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34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fun, intellectually stimulating joy ride through the near future or augmented reality gets real, January 12, 2010
This review is from: Freedom (TM) (Hardcover)
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Freedom is Daniel Suarez's follow up to his 2008/2009 surprise best seller, Daemon. Last year I was blown away by Daemon. Suarez managed to write a compelling thriller around some big ideas. I have been a huge fan of Michael Crichton for years but I always felt his characterizations were weak and the big ideas were shoe horned into a thriller plot. Suarez stays true to the big idea and manages to weave a realistic plot with fully fleshed out characters and situations. This isn't some made-for-movie screenplay, this is a fully realized thriller with deep ideas and a compelling story. I was sucked in from the first page and devoured the first book and left gasping at the end for the follow up. Freedom, just released, doesn't disappoint (except maybe I was hoping for a trilogy). Freedom is a different kind of book to Daemon, the plot continuation is smooth, but the atmosphere of Freedom is very different. While Daemon was a techno thriller, Freedom morphs into a hero's quest/mythological story. The technological ideas are still there and actually they are fully realized in Freedom. Suarez manages to flesh out the technological vision he alluded to Daemon. The convergence of life and augmented reality are smoothly juxtaposed to provide a glimpse of a near future. Suarez is a technologist and it shows. His use of current technology to create his vision is accurate and realistic. He explores the implications of social network theory, augmented reality, game design and ad-hoc network topologies to form a backdrop for a dystopian future. Even his underlying message of governments gone amuck are well researched and realistic; if a little paranoid.
Bottom line: Freedom is a solid sequel to Deamon and together they form a compelling thriller. For those that like big ideas and technological innovations you are in for a treat. No longer are big ideas and fully realized stories mutually exclusive. This is Michael Crichton meets Michael Chabon meets Joseph Campbell - ideas meets characters meets mythology. You do have to read Daemon first, but together they are a fun, intellectually stimulating joy ride through the near future.
Note: If you like the big ideas and technology behind the book, definitely check out Suarez's talk at the Long Now Foundation - Daniel Suarez: Daemon: Bot-mediated Reality.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Worthy conclusion, July 2, 2010
This review is from: Freedom (TM) (Hardcover)
The sequel (or more correctly "conclusion") to Daemon is entertaining and exciting, but it has two problems that are very common to sequels, particularly in the sci-fi genre. First, in the process of expanding the scope of the story and showing the consequences of the first story, it loses one of the primary things that made the first book so compelling - the feeling of connection and relatability to the characters. Second, the author moves outside of his area of expertise, and it affects both the believability of the story and the easy flow of the writing.
The Dune saga is a perfect example of the first kind of failure, if that's not too strong of a word. In the original novel Dune, you are personally invested in Paul's story because he is experiencing the same feelings in his situation as you would - being overwhelmed, amazed, excited, repulsed, etc. You create an emotional connection to the character because you recognize in his nature the same things that are in your own. However, by the time you get to the fourth book in the series, God Emperor of Dune, the story has moved to such a level of abstraction and - literally - galactic scope that it becomes difficult to personally care about the outcome.
This book doesn't go to that extreme, but I did end up losing a lot of the emotional connection I had to the first part of the story in Daemon. So much time is spent in trying to explain the nature of the worldwide societal changes that the individuals experiencing them tend to get a bit lost in the shuffle. I appreciate that it is extremely difficult to expand a story to a global scale without losing a feeling of personal connection, but it's not impossible, even for a popular fiction writer; I'd say that Steven King was able to manage it in most, if not all, of his Dark Tower series. Plus, an author should be sure of his ability to chew what he has bitten off, so to speak.
The issue of an author moving too far from his area of expertise is extremely common across all genres. When an author is deeply familiar and passionate about his subject matter, there is a natural feeling to the writing that is very compelling. Daniel Suarez is obviously an expert in the field of computer technology, particularly on the inner workings of corporate level distributed networks and the vulnerabilities of technological homogeneity, and his passion for the subjects comes across clearly and compellingly in the first book, Daemon. He is far less of an expert on psychology and social dynamics, and unfortunately that comes across in the feel of this book. He obviously educated himself on the subjects, and is writing from an informed position, but those aspects of the story feel simplistic. They lack the nuance and subtlety that come from true expertise, and they are the primary focus of this book. While it is laudable to try and push your artistic boundaries, there is something to be said for sticking to your strengths.
I don't want it to sound as if I didn't like this book, because I did. I just don't feel like it lives up to the standard that Mr. Suarez set for himself in the first novel. That said, I can't imagine not reading Freedom after finishing Daemon, and I don't feel disappointed by it as a conclusion to the story, I just feel like it was flawed in very understandable ways.
