Penguin Audio Archives

Book Review – Daemon By: Daniel Suarez

Daniel Suarezs New York Times best-selling debut high-tech thriller is “so frightening even the government has taken note” (Entertainment Weekly). Daemons: computer programs that silently run in the background, waiting for a specific event or time to execute. They power almost every service. They make our networked world possible. But they also make it vulnerable…. When the obituary of legendary computer game architect Matthew Sobol appears online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events that begins to unravel our interconnected world. This daemon reads news headlines, recruits human followers, and orders assassinations. With Sobol’s secrets buried with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed, it’s up to Detective Peter Sebeck to stop a self-replicating virtual killer before it achieves its ultimate purpose – one that goes far beyond anything Sebeck could have imagined….

Freedom (TM) by Daniel Suarez

The propulsive, shockingly plausible sequel to New York Times best seller Daemon. In one of the most buzzed-about debuts, Daniel Suarez introduced a terrifying vision of a new world order, controlled by the Daemon, an insidious computer program unleashed by a hi-tech wunderkind. Daemon captured the attention of the tech community, became a New York Times and Indie best seller, and left listeners hungry for more. Well, more is here, and it’s even more gripping than its predecessor. In the opening chapters of Freedom, the Daemon is firmly in control, using an expanded network of real-world, dispossessed darknet operatives to tear apart civilization and rebuild it anew. Soon civil war breaks out in the American Midwest, in a brutal wave of violence that becomes known as the Corn Rebellion. Former detective Pete Sebeck, now the Daemon’s most powerful – though reluctant – operative, must lead a small band of enlightened humans toward a populist movement designed to protect the new world order. But the private armies of global business are preparing to crush the Daemon once and for all. In a world of conflicted loyalties, rapidly diminishing human power, and the possibility that anyone can be a spy, what’s at stake is nothing less than human freedom’s last hope to survive the technology revolution.