Daemon, by Daniel Suarez

I have been watching horror movies since I was six and read books of all sort through the years, but rarely have I seen something so truly scary as Daemon. Daniel Suarez manages to convey terror not by upgrading the villain, but by making it mundane. The daemon is not an all knowing Artificial Intelligence that takes over the world, but a stupid game engine run by a logic tree. The ease with which something like this could be created makes the book truly terrifying, particularly for me, who has actually thought of the weakness of humans when faced with decisions and pondered a world where machines make the decisions not because they want to rule us, but because we don't want to choose.

But there is more to this book than its subject. It is actually very well written and that is remarkable considering it is Suarez' first book. I will read the sequel to Daemon, Freedom™ as soon as I can. I loved the attention to detail, not a descriptive boring series of useless trivia, but a close focus on what makes people tick and how technology falls into place to fill the gaps that our failings leave. On the cover of the new book that Daniel Suarez wrote there is a quote that I feel is totally true: he is a true heir to Michael Crichton.