2.5, probably, and I regularly give 3 to books I enjoy despite their flaws, so keep that in mind. As much as I loved it as a thought experiment on how the world might end, I kept being yanked out of the story by the fact that women were either "sexy" or "easily ignored," that all the "heroes" were technophilic men in their twenties, and that it was basically a gamergate wet dream. More character depth and even a Bechdel C+ would have easily earned 4 stars. First, I want to say I love the concept. An intelligent programmer develops a partial Artificial Intelligence to carry out his wishes that turns on when he dies (Dead Man's Switch). Those wishes turn out to become a new world order. Interestingly enough he talks that about how nation-states are obsolete to the multi-national corporations. In some ways I can see this being true.I'm going to break this into two parts. The first part was great and led a small team police and FBI and a wayward programmer to attempt to figure out what was going on. Why were people dying from devices activated over the Internet and who was behind it? The epic battle at the dead man's house was great.After that...I didn't care for it. THe author kept name dropping encryption mechanisms, and while he was completely truthful and on point just made it poor. E.g. paraphrased "I'm glad he used WEP, because if he used WPA2 I would be screwed." What really dropped any sense of semblance was the Deputy Directory of the NSA not knowing about basic encryption, let alone multi-vectored attacks. Then its get into this darknet of folks carrying out the Daemon's wishes (the AI is called the Daemon (Pronounced Demon )). Cars without drivers attacking the NSA and FBI, spammers getting slaughted, a rogue currency and heads up display for membership.The characters were rather bland, and the ones that stuck around seemed to change. Ross went from white guy to russian to romanced white guy. Seabeck never seemed smart enough to be involved, much less a scapegoat. Grag was a smart kid who become a megolomaniac punk. The Daemon also kept doing this retarded "I can only understand yes or no, please answer yes or no, or I will kill you." But a few sentences later responds based upon obscure inputs. I just kept thinking, this was a hell of a lot of preplanning and programming to make this happen, or is a true AI. Both didn't quite fit the bill.I just didn't care for the rest of it. So 3 stars.
I wanted to like this book because the author put a lot of thought into the technology, but in retrospect, I should have abandoned it right after the really, really repulsive bad guy was introduced--or preferably, before, if I had only known. There were actually several featured bad guys, but the hacker/identity thief/carder Gragg in particular was initially over-the-top disgusting and evil, but then the character only appeared later as a rather uninteresting minion. It's as if the author created a whitepaper outlining the exploits required to execute a technical attack, and wrote fairly convincing psychological backgrounds for the actors, but had no real plot to hold the whole thing together and thus no character development or even convincing relationships. Technically interesting but, as a novel, unsatisfying.
—Subhadra
I would give this only one star, but I guess Suarez self-published, so I'm giving him an extra star for his effort.Otherwise this was absolutely awful.The first portion was interesting, with mysterious internet-based killings. Then you have the date-rape guy who sets up the drug dealer for some unknown reason. Then the cop kinda adopts the internet genius guy, and lets him tag along for the investigation.Then the roof falls in, and things get bad in a hurry. Then you have the mysterious government guys, and the prisoner (also known as The Black Character) who the daemon needs for some unknown reason. Then you have the ending, which is a setup for a sequel. Which I won't be anywhere near.Ya know what - I'm going back to one star for effort. 0 out of 5 for content.
—Sun
Its an interesting and altogether possible future.. Very good read. Now I "have to" go read part 2..
—google
What a fun and engaging read! A perfect mix of science plus fiction. Highly enjoyable.
—ganda
Excellent well worth a read
—Saga
