Daemon

I don't read all that much fiction - perhaps reading the Bible as a kid in Sunday School put me off - but when I picked up Daniel Suarez's 'Daemon' in Newcastle airport about a month ago the blurb on the back intrigued me:

An infernal web of autonomous computer programs, Sobol's Daemon feasts on the lifeblood of our hyper-connected society: information. Gathering secrets and stealing identities, it soon has the power to change lives as well as the power to take them. Those who serve the Daemon are rewarded; those who defy it are eliminated.

Although it was probably the line underneath this from a Google employee that convinced me to reach for my wallet:

"Daemon is to novels what the Matrix was to movies. It will be how other novels that rely on technology are judged..."

If you like science-based techie fiction with plenty of twists and turns then this book is definitely for you. I certainly enjoyed it. It's going to be made into a movie, that's for sure. The science is mind-bending at times but never implausible. I won't say too much but, interestingly, the main bad guy is killed in the very first paragraph, an event which triggers pre-planned mayhem across the world. This means the police are left trying to shutdown a dead criminal's intricate series of cyber-booby traps with no chance of catching or punishing him.