Here's a book that, like Vinge's Rainbows End (see my review here) wraps extrapolations from present to future technologies up in a visceral, rip-roaring yarn that explores the idea of a god-like software entity capable of doing nearly anything, with nobody being able to stop it.
Daniel Suarez's Daemon had me hooked from the get-go. Like the characters immersed in the story's game, a game so immersive that it was projected into the brick-and-mortar of everyday life by its software master (the Daemon), I found myself immersed in the world of this book.
This was not an altogether pleasurable experience. With most books, even the best of tales, I can separate myself from their alternate realities when I put them down to do something involving my own "reality"; I still have bandwidth to write and to think about things other than the stories. Not so with Daemon: I "had" to finish this book. I had the feeling of being taken over, and that is what the Daemon is all about.
Daemon is hard-edged and brutal. There is no shying away from bloody death scenes, no sanitizing. There is very little for the lover of Hollywood-style endings to hang his or her hat on: you have to get used to letting the plot take you where it will, regardless of how hard it might be on the characters with whom you might have developed affinities.
You may, as you read this book, even find yourself wandering down the path of musing about what is good and evil, and, more specifically, just who in this book are the heros and who are the villians, or demons, or whatever.
In the interest of full disclosure, Daemon has a sequel. Once I knew about the sequel, even though I knew that I would buy it, I hesitated: did I really want to be immersed in this way again? Like the characters in the story, the daemon has my number: I will read the sequel whether I "want" to or not.
Were I wearing a hat as I write this, I would now be doffing it in honor of Mr. Suarez: he has put together one hell of a story.
