Daemon by Daniel Suarez


Top-notch techno-thriller, with equal emphasis on the "techno" and the "thriller"

Published in 2009 by Signet

Daemon is part 1 of a series. I do not know if there will be more than one sequel but the next book, Freedom, is coming in 2010. (Note: Click on this link to see the review I wrote about Freedom)
A computer program created by a mad genius has infiltrated the world's computers and is creating a 'new world order'. A revolution is in the mix and it will be led by the world's disaffected and misfits - the tattooed computer geeks, the pierced gamers, crazed psychopaths that treat all life like it is a NPC in a computer game, etc.

There have been plenty of books, movies and TV shows about the computer that has taken over a building or a spaceship, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey . but this is the first one I've heard of in which the entire world economic system has been hijacked. I'm no computer expert, but and I am competent at most things concerning computers and the thing is, Daniel Suarez makes it seem so possible...

Daniel Suarez
Lots of techno stuff, tons of action, lots of death and destruction. The book is a rolling rampage and I'm going to be looking for the sequel!

 I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

 This book can be found on Amazon.com here: DAEMON

Reviewed on June 9, 2009.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts over the last 30 days

Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution - A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First by Alister McGrath

Image
Strong, but not for those who are not well-versed in history   Originally published in 2007. Let me just note that Alister McGrath has taken on a large topic (Protestantism) in Christianity's Dangerous Idea and done about as well as one can in organizing the information and presenting it in a cogent and readable fashion. McGrath assumes that you already know a lot about history in general and about the last 500 years or so in particular. That is to be expected. If he had to explain every last detail this book it would have to have been 3,000 pages rather than the already hefty 478 pages of text plus 50+ pages of endnotes. If you are a person that has heard of the Huguenots, but are not sure if they are a native group in South Africa or a religious group in France, this book is not for you. This is not a complete history, either. It is an overview. If you are looking for a complete history of a particular denomination, you are likely to be disappointed. Some denom...
Read more

JOHN WESLEY HARDIN: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Image
Published by Hourly History in October of 2025. John Wesley Hardin (1853-1895) is the archetype of the Old West gunman in so many ways: a) He was most active in the immediate post-Civil War era; b) His violence was not really directed for any larger cause, mostly just family beefs or perceived personal insults; c) Eventually, his violent ways caused his death. Hardin was credited with more than 20 murders, although he claimed he killed 42 men. He wasn't fighting to prove a point, like Billy the Kid claimed to. He wasn't fighting as an extension of the Civil War, like Jesse James claimed to be doing. Instead, Hardin was literally running and gunning as he fled from one jurisdiction to another. He hid among an immense extended family network, eventually killed someone, and then fled to another location to hide among another set of cousins. I found this to be an interesting read. Hardin was clearly some sort of sociopath - anyone who kills 42 people in multiple settings in less th...
Read more

THE PROVING GROUND (Lincoln Lawyer #8) (audiobook) by Michael Connelly

Image
Published in 2025 by Little, Brown and Company. Read by Peter Giles. Duration: 10 hours, 50 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis The Lincoln Lawyer returns for another case in The Proving Ground . Mickey Haller has moved away from defense work to civil litigation. In this case, an AI program designed to be a friend substitute to young adults and teens told a teenage boy to get rid of his girlfriend in a way that could easily be interpreted as killing her. So, he took his father's unsecured pistol and shot her in the high school parking lot. Haller is suing the company for marketing a faulty product towards teens. He is pretty sure he has the goods - bad programming and an unethical marketing team that is more concerned about demonstrating the potential of the AI so the company can be absorbed by a bigger company with deep pockets. They wanted the payoff rather than making it safe. But, as Haller and his team start to dig, they find they are out of their depth. Tech writer Jack McEvoy come...
Read more

JAILBIRD by Kurt Vonnegut

Image
Originally published in 1979. Synopsis Jailbird is the fictional story of William F. Starbuck, the least important member of the Watergate conspiracy to go to prison.  The story begins with the day that Starbuck is released from a makeshift federal prison (and very cushy, for a prison) on a Georgia military base. He has no idea what he is going to do and he doesn't have a lot of money, but he figures that he will be okay - after all, he has a degree from Harvard and he learned how to be a bartender in a correspondence class while he was in prison. What follows is a wild tale of good and bad coincidences that take Starbuck to a broken-down residential motel in New York City. Like the hotel, Starbuck is a broken man in many ways - he is an ex-con, his wife of many years has passed away, he never speaks to his son, and he feels shame for accidentally ruining the career of one of his friends due to an offhand comment he made during a anti-Communist Congressional hearing lead by then-C...
Read more

WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON (audiobook) by John Green and David Levithan

