Daemon

By: Daniel Suarez

Narrated by: Jeff Gurner

Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

Daniel Suarez's New York Times best-selling debut high-tech thriller is “so frightening even the government has taken note” (Entertainment Weekly).

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....

©2009 Daniel Suarez (P)2009 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“A riveting debut.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

“This thrill-a-nanosecond novel is certainly faithful to the techno-traditions of Michael Crichton and should delight not only readers of the 'science gone awry' genre, but general adventure readers as well.” (Booklist)

“Suarez's not-just-for-gamers debut is a stunner.” (Kirkus Reviews)

One of the best books I’ve heard on Audible

I was reluctant at the first few chapters but the more the story went the more I was hooked, great story l! Don’t miss

Such a great story 

There’s nothing I disliked in this book  it was a great book from beginning to end 

Wow! How did it take so long to find Daniel Suarez?

This author seems to keep himself informed of cutting edge technology, both emerging and in some cases discovered a while ago, but without practical application. He also has the imagination to put these things in to play in what to me is plausible, near future, SciFi.

This is my 3rd book in as many weeks and now I’m in a hurry to finish this review so I can go find the next one!

Interesting view but outdated

Most technology mentioned in the book has advanced beyond what Suarez could imagine eg speech recognition. Some is spot on, some is still not possible o my knowledge. The story has flaws but it is still a good read.

Sci Fi plot

Unique plot exploiting our fear of technology and Artificial Intelligence controlling the world. Sometimes Hard to follow the different characters but overall, a really great story.

great book!

I'm a software engineer and although this is sci fiction this is all plausible on a small scale. I'm going to get part two now!

Just ok..

This story has a good premise, but depended a bit too much on so many things just conveniently falling into place to make it work.

Entertaining and fast paced but formulaic.

Very Michael Crichton like in that it exposes and explains a technology and creates a story to show it's dangers. Some familiar archetypes are here as well. Grizzled cop, sexy female scientist, man with a checkered background etc. etc. The core technology it exposes and Suarez's depiction of the frailty of our current society were the highlights, however, these are hampered near the end by stretching believability and asking us to buy in. Nonetheless, I found it really entertaining and listened to it in just a few days.

Also, any comparisons of Daemon to Neal Stephenson's works are laughable. This is much more mainstream and pulpy. Dan Brown and John Grisham's works are more appropriate comparisons.

Phenominal

Excellent. Very rarely do I give a 5 star review. However this book deserves it. Great plotline, great pacing, wonderful narration.

Various comments I read mention the ending. Not every ending has to have a nice ribbon tied around it.. You are left to ponder. What a great thing for a book to do. Maybe there will be a sequel, maybe not. Your mind can wander through the possible scenarios.

Its relatively techy so if you are a luddite avoid, but its very up to date and real technology. People comment on the far fetched or unbelievable plot.. Its a story not a news report! Do all movies you watch have to be believable? If everybook had to be 'believable' not very much would happen.

If you like a good hi-tech thriller, with believable characters and occasional accidental heroes this is the one. Worth a risk.

Riveting story, didn't want to stop listening.

First of all, I was very impressed by Jeff Gurner's storytelling. He has distinctive tones and inflections for each character, and the book was read superbly. I liked Suarez's the writing style, and it didn't take long to adjust to it. It's very to-the-point, with dialogue telling much of the story, and I enjoyed how descriptive he was describing the technology in the book. For those that keep up with technology a little bit know that each of these technologies exist separately, but Suarez put these technologies together to create an epic and somewhat disturbingly realistic tale.

The plot took off immediately, and I was truly addicted to this book right from the beginning. I'll try to speak generally about the plot so I'm not spoiling too much for people who are interested in listening to it. Being a programmer and engineer, this book captivated me because most everything in the book seemed plausible, despite the incredible amount of forethought that would need to be done to make the execution of the plan a reality. However, if you think of it from a game design point of view, this type of thing seems realistic, since games often employ varying responses to events depending on how each task was carried out. Granted there are constraints that do not allow players to simply do whatever they want, but game designers do have to think psychologically about what players will tend to do, and given years of planning with a team behind it, I think the events in Daemon could be possible, especially since so much of our own world is dependent on the internet. I can imagine this book ending up being a very fun movie to watch. Some of the fast-paced scenes could be epic if done right by the director. When I listened to the ending, I didn't realize that a sequel was in the works, so I was confused since there are many loose ends. I thought the ending was appropriate, however.

I'm looking forward to the sequel, Freedom, with great anticipation!