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Daemon

Author: Leinad Zeraus
Publisher: Verdugo Press
Category: Book

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Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars

1 reviews
Sales Rank: 122528

Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 444
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.3 x 1.2

ISBN: 0978627105
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780978627102
ASIN: 0978627105

Publication Date: December 1, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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Customer Reviews:

2 out of 5 stars

Imagine a thriller written by Dilbert May 16, 2008
Imagine a thriller written by Dilbert, but without the (intentional) humour.

I really wanted to like this, after reading in Wired about how the author used Lightning Source to self-publish this tale of a posthumous, deadly, uber-virus. It was not to be.

Google the author (cleverly, he's reversed his real name Daniel to derive a more unique and therefore search-friendly alias) and you'll find a PDF of sample chapters that allows you to read a fair chunk of the first part of the story. Notwithstanding the quotes on the same site that praise the author's eye for technical detail and the unputdownable quality of the writing, I found I was left with no real desire to read any further.

Technical detail is evident, and for the most part its plausible, but it often seems over-indulgent and superfluous...

Ross moved in to take over the keyboard. He brought up a list of
active processes and ran a finger down the list. "Just essential services.
This machine's working awfully hard on nothing. And it's reporting
almost no processor usage." Ross cast a glance over his shoulder. "You
may have a kernel rootkit on your hands, Hadi. I've been seeing more
of them lately.

... a little too breathless for my liking. In the 1980s when the only geek-friendly popular culture was stuff like Tron and War Games this sort of thing may have been impressive, but not any more.

A little later on we have this...

'Gragg had compromised the workstation days ago, first obtaining a network
IP address from the router, and then gaining access to the broker's
machine through the most basic of NetBIOS assaults. The ports on the
workstation were wide open, and over the course of several evening
visits to the cafe, Gragg had escalated his privileges.'

... now that's clearly written with the intention of conjuring up in your mind a wily hacker (cracker, whatever) who really knows his onions. I was imagining an Austin Powers type character leering, "yeah baby, I'm escalating my privileges. You'd better switch on the intrusion detection" - and that's hardly conducive to the establishment of dramatic tension.

Further into chapter 4 we learn that the same character has a 'lip piercing and arm tats' that 'gave him a menacing blue-collar appearance--but if anyone looked closely the tattoos depicted entwined CAT-5 cable' and with that, I decided that any illusion of a gripping, technically savvy, high-tension thriller is lost.

The events the plot opens with were inventive, but I found them too contrived.

Mind you, the reviews on amazon.com (as opposed to .co.uk) are all very favourable, so maybe its just me. I may one day, out of curiousity, get hold of a copy of this book and read the whole thing.