Daemon

The 'out of controlness' of HAL meets the bloodlust of The Kingsman movies and ends up with a car chase/crash scene that rivals The Blues Brothers. This would have been SF when it was written twenty years ago but the computer development since then puts it into the techno-thriller genre with a political edge.

Billionaire computer game develop, Matthew Sobol, has spawned a distributed artificial intelligence network across the internet that is triggered on his death. The 'Daemon' sets in motion a slow burn revolution designed to undermine and take down the corporate industrial complex and in its place set up a system of equality. The daemon runs on the internet on tracks built into two of the online multi-player games that Sobol developed. Because it's not sitting on servers as identifiable code it can't be located. Recruitment happens among gamers who are disaffected young men who can be manipulated or attracted into taking part.

There is no lack of characters, sometimes too many to remember, and some of them are running assumed names and changing identities to infiltrate the govt agency that has been set up to fight the daemon. Dialogue is functional rather than relational, the pace of the action is fast and sometimes seductive, and sometimes it's confusing about who is alive and who is dead. There are some scenes of misogyny that Suarez would probably not include in 2025, or at least would modify.

Overall this action packed book is a good fast read. It is the first of a pair and it ends at a good point as long as the reader knows it's only the first half of the story. Most of it is enjoyable in the way of an action movie that we like but after it's over we go and buy pizza and life goes on. I'm happy to move straight into book 2, Freedom.