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21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
And then a hero comes along, April 1, 2010
This review is from: Freedom (TM) (Hardcover)
Freedom(tm) is or should have been the second half of Daniel Suarez' stunning debut novel - "Daemon". I would not recommend anyone's reading Freedom(tm) unless they first finished "Daemon". It's really the same book, probably split into two for marketing purposes - think "Kill Bill".
The question on the future of our technologically-complicated world - does it have one? - seems to be DS obsession and maybe it should be everyone's because dark times may lie ahead. Uncovering the answer or thinking of some viable solution seems to be Suarez' life's passion and he has the technical skills, the literary talent and the imagination to engage the reader. Suarez' premise is that we can't keep going this way. We just can't. Most resources are limited and they are being wasted away and so are our lives, increasingly lacking meaning and purpose. We live in an overpopulated and shrinking world controlled or manipulated by bloated, soulless corporations where increasingly totalitarian and violence-prone states and governments serving their corporate masters or serving the political class unquenchable thirst for ever more power. Suarez attempts to answer 2 big questions: 'do we have a future' or can we even survive in this world that we built? And, 'can we live free' and what are the limits to our individual freedom and, given humans' general inability to resist the temptation of grabbing and exercising power over their fellow humans, who is going to enforce those limits and how?
These are tough questions and, if 'Daemon' deals mostly with the first question, not necessarily hinting at an answer, in Freedom(tm) there's Suarez' answer to both. DS suggests a solution to the survivability dilemma and he wraps it around an engaging, well written, technologically plausible action/techno-thriller Utopian-dystopia. Besides the how-to's on avoiding the fate of the long gone Maya or Anasazi civilizations, many pages in Freedom(tm) are dedicated to chronicling the emergence of a radically new, technologically advanced but sustainable civilization while the old order crumbles and dies and not without a vicious fight. When it comes to personal freedom... it's complicated but the author is unafraid to present us his own, intensely geeky but quite original solution.
In the good tradition of H.G. Wells and Orwell, Freedom(tm) chronicles the birth of a brave new world and the struggles and tribulations of a few humans who either play a role in facilitating it or are followed in the story so that we may witness their gradual transformation and evolution. Unlike 'Daemon' which was almost exclusively about about struggle, revenge and mayhem, 'Freedom(tm)', while keeping the carnage going, introduces us to 'new growth'. Suarez did an incredible amount of research - how many fiction books come with a bibliography? - and found in himself the talent and the dedication to put together a new world. Yes, it's Utopian and yes, it's improbable. DS' mix of open hostility toward the way we do things today is combined with a love/hate/hope/fear at what might become of us if we just keep going or stampeding the way we are now. Daemon and Freedom fascinating and stimulating reads. Can't we too dream while reading this beautifully constructed and almost plausible story? Yes, we can and Suarez' work is a great dream facilitator.
Had he tried philosophy, sociology or religion (as a prophet?), Suarez would have been quickly marginalized. His assessment of today's world with its senseless but seemingly unstoppable march toward an almost certain catastrophic discontinuity would be ignored or summarily rejected. Today's opinion makers avoid discussing or even thinking (the unthinkable?) of a future were very little seems to get 'better' and where an individual's quality of life and personal freedom have ceased to improve or expand for a generation already and there's very little hope left. Suarez did the right thing writing a book - two books. Works such as Suarez' novels, movies such as Avatar, the very few real life heroes that refuse to compromise their freedom and integrity and do not trade away their individuality in exchange for some false recognition - thinking of people such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (I'm reading him now) or Stephen Hawking or even a politician such as Ron Paul - they inspire and challenge us to transcend our limitations and our inherent smallness and to dare ask questions and sometimes even to suggest answers. Daemon/Freedom are the literary expression of someone who dares suggest an answer. To the extent that these books are read and they make us think and more aware of the world we live in, Suarez' effort was worthwhile.
My hope is that Daemon/Freedom will be read by many and, because they were read some of the readers' lives will change, even in small ways. And, as some might have guessed, the hero I was thinking of - see my review's title - is not a character in the book. I was thinking about the author. He is one of my heroes now.
And, since I mentioned Orwell and Wells a few paragraphs above, I am now wondering if Suarez is going to follow the path of Wells - a prolific and uncompromising writer not much read these days - or, like Orwell, say it all in a few books but not yet forgotten. 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' was Orwell's last book and his peak accomplishment. Is Suarez already working on his next amazing tale of cybergods and freedom-loving humans battling today's destructive and venal corporations and self-serving 'authorities'? One can only hope but no matter what Daniel Suarez does for the rest of his life, he's earned his place as one of my pen-carrying heroes, along with the likes of Solzhenitsyn, Orwell, Dostoevsky, Borges, (yes) Spengler, a few others.
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