Daemon (Daemon, #1)

by Daniel Suarez

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Daemon is an extremely impressive piece of work. It's a wonderfully fast paced thriller, has a relatively unpredictable storyline, and keeps you wanting more, which is in itself a job well done for most books. But Daemon goes one step further by basing itself on an extraordinary complex technological foundation, and actually succeeding.

The entire story stands or falls on the premise of people making present day technology do extremely advanced things. If this premise weren't believable, the story would crumble completely. Fortunately the premise is presented in a rock solid manner. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I believe the story in this book could actually happen, but I believe the limiting factors would be people and circumstances rather than the tech itself.
Sure, there is plenty of eyebrow-raising tech stuff in here, but never to the point where it gets silly. It gets very close to being unbelievable, but manages to walk along the edge in a comfortable and confident manner.
As for the story itself, it's really good. Most of it escalates as an appropriate pace, and the reader is gradually eased into a series of events which, if told in another way, could easily seem absurd. However, the reader never needs to suspend their disbelief too much to get there, and therefore it actually works. The book is like a simple equation resulting in a completely unbelievable answer, but all the working is shown in great detail, and therefore you can't help trusting the answer.
Unfortunately, while the technology never goes quite over the top, the storytelling does on a few occasions. It doesn't happen very often, but at times the story wallows in itself a little too much. The book also doesn't really end as much as stop. I guess this is understandable, as there is a sequel, but it would still be nice if this book felt a little more finished when it was done.

All the negatives are minor though. I'd strongly recommend this book to all geeks, as a proof of concept if nothing else. It is possible to make a mostly plausible novel in which tech is used to do crazy things. It's better than science fiction: instead of imagining tech that doesn't yet exist, it imagines what it could look like if current tech was used in an extremely imaginative and evil way.

It's also a really entertaining read.