"Techno-Thriller" is a a genre of book that I'd not previously heard of but seemed like it should be able to provide the perfect pulp to keep me entertained. I bumped into the genre after I'd heard Leo Laporte and friends recommending Daniel Suarez's Deamon a number of times on various http://twit.tv podcasts and decided to pick it up myself.

A software deamon is a computer program that runs in the background, typically as a service responding to events and generating responses. In the case of Deamon the program is already running somewhere on the internet as the books begins and is lying dormant waiting for it's author's obituary to be reported in the news. The author in question is Mathew Sobol, world famous programmer and designer of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, who knows he is dying of cancer and uses that to set his criminal master plan into action only after he is beyond prosecution. His deamon takes on demonic qualities as it uses viruses and gameplay mechanics in order to spread itself, manipulating players, steal money and murdering innocent people as it grows and grows in power and the authorities attempt to halt it's progress. Each maniacal step builds plausibly on the previous ones and reveals a multi layered thriller on a scale that I just didn't expect as I began my journey.

Freedom TM picks up where Deamon leaves off and allows Suarez to fully explore the possibilities of Sobol's scheme. We travel through undermining of economic and political society as we know it and see an alternative being built and controlled by a distributed artificial intelligent games master. It's pretty clear that only one of these society's can ultimately survive but which will it be? Freedom TM perfectly compliments and completes the story started in Deamon.

My only real complaint is that http://audible.co.uk doesn't yet have it for sale even though the US site does. As far as I understand this is due to vagaries of the international publishing industry that result in conflicting rights issues in each historical geographic region the book is sold in. Presumably the situation will eventually resolve itself over time but I doubt Sobol's deamon would be quite so patient waiting for the corporate shenanigans to play out!

If you like the idea of a geeky thriller mixing high technology, psychological game mechanics and with a large helping of anti-corporate sentiment then do yourself a favour and pick up a copy. Good luck & remember: If you're not playing the game, the game is playing you.