Amazon Description:
Daemons: computer programs that silently run in the background, waiting for a specific event or time to execute. They power almost every service. They make our networked world possible. But they also make it vulnerable…
When the obituary of legendary computer game architect Matthew Sobol appears online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events that begins to unravel our interconnected world. This daemon reads news headlines, recruits human followers, and orders assassinations. With Sobol’s secrets buried with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed, it’s up to Detective Peter Sebeck to stop a self-replicating virtual killer before it achieves its ultimate purpose—one that goes far beyond anything Sebeck could have imagined…
My Review:
Daemon by Daniel Suarez started out strong. Fascinating and terrifying “what-if scenarios” launched upon the death of computer genius Matthew Sobol. It’s a page-turner. You don’t know what’s going to happen next, what horrors will be unleashed.
Daemon is a tale of technological terrorism. The premise is intriguing, but the characters could be better developed. Tough to know who to root for and why.
The deceased main character, Sobol, does a remarkable job of identifying the disenfranchised and putting them to work for him — often giving them little choice.
The technology isn’t too difficult to understand. I imagine readers with a stronger technological background than I could probably find holes that I did not.
One technological irony is that a distributed network, which is normally considered in a positive light as a fail safe, is what made the Daemon tougher to stop.
The book is super fast-paced but it seems to trail off and lose track of where it’s going. That doesn’t make it a bad read.