Image
Audiobook published in 2010 by Listening Library. Performed by MacLeod Andrews and Nick Podehl. Duration: 7 hours, 51 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis Will Grayson, Will Grayson is the story of two Chicago area teens named Will Grayson who attend different schools and do not know one another. One Will Grayson is determined not to risk hurt romantic feelings by not putting himself out there to make connections and possibly get hurt. Instead, he focuses on knowing all about obscure bands and lives vicariously through his over-the-top best friend, Tiny Cooper. Tiny Cooper is a massive mountain of young man who is also gay and is also the school's most talented athlete. Think of the biggest football lineman you have ever seen, make that lineman great at every sport, able to sing show tunes at the drop of a hat, and the biggest social butterfly in the school. The other Will Grayson is a closeted gay teen who has found an online boyfriend from Ohio. He muddles through high school life by g...
Read more

THE LONG HAUL: A TRUCKER'S TALES of LIFE on the ROAD by Finn Murphy

Image
Published in 2017 by HighBridge, a Division of Recorded Books. Read by Danny Campbell. Duration: 8 hours, 8 minutes. Unabridged. Finn Murphy is a long haul trucker, meaning he drives the trucks that you see on the interstate. Murphy doesn't just haul anything - he drives a moving truck. He packs, loads, hauls and unloads households - more than 3,000 of them by his estimation. Finn Murphy's transportation for a promotional book tour . Murphy tells about the generalities of driving a big truck, particularly a moving truck. He includes several entertaining stories about his life on the road.  The listener (I heard this as an audiobook) gets a feel for the comings and goings of the truckers in the moving industry.  His story of his first day as a mover is a classic "how can this get any worse" story. I first heard about this book in an interview on NPR with Terry Gross . This is ironic because the author discusses how so many truckers listen to NPR because i...
Read more

THIS BOOK WON'T BURN (audiobook) by Samira Ahmed

Image
Published by Little, Brown Young Readers in 2024. Read by Kauser Mohammed. Duration: 10 hours, 34 minutes. Unabridged. Book summary Noor Khan is a senior in high school and she is devastated. Her father walked out on her family and moved back to his native England. He gave no warning and the family is reeling. Noor's mother decides that a change of location would be best. Noor, her little sister (a freshman), and her mom move from their diverse upper middle class Chicago neighborhood to a downstate Illinois small town so that her mom can work at a small college.  Noor hates it. She misses her friends and the vibrancy of Chicago. She also feels like an oddity because she is Indian and Muslim in a school that is very white and very Christian.  She determines to gut out this one last semester of high school and then head back to Chicago to go to college. She decides she doesn't need friends or even to enjoy this small town - she just needs to get in, get the diploma and then get ...
Read more

BRAVE COMPANIONS: PORTRAITS in HISTORY (audiobook) by David MCCullough

Image
Originally published in hardback book form in 1991. Published by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by the author, David McCullough Duration: 11 hours, 19 minutes Unabridged Brave Companions: Portraits in History  is a collection of previously published articles and speeches. It's a smattering of this and that - sometimes it's about art, sometimes about scientists, sometimes about politicians and sometimes it's just some musings from McCullough about history. It doesn't matter, almost all of it is interesting and well-told. McCullough understands the value of telling history as a story - as always he is very approachable. My favorite entry was the story of the railroad that preceded the Panama Canal. It was an amazing story of the power of human will against nature. McCullough reads this audiobook, which is great because McCullough has a fantastic speaking voice and is well known for his voice work. I envy both his writing ability and his talents as a speaker. My fav...
Read more

THE HIGHWAY (Cody Hoyt #2, Cassie Dewell #2) (audiobook) by C.J. Box

Image
Published by Macmillan Audio in 2013 Read by Holter Graham Duration: 9 hours, 53 minutes Unabridged If you are a big fan of the TV show Criminal Minds  or the movie The Silence of the Lambs  you will probably enjoy this book quite a bit. For me, the fascination of getting into the head of a serial killer has long since passed and I end up feeling soiled and abused after every excursion into this area. But, I read The Highway because I do enjoy C.J. Box's work quite a bit and I grudgingly like his Cody Hoyt character - he is exasperating and full of gigantic character flaws but just when you have had enough of him he pulls himself together and he gets the job done. In a bit of a reach (actually, in a real big reach) the young female characters from his book Back of Beyond  are caught up in another dangerous situation and Cody Hoyt is called out to rescue them once again. This time they have a run-in with a long haul trucker that kills himself the Lizard King. T...
Read more

SING DOWN the MOON by Scott O'Dell

Image
Originally published in 1970. Named a Newberry Honor Book in 1971. Set in the New Mexico and Arizona territories in 1863-1865, Sing Down the Moon is the story of a teenaged Navajo girl named Bright Morning.  Despite the fact that the American Civil War is raging in the East, this is a tough time for the Navajo. There are pressures from the people they call Spaniards who raid the Navajo and other Native Americans in search of slaves (undoubtedly the "Spaniards" were Spanish-speaking Mexicans that were living in the territory before Mexico lost it to the United States at the end of the Mexican War in 1848.) But, that's not the worst of it. In 1864, the U.S. military under Kit Carson (called Long Knives in this book) rounded up all of the Navajo and put them in a concentration camp called Bosque Redondo. The Navajo in the book are unsure as to why they were forced to come to the camp, but the ongoing threat of Confederate raids into Arizona and New Mexico had a lot to do wi...
Read more