Daemon
"Daemon" is Daniel Suarez's first book and one of the most exciting and interesting novels I've read in a long time. Daniel Suarez is an IT-consultant turned writer and it shows; this is one of the few books that basically gets all the technical details right about Internet, computer security and other technology stuff. Not since Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon have I been as able to relate and enjoy all the technical details along with the excellent action presented.
The Daemon which is the books main "character" is an advanced, autonomous, de-centralized, AI-construct that the millionaire and genius game-developer Matthew Sobol has created to set in motion when he dies. As news of his death are posted online, hacked machines laying dormant on the Internet set a deadly game into play. First it kills several of Sobol's collaborators who might've been capable of figuring out what he had planned. Then it sets in motion a deadly cat and mouse game with the police and FBI which ends in several deaths before the Daemon goes back into hiding in the dark recesses of the Internet.
The Daemon recruits humans over the Internet to join its mysterious quest through a keen sense of human psychology and needs, its creator has foreseen multiple paths that the future can take and plays the world like a chess board. It remains spookily unclear to the reader which parts of its actions are pre-programmed and which parts are the result of the Skynet-like AI. While having a clear purpose it is also cold and unfeeling like only a machine can be - discarding humans like tools and killing them on its mission. The Daemon's servants turn into Fight Club's project Mayhem, unyieldingly loyal because the Daemon giva them something they needed, even though they don't know their real purpose.
The action never lets down and the book is an exciting page-turner all the way through the book, the technical parts are fascinating for a technical people like me but aren't distracting from the story - I would think. It might sound more futuristic than it actually is to someone who don't follow tech or read say Wired Magazine. That said, while all or most of the components are plausible the whole Daemon construct is pretty far-fetched and works too perfectly for a real-life scenario, lucky for us.
If there is one criticism to the book it is that it's too short and ends in a cliffhanger. At around 400 pages and another 400 pages in book two, called "Freedom", the book could have worked better as a thicker book, like Cryptonomicon. The ending leaves way too many threads and motivations open, I'm all for sequels and more reading but this is almost too blatant. Then again, maybe I'm just grumpy because I need to wait a week for the second book to be delivered :).
Either way, this is a must-read for any tech-geeks or fans of techno-thrillers. Fans of William Gibson or Neal Stephenson will feel right at home from page one. I hope Mr. Suarez continues his work for a long time. It isn't as lovingly crafted as Cryptonomicon or Pattern Recognition but then again it is Suarez's first book and was first self-published.
Added: Review of the follow-up, "Freedom(tm)" can be found here: http://www.henryhagnas.com/freedomtm
