Light Summer Reading

I just finished reading Daemon by Daniel Suarez.  If you are looking for a deep and meaningful book to read this summer, then I strongly suggest you look for something else.  However, if you are a geek and are looking for some techie fluff, then you have come to the right place.

I picked up this book on recommendation from a few of the speakers at the No Fluff Just Stuff conference I attended a few weeks ago.  I’m not quite sure the best way to give a review of this book without giving away some major plot points.  So, I’m not going to.  Click the link above and read the Amazon summary and reviews if you like, they will do a better job than I will anyway.  Instead I’d rather talk about the book at a bit higher level than the specific plot summary.  Daemon definitely has the feel of a book that reads like a summer blockbuster movie.  This is Suarez’s first book and I think that shows in his overall style.  I’m no great author (as evidenced by this post), but Suarez makes heavy use of standard character types and cliched situations.  However, in between the sometimes painfully stereotypical character developments there are some really interesting ideas and situations.

Reading Daemon for me was a very similar experience to reading Little Brother by Cory Doctorow.  The story was compelling enough to make me want to keep reading the book, but the real meat of the book was the technology and ideas presented within the story.  It is the type of book that makes you want to go and look up the current state of artificial intelligence and advanced technology.  In my opinion in both cases the story is just a way to talk about the cool shit that you can do with technology and to get the reader to go investigate it.  Little Brother was more explicit about it.  In fact Doctorow explicitly said he wanted to write a book to get kids to go learn more about technology.  I’m not sure this was Suarez’s plan as much, but for me at least that was the take-away.

All of that said, I really enjoyed this book.  If you are looking for something to read that will let you get sucked into a story and aren’t looking for a whole lot of involvement, then I can heartily recommend Daemon. It’s great beach reading for techies, maybe Suarez will become the tech equivalent of a John Grisham.  My one warning to anyone who is thinking about reading this book, is to be prepared for a cliffhanger.  Things are not wrapped up neatly in the end.  There is even a teaser at the end for his next book to come in 2010.  Knowing there is more to come from Suarez, I’ll say that I am waiting for his next book.