Freedom™

A very fitting end to the story started in Daemon. Suarez serves us up a non-stop assault on our senses and imagination of a 'three front war'. One one front is the Daemon, the AI that is disrupting end-stage capitalism. The second front is the emerging social movement as ordinary people start to join it and force a new egalitarian society. And the third front is the combined might of the oligarchs and moneyed class alongside a secretly complicit government.

The action starts on the first few pages and is relentless through the novel. It's seductive and almost magnetic in how it holds the reader's attention. My son and I have a rating system for action movies. It either gets a pass or a "Not enough exploding helicopters." This book has not only exploding helicopters but robotically controlled killer cars, riderless motorcycles swinging murderous rotating blades, avatars that can walk out of an online game and into real life, and lots of high tech stuff for those wondering how imaginative Suarez can get in one book. Very definitely a pass.

There are lots of scenes of over the top violence that leave scattered body parts, but lets face it, noone takes over the world without a trail of dismembered arms and legs. His VR headsets and the accompanying online world of the followers of the Daemon are way beyond their day when this book appeared. And there will be those who consider the political conversations and viewpoints scattered throughout are preachy, but they sit well in the overall story, especially considering that state of federal politics of the US in 2025.

All that remains is for somebody to pick up a bunch of funding and turn these two books into a top tier movie.

Fun and fast-paced sequel to Daemon.

The characters are fun and the situations are very interesting and although the book was written quite a while ago, the topic is very timely for our society today. Hot touchpoints include AI, liberty, political ruling classes, GMO big-Agriculture, and Augmented Reality.

The writing style and vocabulary is pretty simplistic, but that's what makes it a fun, fast read. The character development is a little thin, but the book takes place in what seems to have been less than a week's time (or close to it).

If you enjoyed Daemon, definitely pick this one up. If you have interest in the social aspects of high technology, especially those topics mentioned above, this is definitely worth the read. I enjoy the “world” that has been built here and would be very interested in a 3rd sequel.

(I'm currently reading Suarez' latest - Change Agent and enjoying it quite a lot)

Both this and Daemon were terrifying and hopeful. I see the overreach of corporations that are central to this book in the news everyday. The technology is mostly possible today and that's the hopeful part.
Both are excellent books.

Decent science-based thriller that imagines a world with local control over production driven by a pop up display to an alternate internet run like a massive online role playing game.

The sequel to the first book, Daemon. Full of interesting and scary ideas of a future society based on computers.

Every geek should read this series.

Daniel brings Daemon to a fitting end and he does it in style. The central characters get a much better focus and so does the end objectives of the Daemon. As good sci-fi should he continues to blur the line between what is currently possible and what will be in the near future. All in all a must read for Sci-Fi enthusiast but maybe also for the general public who believes we give up our freedom when we give access to our data in today's world.

Action packed world that introduces a lot of interesting ideas about how a software can manipulate and change the world. In terms of jaw-dropping moments, this one tops the first volume, but somehow lacks the same freshness.

This sequel to Daemon was alright. A lot more action and a lot less plot than its predecessor. It at least resolves all the loose ends that made Daemon feel like an incomplete book. Worth reading if you liked the first one.

Geeky, high-energy fun.

This follow-up to [b:Daemon 4699575 Daemon (Daemon, #1) Daniel Suarez http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255801429s/4699575.jpg 4763873] shows a lot of growth in Suarez' ability to tell a story. The plot and pacing were much tighter than in the first book and the technology seems somehow more believable this time around. Maybe that's because he didn't spend quite as much time explaining the details of the inner workings of everything, but whatever the reason this book is a better read.

After reading the excellent Daemon last year, I had to wait until this year to find out what happened with the loose ends. Freedom™ continues the story and tells us what happens to Detective Pete Sebeck, NSA Agent Natalie Philips, Jon Ross, Loki, and the Major. It's a fast read, almost as fast as Daemon, but it's not nearly as propulsive as Daemon was. Still, even in the slower spots of the narrative, the ideas that Suarez expounds on are interesting and dovetails ominously with some other non-fiction I've read recently. One bit that especially resonates is the portrayal of an evil seed company and its deleterious effect on farmers. There are a few crazy action scenes sprinkled into the story but unfortunately they don't gel together as well as in Daemon. But this book is worth it alone just to discover how everything plays out. Loki's denouement is especially fitting.

Ugh.

I very rarely will “review” books on Goodreads, but I feel like this one warrants a little bit of time.

I wanted to like this book. I was supposed to eat this book up. I completely fit the demographic (stereotype?) of tech-enthusiast/professional that this book is aimed towards and marketed to. But as hard as I tried, I couldn't get into it. This book took me just over a month to read, and I can normally knock a book this size out in a week.

This and Daemon both read like Suarez was trying REALLY hard to get Jerry Bruckheimer to notice and adapt it into the next big summer blockbuster – and maybe that's what I didn't like about it. The dialog seemed too clever; as plausible as the idea of a Daemon taking over our economy is, some of the dialog between the characters was laughably impossible (and therefore, off-putting). I dunno, I was just disappointed.

I keep reading great reviews, so if you're really looking forward to reading this, don't let this review deter you.

A great sequel to Daemon! You get to see a different side of some of the characters, and not everything is as cut and dry.

I was skeptical that Suarez could recapture the utter immersion and fascinating construction of Daemon, but he did. I think one of the main ways he did so, was turning from an emphasis on technology to an emphasis on the socio-political themes that began to emerge in Daemon.

In the tradition of Brave New World and 1984, Freedom(TM) serves as a warning by exaggeration. It's not that the events and revelations of Freedom(TM) are accurate or even prescient, it's that the elements that could cause them to happen all exist right now.

The confluence of events that could make the world just like the one in Freedom(TM) are certainly unlikely, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to the warning.