Book: Daemon by Daniel Suarez

As of now I’m not quite done this book, but it is one of the few fictional stories that I’ve ever gotten into. (Without revealing secrets) This book opens with the announced death of a software giant/genius dyeing after a long battle with brain cancer and seemingly unrelated events and people converge on what could be considered a turning point in history: when it is possible to murder someone from beyond the grave (as quoted from the book) "When you’re safely dead".

On Audible this book is in a half-dramatized, half-narrated story with different characters voice by different actors or actresses, which conveys nicely because this book can be downloaded using Audible’s new ‘E’ format (which bring the file size for this book to about 500MB).  This is one of the best applications of the audiobook medium yet; the high quality, great narrators, and a great story. Keep in mind that this book is a significant investment of time, at 15 hours and 57 minutes.

If you like this book, it’s author has a sequel premiering in 2010, Freedom.  You can take a look at free chapters on the authors site, here.

Get this book for $31.47 or 1 credit on Audible.

Or get this book in dead-tree format for $16.98 from Amazon.

**PS With credits this book can cost as low as $7.49, or using a sponsored trial (such as from TWiT) you can get it free (with new signup)**

(Publisher’s Summery)

Technology controls almost everything in our modern-day world, from remote entry on our cars to access to our homes, from the flight controls of our airplanes to the movements of the entire world economy. Thousands of autonomous computer programs, or daemons, make our networked world possible, running constantly in the background of our lives, trafficking e-mail, transferring money, and monitoring power grids. For the most part, daemons are benign, but the same can’t always be said for the people who design them.

Matthew Sobol was a legendary computer game designer – the architect behind half-a-dozen popular online games. His premature death depressed both gamers and his company’s stock price. But Sobol’s fans aren’t the only ones to note his passing. When his obituary is posted online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events intended to unravel the fabric of our hyper-efficient, interconnected world. With Sobol’s secrets buried along with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed at every turn, it’s up to an unlikely alliance to decipher his intricate plans and wrest the world from the grasp of a nameless, faceless enemy – or learn to live in a society in which we are no longer in control. . . .

Computer technology expert Daniel Suarez blends haunting high-tech realism with gripping suspense in an authentic, complex thriller in the tradition of Michael Crichton, Neal Stephenson, and William Gibson.

©2009 Daniel Suarez; (P)2009 Penguin Audio