I read this book, literally in about 4 hours. Those hours were spread around about three days, in 5 to 50 minute increments. It did not even last long enough to make it into my “what I’m reading now” listing over there! ->
My friend and occasional commentator here Dan O’Donnell loaned it to me a while back, and it has been sitting in my bookshelf waiting in the queue. I love to read, and rarely in my life is there not some book in my bag that I’m working my way through. I tend to prefer non-fiction, with an emphasis on history, philosophy, and things that provoke thought. Daemon does not fall into any of these categories. It does provoke a bit of thought, but mostly it is a Crichton-esque techno-thriller. It reads like a near-future sci-fi movie (which, I understand it will become at some point.) I finished Jospehy’s definitive history of the Nez Perce and the Inland Northwest, and am pondering a lot of what I absorbed from that… meanwhile picking up something escapist and swift was a nice change of pace.
While most of the technology it explores is plausible, a lot of the plot elements themselves are absurdly implausible. But like a good Bond movie, you suspend your disbelief and ride the roller coaster anyway. One of my guilty pleasures is spotting continuity errors in movies (I add at least one “goof” to IMDB for every movie I watch) and as this book unfolded like a movie I was able to pick up a bunch of them. The errors started compounding rapidly towards the end, and as the final chapters converged my suspension of disbelief reached a breaking point. Several plot threads were either deliberately or mistakenly left dangling, and at least two major plot points seemed jarringly, or hastily, thrown together. The story line followed this wonderful trajectory that suddenly lost momentum and fell like a brick earthward… with a slight bounce as it closed. It seems to me that either Mr. Suarez felt compelled to leave a lot out there for a sequel, or he rushed to complete this story due to some external pressure.
A great geek bodice-ripper for a long flight, but not much more.