FREEDOM™ is the sequel to Daemon, and if you haven't read
Deamon, stop reading this review. Go get
Daemon. Read it. Then go get the sequel. You
won't need me to convince you. If you feel like it, come
read my review at some later date.
If you have read Daemon, why are you reading this
review when you could be reading FREEDOM™?
FREEDOM™ picks up right where Daemon left off. The daemon
continues executing the instructions of its genius creator,
and conflict is brewing between its followers and the
guardians of the old world order. The book follows the
(surviving) characters as they try and figure out what is
going on, and decide whether or not the daemon is a force
for good, or a force for ill - and whether they should be
fighting the daemon, or fighting for it.
Suarez keeps throwing out great ideas in FREEDOM™, so fast
that the story has a hard time keeping up. There is room
for dozens of books about a creating a real society around
the rules that govern online role-playing games like World
of Warcraft. To discuss some of the ideas would deprive the
reader of the pleasure of discovering them in the book
themselves. Occasionally, those ideas come across a little
preachy, and indulges in conspiracy-theorist fantasy, but in
a book about conspiracy theories and ideological warfare,
that's not really a valid grounds for complaint.
FREEDOM™ demonstrates that Daemon wasn't a fluke:
Suarez's second book is just as good as the first. I can't
wait to see what he writes next.
Modern Civilization is about to experience a cold reboot
...
In one of the most buzzed-about debuts of 2009, Daniel
Suarez introduced a terrifying vision of a new world order,
controlled by the Daemon, an insidious computer program
unleashed by a dying hi-tech wunderkind. Daemon captured the
attention of the tech community, became a New York Times and
Indie bestseller, and left readers hungry for more.
Well, more is here, and it's even more gripping than its
predecessor.
In the opening chapters of FreedomTM, the
Daemon is firmly in control, using an expanded network of
dispossessed operatives to tear apart civilization and
rebuild it anew. As civil disorder spreads through the
American Midwest, former detective Pete Sebeck, now the
Daemon's most influential yet reluctant-operative, must lead
a small band of enlightened humans in a populist movement
designed to protect the new social network. But the private
armies of global business are preparing to crush the Daemon
once and for all.
In a world of conflicted loyalties, and rapidly
diminishing human authority, what's at stake is nothing less
than democracy's last hope to survive the technology
revolution.