evoke the sense of futility that might ensue, were the internet to be compromised as such? Regardless of whether this were the case, the only futility that he actually managed to communicate was that which lies in trying to pad out the last couple of hundred pages of a novel without a worthy goal in mind.
Even if the publishers had set out on a bold venture to represent the quality of the story by printing in human excrement rather than in ink, this book could hardly have warranted a significantly more damning assessment. While I would have to grudgingly applaud the author for having had the sheer gumption to put backside to paper, I wouldn't urge anyone to spend their time sifting through this keepsake of his most pungent faecal ablutions. The only real positive that I could highlight is the fact that he managed to serve up an inclusion of the word 'bukkake'- a term that has suffered an all too tragic level of neglect within mainstream popular fiction.
Even if the publishers had set out on a bold venture to represent the quality of the story by printing in human excrement rather than in ink, this book could hardly have warranted a significantly more damning assessment. While I would have to grudgingly applaud the author for having had the sheer gumption to put backside to paper, I wouldn't urge anyone to spend their time sifting through this keepsake of his most pungent faecal ablutions. The only real positive that I could highlight is the fact that he managed to serve up an inclusion of the word 'bukkake'- a term that has suffered an all too tragic level of neglect within mainstream popular fiction.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By SBno1
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
I am not going to re-hash what others have commented on here, the reviews so far are a good balance of what the book is about. I am just going to add a few observations.
I enjoyed this book, read it over a period of a few quiet days and it kept my attention throughout. If you are computer literate, familiar with a wide range of computer terms and enjoy crime novels, then you will probably get along with this book just fine.
However if you are not then I would say that within the first 2 chapters you are going to be struggling with some of the terminology and rapidly lose interest before the book has a chance. It gets a bit heavy talking (without any description) about TCP/IP, routing data, Server farms, CAT5 cables etc.
I didn't think that the terminology really added much to the atmosphere of the book and was probably used to its detriment. A little less cyberspeak would have opened the book up to a wider audience.
I disagree with the comment in the product description that "Deamon is to novels what The Matrix was to movies". I don't think this book is that revolutionary or literary changing.
That being said, I read it, I enjoyed it and I recommend it....if you are prepared to just accept techno terms without having to Google them
I enjoyed this book, read it over a period of a few quiet days and it kept my attention throughout. If you are computer literate, familiar with a wide range of computer terms and enjoy crime novels, then you will probably get along with this book just fine.
However if you are not then I would say that within the first 2 chapters you are going to be struggling with some of the terminology and rapidly lose interest before the book has a chance. It gets a bit heavy talking (without any description) about TCP/IP, routing data, Server farms, CAT5 cables etc.
I didn't think that the terminology really added much to the atmosphere of the book and was probably used to its detriment. A little less cyberspeak would have opened the book up to a wider audience.
I disagree with the comment in the product description that "Deamon is to novels what The Matrix was to movies". I don't think this book is that revolutionary or literary changing.
That being said, I read it, I enjoyed it and I recommend it....if you are prepared to just accept techno terms without having to Google them
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4.1 out of 5 stars
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable modern thriller
As a lover of the late Michael Crichton I quite enjoyed this, although it is not as consistent as one of Crichton's, Suarez shows a lot of promise. Read more
Published 1 month ago by I Am Tyler Durden
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must for anyone who likes technology
Daniel Suarez's grasp of technology, and how it could be developed and used (for good or evil) is brilliant in this book. Read more
Published 2 months ago by IGGt
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great warning of where technology could go
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it is very well written and keeps you guessing what is going on and where it is headed. Read more
Published 5 months ago by andr3wpr
5.0 out of 5 stars
Loved it!
One of those rare occasions when a scifi about computers is written by a guy who knows what he's writing about.
Published 6 months ago by Mefiras
5.0 out of 5 stars
Absolutely brilliant
I found this in a ship's library while on a cruise but I didn't have time to finish it so I bought the kindle version to read on the way home. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Fren
5.0 out of 5 stars
Is Daniel Suarez the new Michael Crichton?
Is Daniel Suarez the new Michael Crichton? This technothriller is extremely well written, edge of your seat book. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Fred Weimer
5.0 out of 5 stars
Recommend!
I liked the book and recommend it. I think this twenty word limit is ridiculous. All I wanted was to to give this book the 5 stars it deserves and get on with it.
Published 10 months ago by Mark
4.0 out of 5 stars
A really good DotNet thriller
If you read this then you'll have to read Freedom!!
As someone who works in the software industry I found this book scarily real. Read more
As someone who works in the software industry I found this book scarily real. Read more
Published 11 months ago by R. Taylor
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic
This is a fantastic read. I bought it on the recommendation of a podcast and was immersed straight from the start. Read more
Published 11 months ago by An Honest Reviewer
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good
A great thriller novel that handles fairly technical information in a clever way. Anyone interested in technology, video games and cyber warfare should give this book a go.
Published 12 months ago by R. Greeno
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