Ignore the Daemon at your peril

It's been a few months since I last did a book review so over the coming weeks I plan to bring you several gems from my collection to make up for that. The first is this: Daemon by Daniel Suarez.

I picked this up on a whim in Borders in 2008 a few days before I moved house. It has gone from box to box, bookshelf to bookshelf and has remained on my reading list the whole time. From the start it looked interesting with its blacked out cover, matrix-esque visuals and recommendations ranging from Google to the White House. Now, I have always been a fan of cyberpunk; I loved Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, adored Hackers and eXistenZ, and have read other collections like Cyberabad Days and Disco 2000 because of the themes they play upon.  I also try to stay aware of changes in technology that will shape the way the world functions – Daemon does all that and more.

I can imagine the actions happening in this book taking place. It has that level of credibility. Everything in this book is possible. And that is terrifying. People joke that the future is here and they are right; we live in an age where man has been to the moon, where missions to Mars are likely to happen within a decade and yet we don't realise just what an impact our society would have on those who haven't grown accustomed to it as it has emerged. Daemon shows this; the few tech-savvy characters that are aware of the true capacity of technology are hindered by the masses living in ignorance. This is a novel that actually manages to pull off the question "but can't you just shut down the internet?" with a straight face. (The answer, by the way, is no.)

There were things that annoyed me about the book though – so it is by no means perfect. It is the first half of a novel – the second part is told in a seperate book and that shows in the ending. The immediate plot is resolved but the world is left hanging. It needs completion. Until I have read Freedom I'll refrain from going into any further detail, suffice to say for now, if you like techno-thrillers you want to read Daemon.