What I'm Reading: Daemon and Freedom

I'm always interested in what John Robb has to say, so when one of my commenters told me that Daniel Suarez's book Daemon should be considered "John Robb: the Novel", I downloaded it to my Kindle that night. Zenpundit gave these books good reviews, and Robb himself (who is friends with Suarez) often cites examples from the novel and its sequel Freedom.

Daemon is about a terminally ill computer genius named Matthew Sobol who leaves behind a devastating legacy: computer code that will activate upon his death, sow all kinds of mayhem, and ultimately lead to a war against civilization itself. It is a gripping novelization of a line that stuck with me from Robb's book Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization: the superempowerment of individuals and the lowering thresholds for war are leading us to a dangerous culminating point characterized by "the ability of one man to declare war on the world and win."

Suarez gets an A+ for ideas. What makes Daemon so creepy is how plausible many of Sobol's schemes are. You get the sense that this kind of thing could happen tomorrow. The book offers a tour into a bizarre but believable near future where a genius like Sobol can exploit the Internet, massive multiplayer online role playing games, augmented reality, and robotics to subvert the world order. His ambitious scheme ultimately rests on recruiting human talent. My favorite part of the book was watching the dead Sobol identify and apprentice a drifting young computer hacker, and harness his abilities to further his agenda.

Although the book's ingenuity makes it a must-read, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Most of the characters are dull and uninteresting, with the notable exceptions of Sobol himself and Greg, the young hacker who gets entwined with Sobol's plans. Scenes that are supposed to be emotionally-packed fall flat. The writing style is clean, but lacks energy and vibrancy. In short, Daemon suffers from weaknesses traits that are unfortunately common among commercial fiction. Fortunately the gripping plot and the ideas overcome these weaknesses and make the book hard to put down.

Freedom picks up where Daemon leaves off. Sobol's daemon has grown in power. The plans he laid before his death have drawn together a new kind of human community that desires to overthrow and rebuild civilization as we know it. New ideas flash across every page: augmented reality, resilient communities, next-generation weapons and gear, new forms of economic systems, the merging of real and virtual worlds. I respect Suarez's tremendous imagination and the scope of what he is trying to create.

With that said, Freedom didn't work for me. The ideas get too big too quickly. Plausibility, Daemon's core strength, goes out the window. As Suarez makes Sobol's community bigger and badder, it becomes less and less interesting. Greg, the fascinating hacker from Daemon, turns into a comic book villain whose amazing powers come at the expense of any personality or human story. A second villain is so evil that--like the one-dimensional villains in Avatar--he never becomes interesting. In Daemon, each of Sobol's nefarious acts was unique and carefully-crafted. In Freedom, we repeatedly watch a horde of robotic motorcycles slashing crowds of enemies to pieces with swords. The novelty quickly wears off, and the extra buckets of blood and gore do little to bring these scenes to life. Although it has its moments, the plotting isn't nearly as tight as in Daemon. I had to make myself finish the book.

Still, both books should be read together on account of their ideas. They are thought-provoking, introduce many of the technologies that will transform our society in the next ten years, and illustrate many of the ways that warfare could potentially evolve. These books are also as good of a primer on cyberwarfare as you're likely to find. If you can get past the shallow characters and the uneven quality of the writing, Suarez has written a remarkable story and imagined a frightening but plausible future.